Kim Norvell

knorvell@dmreg.com

At least six Polk County cities have already approved or are considering opting-out of a minimum wage increase set to go into effect in 10 days.

Those cities are making a last-minute effort to opt out of the county's mandate before its first scheduled increase to $8.75 an hour on April 1. Others are hopeful the Legislature approves a state law barring counties from setting their own minimum wage increases before the deadline.

Polk County workers will be paid $1.50 more an hour under a law approved by the county supervisors last October. Minimum wage will reach $10.75 an hour by 2019 after several rounds of increases, with future wage hikes tied to the Consumer Price Index.

If signed into law, House File 295 would immediately roll back increases approved in Polk, Johnson, Wapello and Linn counties and freeze the state's minimum wage at $7.25 an hour. The bill was approved by the Iowa House on March 9. The Senate is taking up the same bill, which passed out of committee Wednesday and is now eligible for floor debate.

Here's where individual cities stand as of Wednesday:

Ankeny and Bondurant have both approved ordinances to keep minimum wage in their cities at $7.25 per hour.

and have both approved ordinances to keep minimum wage in their cities at $7.25 per hour. Clive , Altoona , Pleasant Hill and Carlisle will vote on ordinances to opt out of the increase in the next week.

, , and will vote on ordinances to opt out of the increase in the next week. Des Moines , West Des Moines , Urbandale , Johnston , Windsor Heights , Polk City , Elkhart and Mitchellville do not have immediate plans to address the issue locally.

, , , , , , and do not have immediate plans to address the issue locally. Alleman and Norwalk would be unaffected by a minimum wage increase with no businesses in the Polk County portions of their cities.

West Des Moines Mayor Steve Gaer said he is hopeful the Legislature will act before the first deadline. But the city council is prepared to meet in a special session at the end of the month if West Des Moines needs to opt out on its own, he said.

"I think the businesses know based on the publicity that we want to opt out, not because of the increase but because of the disparity in our city," he said. "As a city, we've said we can't have four different minimum wages."

The western suburb lies in Polk, Dallas, Madison and Warren counties.

Urbandale will also wait for the state to take action, which they anticipate to happen this session and before the deadline, said City Manager A.J. Johnson.

But that strategy doesn't work for Clive. City Manager Dennis Henderson said the council asked for an ordinance to consider at its meeting Thursday to ensure the wage stays level throughout the city's two counties. Clive straddles Polk and Dallas counties along 142nd Street.

"(Council members) have talked about it for some time from the beginning, but we have been waiting and waiting and waiting on the Legislature to make a determination," he said. "It's really the state and the federal governments who should be making those decisions, not the local government, in (the council’s) opinion."

Pleasant Hill Mayor Sara Kurovski, whose city council will vote to opt out of the increase March 28, said elected officials there are concerned economic development will suffer if businesses can pay lower wages in neighboring cities. She advocates for a statewide increase determined by the Legislature through an economic evaluation, she said.

"It sets us as a city off in a different economic advantage or disadvantage, depending on whichever lens you're looking through," she said. "And it's my opinion you need to have a consistent statewide minimum wage, so you don’t have cities and counties competing against each other."

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Tom Hockensmith, the Democratic supervisor who led Polk County's effort, questioned the motive behind cities' efforts to push through local ordinances at the eleventh hour when they had five months to take action. He said the cities' moves "leave a bad taste in your mouth" after the supervisors had more than six months of discussions and public hearings involving representatives from a majority of Polk County's communities.

"It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me at this point if you're certain that the Legislature is poised to take action on this," he said. "I don't know what it does for them at this point. It doesn't make sense to me, politically or otherwise."

About 36,000 workers in Polk County would benefit from a minimum wage increase, said Peter Fisher, research director at the Iowa Policy Project. Estimates from the Economic Policy Institute show 25,200 employees earn less than $8.75 an hour, he said. Another 10,800 would indirectly benefit from Polk County's increases as businesses raise wages to remain competitive, he said.

Fisher said businesses in cities that opt-out of the wage hike may still find themselves paying the new minimum if the Legislature does not pass the freeze.

"The Des Moines metro area is really one labor market, and when the largest part of the market is paying $8.75 or more it could be hard to compete for good workers paying less than that," he said.

The state and federal minimum wage has been stalled at $7.25 since 2008. Twenty-nine states have raised their wages above the minimum rate.

Polk County officials hoped their actions would compel legislators to act. Democrats in both the Iowa House and Senate introduced legislation this session to raise Iowa's minimum wage, but those bills are expected to go nowhere in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The Des Moines Register did not hear back from Granger, Grimes, Runnells or Sheldahl about their plans for local minimum wage ordinances.