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Ohio Lawmakers Consider a Hike in the Minimum Wage

photo of Kent Smith
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU

Cleveland City Council is introducing legislation to set the minimum wage at $15. Throughout the state and the country, there are repeated calls for increasing the minimum wage. 

Democratic State Representative Kent Smith wants to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, giving more than a million Ohioans a raise.

“And 2.1 billion would get circulated in the Ohio economy.”

But John Barker, the head of the Ohio Restaurant Association, says many of his members already pay above the $8.10 state minimum wage but going higher could cause inflation.

“The restaurant industry has typically low prices and typically low profit margins. That model hasn’t changed. The only way you can do that is to charge more for all of the food and you wonder how people will respond to a $10 hamburger.”

Majority Republicans at the Statehouse have not embraced Smith’s proposal. But state and federal Democratic candidates say raising the minimum wage will be one of their talking points on the campaign trail this fall.

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.