LA County Supervisors vote to study raising the minimum wage

Following a process started by the city of Los Angeles, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to study the impacts of raising the minimum wage for county employees and workers in businesses located in the unincorporated areas. 

The motion, from supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis, instructs the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation to analyze the findings of three newly-released studies, which gauge the impact of a potential wage hike in the city of Los Angeles. The LACEDC will apply those findings to the county and provide their own projections.

The county will pay up to $95,000 for the analysis.

"We want to join the dialogue, but we want to join it armed with the facts," Kuehl said. 

Economists at the LACEDC will have their work cut out for them. The three studies presented last month to the L.A. City Council crunched data differently, and came to somewhat different conclusions. Studies from UC Berkeley and the Economic Roundtable found that a higher minimum wage would benefit the city. A study commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce said it would hurt businesses, and recommended against a wage hike.

Kuehl said one out of every 100 residents in Los Angeles county is a county worker, making the government the area's largest employer. 

"What our county does as an employer, as a regional wage setter, is vitally important to the economy and the quality of life in our region," she said. "Together with the city of L.A., we represent over half of this region."

Her staff says about 4500 business licenses have been issued in the unincorporated areas of the county. Hoping for more input from the owners of those businesses, Supervisor Don Knabe called for a series of public hearings in those areas. 

"Economists are great and they do good work, but they don’t run a business, and they certainly don’t run the largest county in America," Knabe said. "I strongly believe that we need to hear from those experts: the people who work every day to meet payroll." 

Like the public hearings held so far on the minimum wage by the Los Angeles City Council, several members of the public showed up to weigh in on the topic at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. Labor activists and low-wage workers applauded the idea of raising the minimum wage, while representatives of business groups said it was the wrong strategy. Both sides agreed the county is smart in studying the idea more before making any proposals. 

Supervisor Kuehl credited Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for starting the discussion in the region, and said the county's move to study its impacts adds to the momentum. 

"I think this will happen all over the county," Kuehl told KPCC. "Then we won't have the kind of flow of labor and workers that people are worried about because we'll be much more unified."