A new bill regulating local mandates on businesses passed through committee in the Iowa State House of Representatives on Feb. 9. If passed, the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour will be mandated as the exact minimum employers can pay across the state. Local regulations on product containers, employment opportunities and sales standards that go beyond state legislation will also be repealed if the bill is enacted.

Polk, Linn, Johnson and Wapello counties now require minimum wages above that $7.25 mark, which has been the national minimum wage since 2009. Multiple Iowa counties also have laws that prohibit grocery stores from providing plastic bags to customers, with even more counties considering enacting similar laws.  

The bill also strikes any local legislation going beyond statewide civil rights laws. 

Supporters claim that in the arena of civil rights and employer regulation, regionalism isn’t acceptable. These complex topics are too broad for one short op-ed, so this week I will focus on our state’s wages, and next week I will focus on local civil rights.

Supporters of the bill itself make the argument that having county-controlled wages creates “patchwork regulation.” In this sense, businesses operating statewide need to negotiate conflicting regulations. If businesses can legally pay workers certain wages in one location but not others, branches will be held to different standards, with varied profits.  

Furthermore, businesses could end up with unfair advantages thanks to differences in wages and regulations. These regulation gaps sometimes are more specific than counties. For example, although Polk County is raising minimum wage, Bondurant has exempted itself from the county’s law.  

The argument could also be made that local wage laws could hurt workers at least as much as businesses. Johnson and Polk counties both opted for minimum wages above $10 an hour. Even among the counties that chose to raise minimum wages, this could be the start of an institutionalized income gap. Wapello County, already one of the 10 poorest counties in the state, raised its minimum wage to only $8.25.

In a state where most counties have a minimum wage well below an acceptable level, businesses could easily move lower-income jobs to areas where people are forced to accept lower incomes. This could create long-term systems where higher-income jobs are unavailable due to less competition, and companies wanting to pay less for labor could exploit large portions of the state. 

Along with hurting small towns by accelerating growth for unskilled labor, this could cause high levels of unemployment in areas with high minimum wages. If Des Moines wages remain above Bondurant’s, unskilled workers in Des Moines will have fewer opportunities. Companies simply won’t be willing to hire people if lower wages are available nearby.

Certain parts of this bill are valid, but this is not the solution. First, the problem of statewide businesses.

While John Landon, the author of the bill, believes the bill is justified because there is a strain of multi-county businesses, local businesses offer most of the minimum wage jobs. Generally speaking, it’s statewide businesses that can afford to provide high wages for everyone.

And as for towns exempting themselves from county-wide regulations, it’s important to know that Bondurant Mayor Curt Sullivan exempted his town after the bill was proposed. He publicly stated that he didn’t disagree with the Polk County’s wage levels, but that he wanted wages to be the same statewide. It’s likely that this is a political move, as he’s clearly creating more of a problem in order to advance his agenda.

It appears that regionalized unemployment and low wages are real threats if a wage gap solidifies. But it’s also important to know just how dire the circumstances are. Right now, more than 80 percent of people who earn minimum wage are over 20, and the majority of minimum wage workers are women. Meanwhile, the minimum wage is 37 percent as much as the wage of the average worker, and one third of Iowans struggle to afford necessities.

Minimum wage gaps are concerning, but with minimum wage this low, there’s already a disparity between income in Iowa cities and small towns. And this is a disparity that would be mainly alleviated by the introduction of local wage raises, especially in places like Wapello County. Furthermore, by the end of 2017, 21 states will raise their statewide minimum wage. If Iowa is to avoid becoming a hub for mainly low-income jobs, having at least some of the state demand acceptable wages is an important step. 

When Republicans first proposed this bill, they said that it would be accompanied by a bill to raise minimum wage. Supervisors from each county that raised wages said they were hoping to motivate the Iowa Capitol to hurry along statewide increases. Now that this wage bill is about to be voted on, it doesn’t look like there is any plan to increase it. The problem this bill addresses is troubling, but its choice of solution is much more worrisome.