Mayor de Blasio could call him Governor No.
Barely 24 hours after the mayor said New York City would lobby Albany for the right to set its own minimum wage, Gov. Cuomo shot down the idea as economically damaging to the entire state.
Cuomo told a radio interviewer that having municipalities set their own, competing wage rates would create a “chaotic situation” that would pit city against city.
“We don’t want to cannibalize ourselves,” the governor said on the “Capital Pressroom” radio show in Albany. “We don’t want to have different cities with different tax rates competing amongst themselves.”
The mayor needs Albany’s approval to increase the minimum wage, now set at $8 an hour statewide.
The round rebuff follows Cuomo’s more subtle bid to derail de Blasio’s plan to hike taxes on the city’s wealthy to fund pre-kindergarten classes, something he wants to avoid in an election year.
The governor countered by offering to pay for the program through the state budget without a tax hike — although he earmarked far less than city officials say they need.
On the minimum wage, Cuomo said the state constitution requires Albany to seriously weigh the interests of localities, but not at the expense of the Empire State.
“Albany has one tax rate and then Schenectady has a different tax rate because Schenectady is trying to steal business from Albany. Or they have different wage requirements or different labor laws,” he said of the potential jockeying.
“This could be a chaotic situation. So the balance is very important,” he added. “And that’s what the constitution tries to establish, the balance.”
Cuomo and the Legislature approved a law last year that hiked the minimum wage statewide from $7.25 to $8 per hour Jan. 1. It is scheduled to jump to $8.75 at year’s end and to $9 by the end of 2015.
In his State of the City address Monday, de Blasio didn’t put a figure on what the city minimum wage should be. But city Comptroller Scott Stringer has proposed $11 an hour.
Even de Blasio ally state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx) made it clear there was little will in Albany to revisit the issue of the minimum wage so soon after last year’s agreement to raise it.
“We passed the minimum wage, a very robust one, at $9 an hour,” Klein said. “Let’s move on.”