DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: State of the State address focuses on several progressive goals, including a much-needed hike in the state’s minimum wage.
By: Hank Kalet
Gov. Richard Codey certainly has an ambitious agenda.
The acting governor, who also serves as state Senate president, already has been a busy man in his nearly two months in office, crafting a surprisingly progressive and far-reaching agenda. He is pushing for comprehensive reform of the state’s mental health system, an overhaul of the state’s ethics rules, a moratorium on the death penalty and a much-needed widening of the N.J. Turnpike.
The Essex County politician expanded on that already formidable set of goals Tuesday when he gave his State of the State address to a joint session of the state Legislature.
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In the speech, he outlined a number of goals, several of which dovetail nicely with the plans he already has outlined more money for housing and service for the mentally ill, a revamping of the state Executive Commission on Ethical Standards to give the public a greater voice and the restoration of the public advocate’s office.
The others his proposal to hike the state’s minimum wage from the woefully low $5.15 an hour to $7.15 over the next two years and to boost funding for embryonic stem cell research are unexpectedly bold, but necessary.
The minimum wage hike, in particular, is long overdue and is probably the most important proposal to come out of Tuesday’s speech. The last hike was in 1999, when the wage was boosted a measly 10 cents to keep it consistent with the federal minimum wage level of $5.15. At the time, the Republican-controlled Legislature with the consent of Republican Gov. Christie Whitman enacted legislation tying it to the federal minimum, meaning the state could not boost the minimum unless the federal government was to do so.
The realities of living in New Jersey, however, demand a repeal of the 1999 law and a significant hike in the wage. That’s the point the New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonpartisan think tank, makes in a December report endorsing a hike in the wage to $7.50 an hour.
According to the report, the cost of living in New Jersey is about a third higher than the national average. A minimum wage worker working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks grosses $10,712, well below what it takes to live in New Jersey, Susan Bottino writes in an NJPP commentary on the wage.
"In fact, someone making that amount in New Jersey would have to perform the superhuman task of working 153 hours a week to afford the average two-bedroom apartment," she writes. "Clearly, the minimum wage is not the safety net it was intended to be. Minimum wage workers struggle to survive."
The NJPP says a minimum wage hike to $7.50 would help more than the 11,000 workers making minimum wage in New Jersey. The NJPP says there are a total of 307,000 New Jerseyans about 8.3 percent of the workforce that are paid between $5.15 and $7.49 that would directly benefit from the increase. Another 189,000 workers making up to $8.50 an hour 5.1 percent of the workforce are likely to benefit from the hike, as well.
The chief argument against the wage hike is that it would lead employers to cut jobs. But the NJPP says numerous surveys and studies dispute that claim, with some showing that the opposite actually occurs.
While the wage hike maybe the most important proposal to come out of the speech, one other bears specific mention because it would give citizens a more powerful voice in state government.
The restoration of the public advocate’s office, which had been promised by then-candidate James McGreevey but left off his agenda once he took office, demands immediate attention. The advocate, abolished by Gov. Whitman in 1994, was essentially the citizen’s voice inside state government, an independent watchdog working within the executive branch with broad powers to investigate not only business and industry but state, county and local agencies and sue them on behalf of the state’s residents if need be.
During it’s 20-year history, the advocate forced the state to implement a court-mandated affordable housing program, to end delays in parole hearings for state prisoners and to live up to federal clean air standards. It also helped force the casino industry to put money back into Atlantic City, sued the state to give institutionalized patients the right to terminate their medical treatment and backed beach-goers upset over high beach fees and that’s just the short list of the dozens of important fights with which it had been involved. New Jersey citizens lost an important ally when the position was eradicated.
Missing from the speech, of course, was any talk of an anticipated budget deficit that could approach $4 billion that hangs over the state like the sword of Damoclese. But there is time enough for the governor to take that problem on. The budget is not due until March.
In the meantime, Gov. Codey has outlined the most far-reaching progressive agenda the state has seen in some time.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be e-mailed by clicking here.