Second in a series.

Re: “Reaching for Handle on Minimum Wage” 

Every fulltime employee for the state government should be drawing a salary above $30,000, says state Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley Thomas while opining on the current debate over a minimum wage.

“We should require our contractors – including non-profits, construction entities, suppliers – to take similar steps,” said the second-year Democrat who represents Culver City and the Crenshaw District.

“If we are able to push that, it will cost the state money. Taxpayers have to foot the bill to finance that. It is expensive.”

To buttress his assertion, Mr. Ridley-Thomas said that a minimum wage bill he supported – that was carried by San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno and died in committee – “would have cost the state an estimated $2 billion.

“That,” he said, “is how much the state is a poverty wage purveyor. Frankly, that is unacceptable.”

Mr. Ridley-Thomas, at 27 the youngest member of the legislature, said that if Sacramento “is going to put minimum wage demands on private industry, we in state government have to do some soul-searching ourselves. We have to figure out if we are going to step up as well.”

The Assemblyman vowed vowed that he will not support any proposal that exempts the state, and its roughly 250,000 employees, from a wage law and applies exclusively to the private sector.

(To be continued)