Bentley Signs Bill Blocking Minimum Wage Hikes, Senate Approves Lean General Fund Budget

| February 26, 2016 

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The fourth week of the Alabama legislative session ended with a bang. Governor Robert Bentley has signed a bill blocking local governments from setting their own minimum wage. The governor signed the bill yesterday afternoon just after the Alabama Senate approved the bill 23 to 10, largely along party lines. Republican legislators supported the bill to push back against the Birmingham City Council, which voted to raise their city’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Bill sponsor, Republican Representative David Faulkner of Mountain Brook, says the state needs a uniform wage floor. Senator Linda Coleman-Madison, a Democrat from Birmingham, says she is concerned about people trying to feed their families on current hourly wages.

For more on this story and the rest of the week’s action, we talk with Don Dailey. He’s host of Capitol Journal on Alabama Public Television. Dailey told WBHM’s Rachel Osier Lindley about the lead-up to the bill’s passage, and the lean general fund budget approved by the Alabama Senate. If it wins final approval, it would means cuts in Medicaid services and ending a long-planned reform to managed care.

 

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