Dayton says (again) he'll veto a bill that bans cities from setting a minimum wage

Yes, they've had this debate before. But now there's a "poison pill" element.

Author:
Shaymus McLaughlin
Updated:
Mar 8, 2018
Original:
May 24, 2017

Back on May 11, Gov. Mark Dayton promised to veto a bill that would ban cities from setting their own minimum wage or sick time laws for workers.

Now jump forward to Tuesday night, May 23. Gov. Mark Dayton promised to veto a bill that would ban cities from setting their own minimum wage or sick time laws for workers.

Yes, this same exact issue is coming up once again, with Republican legislators rolling out another of these "preemption" bills (and this time during a special session).

The earlier version was pretty straightforward, dealing only with this topic of preemption (or "labor standards," as the actual bill text puts it). The House and Senate never finished the process of coming up with a compromise conference report to send Dayton. But since he'd promised to veto it, it likely would have been halted anyway.

This new version rolls the preemption policies into a much larger bill. So not only does it stop any cities from changing minimum wage or altering sick time laws from state regulations, it also includes changes to wage theft policies, public employee pensions, some teacher and firefighter retirement policies, paid parental leave for certain union workers, and more.

The governor was displeased, calling it "unconscionable" that the GOP lawmakers who wrote the bill would "pit the earned financial security of hardworking state employees and retirees against the rights of local officials to make the decisions."

DFL Sen. Jeff Hayden was also unhappy.

This is all going on amid the bigger budget negotiations that have gone almost nowhere in the past 48 hours.

What was the point of this?

Here's how @kalidrea put it to Sen. Carla Nelson on Twitter: "Why was paid parental leave for state employees tacked onto the preemption bill?"

This was essentially a play to win over the governor and get his signature by adding things me might agree to. So he can get these other things like paid parental leave ... if he also lets preemption become law. TPT's Mary Lahammer put it well:

But as the governor reiterated in his response, "I have said that I will veto the preemption bill, and I will honor that commitment."

If you want some of the arguments for and against a preemption policy, check out this previous story.

There's a rally against the 'poison pill'

Critics of the decision to roll the preemption and paid parental leave into a single bill are referring to it as a "poison pill." Many rallied at the Capitol in St. Paul Wednesday afternoon to voice their displeasure.

Here are a few tweets from groups about the proposal.