Portland considers asking voters about raising minimum wage again

Portland City Hall. (AnnMarie Hilton/ Maine Morning Star)

The majority of Portland voters said no the last time they were asked if they’d like to raise the minimum wage, but some city councilors are trying for a do-over.

A 2022 ballot question asked voters if they would like to raise the city’s minimum wage to $18 an hour and eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. That question, which faced significant opposition from industry groups, only gained the support of 39% of voters at the time, but the Portland City Council is considering putting both measures on the ballot again this November. And this time, they are trying a different approach.

Currently, the minimum wage in Portland is $15 an hour for wage workers and $7.50 an hour for those who receive tips. This rate was established by a successful ballot question in 2020.

Portland City Council member Kate Sykes, who used to chair the Maine Democratic Socialists of America chapter, had worked on the ballot campaign. “While it was a great victory in 2020, it’s time to dust that off and look at it again,” said Sykes, who now represents District 5 and is working with fellow council members Anna Trevorrow and Victoria Pelletier on the new measure.

“Cost of living is such that you can’t make it on a minimum wage in Portland anymore,” Sykes added. According to a living wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a person living in Portland without children needs to make at least $23.74 an hour to support themself.

Increasing the minimum wage will not only create a more liveable wage for hourly workers in the city, but Sykes said it is an effective tool to address the housing crisis. In a memo she shared with the council at the last meeting, Sykes said the overwhelming majority of workers who make less than $20 an hour are renters, so increasing their pay will make housing more affordable for them.

A different approach

In retrospect, Sykes said it was a “mistake” to group the two wage measures into a single ballot question in 2022. While they involve a similar topic, she said they are different “mechanically,” so together they were “too complex of a ballot question.”

Rather, the council members would like to present the policy changes as separate questions on the Nov. 5 ballot: One to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2028 and another to remove the subminimum wage for tipped workers . This way people could vote on them independent from each other.

Additionally, Sykes said there are other potential modifications to the subminimum wage proposal, which would ensure service employees receive the same minimum wage as other hourly workers, plus tips. When the idea was posed a couple years ago, Sykes said some opponents felt the five-year timeline to implement the change was too fast. This time, the potential question would extend that to 10 years.

“It is kinda a re-tooling and a do-over of those two questions,” Sykes said.

Because the measure is working its way through the council, it won’t require the signature gathering of a citizen-led initiative, Sykes explained. Rather, it will require a council vote  affirming they would like to put it on the ballot.

The council had its first reading of the measure Monday, but it will have an opportunity for more robust discussion, proposed amendments and public input at its Aug. 19 meeting. That is also when the council could vote on whether to move forward with the questions.

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