Efforts to get a $15 an hour minimum wage in Maryland by 2024 went into high gear Friday as members of a House panel heard from dozens of people on both sides of the issue.
Three Maryland county executives — all Democrats — kicked off the hearing before the House Economic Matters Committee Friday morning.
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks favors raising the hourly wage in Maryland from its current level of $10.10.
She told the panel that raising worker pay is a moral imperative and added, “What I say is that we cannot afford not to raise the minimum wage.”
Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman told the House members, “The cost of not increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a cost on taxpayers.”
Pittman explained that when people’s paychecks don’t cover their basic necessities, they then look to government assistance to close the gap.
In Montgomery County, the move to get to $15 an hour is already being phased in over a period of years. Currently, the wage is between $12 and $12.25 an hour. Back in 2013, the neighboring jurisdictions of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties agreed to enact legislation to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour by 2017.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Kate Ryan over at WTOP