Metro

Cuomo shuts down de Blasio’s minimum wage plan

One day after Mayor de Blasio suggested New York City be allowed 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” and negatively “cannibalize” New York.

The mayor needs Albany’s approval to increase the minimum wage, now set at $8 an hour.

“I’m in favor in something called the constitution of the State of New York.” Cuomo said.

He said the state constitution requires Albany to seriously weigh the interests of localities, but not at the expense of the Empire State.

“We are also one state and we don’t want to cannibalize ourselves. We don’t want to have different cities with different tax rates competing amongst themselves,” the governor said on the “Capitol Pressroom” radio program in Albany.

“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. And that’s what the constitution tries to establish, the balance. A common set of primarily economic factors within a state. And then late the states compete.”

“That competition within the state, however, I do not believe would be productive. I don’t want to see Buffalo trying to steal from Syracuse trying to steal from Albany.”

Cuomo and the Legislature approved a law last year that hiked the minimum wage statewide from $7.25 to $8 per hour on 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 an $11 an hour rate.