Raise minimum wage?

"Raising the minimum wage is the best way to fight poverty," the bill raising the rate in Nevada states, noting full-time workers would receive an additional $2,000 a year, "enough to make a big difference in the lives of low-income workers to move many families out of poverty."

Huntsman said he wants to find out the effect of Utah's minimum wage. "I know we've got a lot of people who are right at the line," the governor said, living below the poverty level. "I don't think it's sustainable. So let's take a look at how it's impacting our population."

The governor's task force, which will include representatives of the business community and lawmakers, as well as the advocate organizations, is expected to begin meeting by the end of June, task force chairwoman Pamela Atkinson said.

Atkinson, a longtime advocate for the state's poor, said she wants to see more information before she's ready to endorse a higher minimum wage. "I think I need to know all of the facts," she said.

The information now being collected for the task force, she said, includes "the problems being caused by people being on the minimum wage, the number of people who have to work two or three jobs and the cost to taxpayers" for Medicaid and other benefits.

It will be up to lawmakers to decide whether the minimum wage should go up. Last session, they voted to eliminate a loophole used by Salt Lake City to give preference to companies that pay a living wage of as much as $10.56 an hour when awarding city contracts.

The sponsor of that bill, Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said mandating a higher minimum wage "is a two-edged sword" that is likely to hurt those Utahns whom it is intended to help.

"It often will put some people who are standing on the lowest rungs of the American Dream out of work," he said, including teenagers and other newcomers to the job market who may see their positions eliminated or sent elsewhere.

"I want everybody to have the opportunity to work. These kinds of laws put people out of work, particularly those who have the least amount to offer" an employer, said Stephenson, the head of the pro-business Utah Taxpayers Association.

Bill Tibbetts, director of the anti-hunger action committee at Crossroads Urban Center, is optimistic something will be done. "I think when you get people together and you look at this issue seriously, it's going to be hard not to," Tibbetts said.

"Studies show the majority (of people earning the minimum wage) are adults. A lot of them have children and are the primary wage earner in their household," he said. "Those are not people we can afford to ignore."

---

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com