Living Wage Ordinance, Listen To Reason

Local democrats took the opportunity last week to blast President Bush’s 2006 proposed budget, which included funding cuts to the Community Development Block Grant programs. It was reported “Bloomington alone has received $126,000 less this year in federal block grant dollars than in 2002, when it got $1.086 million”. Ironically, it is this same group of democrats that is hell bent on instituting a Living Wage Ordinance that could cost the Monroe County United Ministries nearly that same amount of funding in its first year under the new ordinance.

Meri Reinhold, executive director, Monroe County United Ministries has warned that if the LWO is enacted, the cost to MCUM “could be as high as $109,000 per year, which is far beyond the funding levels available to us from the city, even if they do assist us with transition funds (such assistance, if any, is not clearly defined). Therefore, we would have to reduce our services either due to increased costs or to accommodate the loss of city funding because of our ineligibility. Reducing our services means that fewer children can come to our program, fewer children means that reductions in staff are required. Whichever course we choose, children lose, our employees lose, and in our opinion, we all lose”.

IUPUI economics professor Martin Spechler and fellow economics professors, Lloyd Orr and Gerhard Glomm, conducted a one-hour seminar on the LWO, labeled “unintended consequences” Friday afternoon at the Monroe County Public Library. Spechler called the living-wage idea “a fad” that will do more harm than good. All three suggested the city council could do more with the money by subsidizing health, housing and food programs for the poor that don’t raise their taxable incomes or decrease their eligibility for other benefits.

Now, several of the supporters, including the Mayor are attempting to salvage the ordinance by watering it down with exclusions and exceptions. Face it, this is a lousy ordinance, let it go, get over it. The people that can least afford it will suffer the most under this ordinance and frankly it’s not worth the cost just to be able to put up a billboard stating “Bloomington, the first city in Indiana with a living wage”. We can only hope that Mark Kruzan and Andy Ruff listen to reason and pull the plug on the LWO before it goes to the Council for a vote.