Nevada minimum wage earners score

Monday, Jan. 15, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Nevada's minimum wage earners have reason to celebrate, even if two Republican members of the Nevada congressional delegation do not.

Minimum wage earners won a $1 an hour pay raise in Nevada at the polls last November. Now, under legislation approved last week by the House, they could see another series of raises, starting with a 70-cent hourly boost possibly later this year.

Eighty-two House Republicans - about 40 percent of the party's members - crossed party lines to vote to raise the $5.15 federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

Nevada Republican Reps. Jon Porter and Dean Heller voted no. They said they thought the risk to small businesses was too severe.

Heller said that his experience as secretary of state for a dozen years before coming to Congress taught him that Nevada's small businesses need all the support they can get. Just one or two of every 10 small businesses survive, according to state agencies.

He said he could not support the Democrats' plan without also giving tax breaks to small businesses, which Republicans tried and failed to secure.

Porter voted for a minimum wage hike in Congress last year, when it included small-business tax breaks and was linked to repealing the estate tax on the wealthiest of Americans. That bill stalled in the Senate and never became law.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to consider putting small-business tax breaks in the Senate's version of the bill, but Porter said he did not want to rely on that possibility.

Porter said he worries that businesses in Nevada are already saddled now that voters upped the state wage $1 an hour over the federal rate, which under the House bill would rise to $5.85 two months after the legislation becomes law. It would rise twice more - to $6.55 one year after the first raise and to $7.25 the following year.

Nevada's third House member, Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, voted for the raise. "Nevadans sent a clear message this election that they support an increase in the minimum wage," Berkley said in a statement. "This change is long overdue and will help more families make ends meet."

In Nevada, weekly pay for full-time minimum wage earners rose from $206 to $246 after the November election. It could rise to $274 in the first year of a federal increase.

Annually, that initial increase would boost income from $10,300 before the November election to $14,200 if the federal law passes this year - but that is still below poverty level for families.

Nevada Labor Commissioner Michael Tancheck is watching the federal legislation closely.

Nevada's $1 boost above the federal level took effect Nov. 28, as soon as the election was certified.

But the effective date of subsequent raises tied to federal wage increases is unclear. The law does not say the adjustment must immediately follow the federal increase. After each federal pay raise, Tancheck will decide when Nevadans will get the $1 increase .