4 states reject wage hikes; Ky. bill would omit servers

Nation's Restaurant News,  March 5, 2007  

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WASHINGTON -- With Congress poised to increase the federal minimum wage, legislatures in Kansas, Georgia, Virginia and Idaho all recently rejected proposals to raise their states' minimum wages.

In Montana, lawmakers fell one vote short of passing an amendment to a wage hike passed in November that would have exempted servers from its annual cost-of-living indexing provision. The voting deadlocked at 50 to 50 when a Republican lawmaker who is also a waitress cast a "no" vote, according to local press reports.

Kentucky's House of Representatives passed a wage increase Feb. 21, but it excludes servers and omits an automatic cost-of-living adjustment. The matter awaited state Senate attention there.

Twenty-six states now have minimum wages that exceed the federal hourly minimum of $5.15; eight of those states have threshold wages that exceed the proposed $7.25 federal minimum that was awaiting congressional action.

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