Brian Dickerson in the Free Press delves into the background of a move by state Sen. Randy Richardville and his Republican legislative colleagues to scuttle any real effort to raise Michigan's minimum-wage and concludes Republicans don't care about what voters think.
Dickerson shows how Richardville and cronies plan to neutralize any effort by citizens to mount a ballot proposal that would ask voters to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 by 2017 and index it to inflation thereafter.
Never mind that giving voters the final word is precisely what the framers of Michigan’s constitution had in mind when they established the ballot initiative process in the first place. This is the minimum wage we’re talking about — and raising it could cost the large and small-business owners who bankroll Richardville’s party some serious coin.
So instead of amending the state’s current minimum-wage statute (as Jones’ bill would do), Richardville’s proposal would repeal that statute and replace it with a new, essentially similar one. His strategy — which he readily copped to in a phone conversation Friday afternoon — is to make sure that, even if Raise Michigan succeeds in its bid to amend the current minimum-wage statute, it won’t count, because the statute they want to amend will have ceased to exist.
Clever, eh?
