child wellbeing
Advocates: Las Cruces minimum wage hike won’t affect child-care subsidies
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Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima has been hearing complaints and concerns from businesses throughout the process to increase his city’s minimum wage from the state minimum of $7.50 in 2014 to $10.10 an hour in 2019. There was a particular howl recently from the business community when a provision to index the minimum wage to inflation was scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2018, something business operators and even the local school district was not prepared for because of an error in the ordinance’s drafting. The city council has since fixed the oversight. But child-care providers in particular have been bending Miyagishima’s ear because of fear over the effects on their payrolls and on parents who are receiving child-care subsidies.