Flynn, Long Urge ‘Living Wage’ Law

Ventura County supervisors Tuesday will consider moving forward quickly with a law requiring county contractors to pay their employees a “living wage,” but exempting businesses leasing land from the county at Channel Islands Harbor.

Supervisors John Flynn and Kathy Long on Friday sent a letter to their colleagues outlining the proposal that would guarantee $8 an hour for workers with health benefits and at least $10 an hour without benefits on any county contract worth more than $25,000.

Flynn said approval of the proposed law should be speedy, despite reservations voiced by the board’s two conservative members, Judy Mikels and Frank Schillo.

“I think there may have been a couple of supervisors who didn’t like the idea of a living wage ordinance and either wanted to scuttle or reduce the effectiveness of it,” Flynn said. “It’s been bounced around too much. This is a strong direction to staff to produce an ordinance.”

Flynn and Long have asked for the law to be drafted within 90 days.

If Ventura County adopts the ordinance, it will join a growing list of municipalities across the region attempting to pull their lower-wage workers above the federal poverty level--$16,450 per year for a family of four, said Marcos Vargas, chairman of the Ventura County Living Wage Coalition, made up of 40 community, labor and faith-based groups.

Los Angeles, Pasadena, West Hollywood, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, along with Los Angeles County, are among governments that have adopted similar laws. Proposals are being considered in Oxnard and Santa Barbara, Vargas said.

About 23% of Ventura County’s 756,000 residents are working in poverty, despite good economic times, he said.

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“The coalition endorses this as an important first step in adopting a meaningful and effective living-wage ordinance by early next year,” he said.

The board agreed in concept a year ago to an ordinance sought by the coalition that called for higher salaries and benefits in county contracts, subsidies and leases. The resolution before supervisors on Tuesday eliminates subsidies and leases, specifically because of Channel Islands Harbor, Flynn said.

The county-owned harbor, still struggling to survive economically, would go under if service businesses, such as restaurants and hotels, were forced to pay employees $8 to $10 an hour, said Michael Koutnik, owner of the Whale’s Tail. Most workers there now make the state minimum wage of $5.75 an hour.

“If living wage was assessed to the harbor, this restaurant would go bankrupt and probably every other business here would, too,” he said.

Mikels--the only dissenter in the November 1999 vote to back the ordinance concept--said the impact on the harbor was among her biggest gripes with the law. But she is also worried about the mandate’s effect on other businesses amid signs of an economic slowdown. The county’s cost of doing business will also likely increase as contractors pass on higher labor costs, Mikels said.

“I’m still very concerned and uncertain about this whole living wage idea,” Mikels said. “And it bothers me to be asked to give commitment for a strong and effective ordinance before we see a report.”

Schillo went a step further, charging that Flynn and Long were trying to “shove their own law down the throat” of Chief Administrative Office Harry Hufford.

“I think it’s a blatant example of putting pressure on the CAO . . . instead of allowing him to do his work and discuss it later,” Schillo said.

Schillo said he would only support a voluntary program that would give preference in hiring companies that agree to pay a living wage.

“We’d end up with the same thing--a contract with a company [that] paid a living wage,” he said. “I want the choice to be made by the companies, not big government.”

The county awards millions of dollars each year in contracts to companies for a variety of services, ranging from road work to building maintenance to gardening. For now, those employees are the priority for working-poor advocates. But the coalition eventually wants all businesses leasing or receiving subsidies from the county to pay the higher salaries and benefits, Vargas said.

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That will not sit well with businesses in the harbor, which are in the unique position of leasing the land beneath their tax-generating operations from the county. They say it wouldn’t be fair to make them the only restaurants and shops in the county forced to pay workers $8 an hour.

“The harbor has not completely come out of its economic woes, and though the future is bright, how are we going to entice other businesses to come here?” Koutnik asked.

In addition to wage and benefit guarantees, the ordinance would include compensated time off, Consumer Price Index increases and the creation of a living wage oversight committee made up of labor, business and community representatives. Businesses with fewer than five employees would be exempt.