MAYOR BRONIN
STATEMENT ON LEGISLATION TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE
— NEWS AND
COMMUNITY STATEMENT—
(March 3, 2016)
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin
released the following statement concerning An Act Increasing The Minimum
Fair Wage, H.B. 5370, which is being debated this evening by the State
Legislature’s Labor and Public Employees Committee. The proposed legislation
would raise the wage, incrementally, to $15 per hour by 2022.
“No
individual or family should work more than forty hours a week and live in
poverty,” Mayor Bronin said. “A fair wage is the right thing to do for workers
and an important part of creating an economy that works for everyone.”
Sounds nice but any time the government regulates wages and benefits in the private sector it hurts people in the end.
ReplyDeleteJust like when they started passing legislation that anyone working full time should get basic benefits. What's the response of employers? Cut some if not most of their workers back to part time so they don't need to offer benefits. Thanks to "no one working 40 hours a week should live without benefits" many workers need two part time jobs now.
Interference of government in regulating wages may have a down side, but private industry that lobbies Congress to create regulation that allows American industry to move off shore also hurts society. It takes away middle income positions, reduces the middle class and turns more workers into low end service industry. This vastly increases the wealth of the corporate community. And it necessitates the government to redistribute wealth in the form of progressive taxes, food stamps and subsidized housing to the once semi skilled middle income class.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the rat race.
He would be better off cutting their taxes! The politicians have direct control over this type of relief yet they rarely use it. I guess it's easier to blame the businesses for all the problems of the world.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing skilled about working in the fast food industry as a burger flipper for five years.
ReplyDeleteIf I run a small business and pay 6 employees $10 an hour each because all I can afford is paying $60 an hour total, guess what? When the state mandates I pay them each $15 an hour I'm laying off two so I can stay within my $60 an hour budget.
ReplyDeleteBrace yourself everyone for another unemployment spike in CT and the ripple effect that comes with more people out of work.
I realize that Mayor Bronin has a very expensive education, and that his vision and understanding exceed the narrow limits of our fair municipality. However, his thoughts on the appropriate level of government coerced minimum wage are utterly irrelevant, or no more relevant than those of the Chief of Police. He's our ordained strong Mayor endowed with actual executive powers. Please let him, in cooperation with our new Council, find the spending cuts necessary to fix the budget.
ReplyDelete-----------------------------
Hi all, Just a reminder that Hartford 2000 and its partners will be hosting the annual People's Budget workshop tomorrow, Saturday, March 5, from 9 AM to 1:30 PM at the Hartford Public Library downtown. This is an opportunity for residents to experience the actual balancing of the City operating budget in a hands-on exercise and to provide input to the Mayor and Council on the fiscal year 2016-17 budget. Currently, there is a gap of $31 million between revenues and expenditures that must be erased.
Bronin should be grilling the City Treasurer as to why the City is so much further in debt than he reported. That is what we have a Treasurer for. I think those phony numbers had something to do with him getting re-elected. He should be gotten rid of. There is no way a Treasurer who is that bad at keeping track of money should still be working.
ReplyDeleteThe Treasurer has nothing to do with that. The Treasurer is responsible for making sure funds are available to issue checks. Budget projections come from the Management and Budget Department and the Finance Department is responsible to oversee spending. Your finger pointing should have been started a few months ago at the previous reckless Mayor and Council. Do you really think these budget shortages are happening just now and are something new? Maybe someone should have been asking questions before we started building a new baseball stadium and driving the City into 25 year debt payments. Oh, wait . They were and Wooden and Segarra , Kennedy, Cruz, Jennings, and Anderson chose to ignore what they were saying and went ahead with the "done deal"
ReplyDeleteKevin, I still don't understand why no one from the media (including your friends) have put a microphone in front of Segarra's piehole and make him answer for any of this! That's it???? He gets a free pass to walk around UNACCOUNTABLE because he lost the election???? I'm not saying to tar and feather him,but at least shame him a little bit!
ReplyDeleteThe Treasurer knows how much money the City has and whether they are overspending or not. He knew what was going on.
ReplyDelete4:28PM
ReplyDeleteGood question. I am not sure anyone really cares what Segarra has to say, the damage has already been done. I for one could care less if I ever see his face again, except maybe in news coverage for a Federal indictment over Dillon Stadium or any of his other dirty deals that are starting to bubble to the surface now. (I will post the latest Audit Report today on how he gave $50,000 to a promoter that was already in debt to the City for tens of thousands of dollars) And if you have been to any event where Mayor Bronin has spoke, he is not shy about saying what a financial mess he inherited and the tough budget decisions he is going to have to make. Decisions that were ignored for years by Segarra.
5:05pm
ReplyDeleteHe may very well know, but it is not in his authority to control it. If he did, you would be posting that he is a meglomaniac trying to control the City. Put the blame where it belongs, with our former Mayor and the do nothing incompetent Council. Ken Kennedy was chair of OMB and look at the mess he left us with. They all knew this mess was coming but they refused to make the tough decisions. Thank God they are all gone and someone that is willing to make the tough decisions is sitting in the Mayor's Chair now.
Kevin, not all of them are gone. Let us not forget the one hold-over who could have voted no on the stadium but didn't because she wanted to employ 15 part-time minimum wage workers from Hartford that normally, would be unemployable. So we spent 60 million plus to employ 15 people. Gosh.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lovely sentiment. But by the year 2022 (6 years away)--when/if the minimum wage has risen by "increments" to $15/hour--that will most likely still keep people earning that figure at poverty level. Inflation is a bitch.
ReplyDeleteResidents should speak out about the current Court of Common Council budget. These officials were elected their aides were not. Give me a break on the aides salaries.
ReplyDeleteOne former and present Council member thought $90,000 should be the salary. Give me another break. Hartford Government at it's worst.