3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
Pay to rise for millions as 19 states increase minimum wage
Oregon’s wage
will increase in
varying amounts
By DAVID KLEPPER
Associated Press
AP Photo/Mike Groll
Supporters of a $15 minimum wage for fast food work-
ers rally in front of a McDonald’s in Albany, N.Y. Millions
of workers across the U.S. will see their pay increase as
19 states bump up their minimum wages as the new year
begins. California, New York and Arizona are among the
states with increases taking effect Saturday or Sunday.
ALBANY, N.Y. — It will
be a happy New Year indeed
for millions of the lowest-paid
U.S. workers. Nineteen states,
including New York and Cali-
fornia, will ring in the year with
an increase in the minimum
wage.
Massachusetts and Wash-
ington state will have the high-
est new minimum wages in the
country, at $11 per hour.
California will raise its wage
to $10. New York state is taking
a regional approach, with the
wage rising to $11 in New York
City, $10 in its downstate sub-
urbs and $9.70 elsewhere.
“This $1.50 increase, I can-
not even comprehend or tell
you how important this will
be,” said Alvin Major, a New
York City fast-food worker.
The 51-year-old father of
four helped lead the fight for the
increase in his state, one of sev-
eral successful efforts by fast-
food workers and other low
wage workers around the coun-
try. “The price of food has gone
up. Rent has gone up. Every-
thing has gone up. ... This will
make a difference for so many
people.”
Voters in Arizona, Maine,
Colorado and Washington
approved increases in this
year’s election. Seven other
states, Alaska, Florida, Mis-
souri, Montana, New Jersey,
Ohio and South Dakota, are
automatically raising the wage
based on indexing.
The other states seeing
increases are Arkansas, Con-
necticut, Hawaii, Michigan and
Vermont.
Workers and labor advo-
cates argue the increases will
help low-wage workers now
barely making ends meet and
boost the economy by giving
some consumers more money
to spend. But many business
owners opposed the higher
wages, saying they would lead
to higher prices and greater
automation.
Some restaurant owners may
consider reducing portion sizes
or charging for side dishes that
were once included in the price
of a meal to absorb the increase,
according to Melissa Fleischut,
president of the New York State
Restaurant Association.
“I’m sure prices will go up
where they can, but restaurants
want to avoid sticker shock,”
she said. “They’re going to
have to get creative.”
The adjustments in Oregon
States face off over future of Obama global warming plan
other states are part of the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Ini-
tiative, a cap-and-trade pro-
gram that has reduced carbon
dioxide emissions from elec-
trical generation in the region
by 40 percent from 2005
levels.
Oregon among
the signers
By MARY ESCH and
JASON DEAREN
Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. — Two
weeks after officials in two
dozen states asked Republican
President-elect Donald Trump
to kill one of Democratic Pres-
ident Barack Obama’s sig-
nature plans to curb global
warming, another group of
state officials is urging Trump
to save it.
Democratic attorneys gen-
eral in 15 states plus four cit-
ies and counties sent a letter to
Trump asking him to preserve
Obama’s Clean Power Plan,
New York Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman, the lead
author, announced Thursday.
The letter was a rebuttal to
one sent this month by Repub-
lican officials from West Vir-
ginia and 21 other states and
Democrats from the coal-pro-
ducing states of Kentucky
and Missouri urging Trump to
issue a Day 1 executive order
declaring the Clean Power
Plan unlawful and prohibiting
the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency from enforc-
ing it.
The Clean Power Plan aims
to reduce carbon dioxide emis-
sions at existing power plants,
the nation’s largest source of
the pollution, by about one-
third by 2030. Opponents say
the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency lacks authority to
implement the rules. The plan
is already the subject of a legal
fight.
Climate agenda
Trump has called the sci-
ence showing climate change
a hoax. His choice to head
In California
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Two weeks after officials in two dozen states asked Don-
ald Trump to kill one of President Barack Obama’s plans
to curb global warming, New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman (pictured) was lead author on a rebuttal let-
ter signed by Democratic attorneys general in 15 states,
plus four cities and counties, asking the president-elect
to save it.
the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney
General Scott Pruitt, has sued
the EPA repeatedly to stop
its climate agenda including
Obama’s sweeping power
plant rules. And his nomi-
nee to run the Department of
Energy, former Texas Gov.
Rick Perry, has questioned
climate science while work-
ing to promote coal-fired
power in Texas. But in a tele-
vision interview this month
Trump said he was “still
open-minded” about the sci-
ence of climate change.
Schneiderman said states
like New York are “on the
front lines of climate change”
and have demonstrated how
to cut pollution and emissions
while protecting affordable
and reliable electricity, cre-
ating jobs and growing the
economy.
“The Clean Power Plan
builds on that successful work
and is a blueprint for the crit-
ical action needed to fight
climate change’s devastat-
ing environmental, economic
and public health impacts,”
he said.
Under Democratic Gov.
Andrew Cuomo’s Clean
Energy Standard, established
this year, 50 percent of New
York state’s electricity must
come from renewable energy
sources like wind and solar
by 2030. New York and eight
In California, the nation’s
most populous state, which
also signed the letter, the
goal is also to have half of
its energy from renewable
sources by 2030 and a 40 per-
cent reduction of greenhouse
gases.
The letter to Trump lists
local impacts of climate
change from fossil fuel emis-
sions, including drought in
California, catastrophic storm
surge in New York City, a
record deluge on Colorado’s
Front Range, high-tide flood-
ing in Virginia and South
Florida and diminished shell-
fish harvest in Oregon and
Washington state.
The legal challenge, filed
by 27 states that oppose the
Clean Power Plan, is before a
federal appeals court in Wash-
ington, D.C. A decision on the
plan could come at any time,
but the U.S. Supreme Court
has temporarily blocked
implementation of the rule
until the court challenge is
resolved.
Still, even if Trump wants
to scrap the plan, it would be
a large, time-consuming task.
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M INDFULNESS
D AY R ETREAT
N EW Y EAR
FOR THE
State trooper
out of ICU,
recovering
Associated Press
PORTLAND — The fam-
ily of a wounded Oregon
State Police trooper says he
has been moved out of the
intensive care unit and into a
hospital room just days after
being shot several times on
Christmas night.
The brother of Trooper Nic
Cederberg writes on an online
fundraising
page that the
officer will
undergo sur-
gery Friday
to fix a bro-
ken
arm.
The brother,
Nic
Jeff Ceder-
berg, says the Cederberg
procedure is
his brother’s last major sur-
gery for the time being and he
is “amazing the doctors and
nurses with how his recovery
is going.”
Authorities say the trooper
was shot Sunday night by
homicide suspect James Tylka
following a car chase. Tylka
was then killed by police.
Officers pursued Tylka after
finding his estranged wife dead
outside his suburban Portland
home.
N E W Y E A R S
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David Doniger, a cli-
mate policy expert with
the Natural Resources
Defense Council who
served on Democratic
President Bill Clinton’s
White House Council of
Environmental Quality,
said the Trump admin-
istration “can’t make it
go away unless they go
through rule-making pro-
cess and unwind it.”
“And that’s a public
process, so they’ll have to
hear from supporters of the
plan,” he said.
If Trump were to issue
the executive order being
asked for by the plan’s
opponents, since the plan
has gone through a formal
process to become a regu-
lation it would still require
a long, public process to
undo, Doniger said.
Besides New York and
California, the letter is
signed by attorneys gen-
eral from the District of
Columbia, Hawaii, Illi-
nois, Iowa, Maine, Mary-
land, Massachusetts, New
Mexico, Oregon, Rhode
Island, Vermont, Virginia
and Washington as well
as officials from Bro-
ward County and South
Miami, Florida, Boulder,
Colorado, and New York
City.
(July 1), New York, California
and several other states are part
of a series of gradual increases
to a $12 or $15 hourly wage.
The minimum wage will
also go up this weekend in 22
cities and counties, includ-
ing San Diego, San Jose and
Seattle.
The high number of states
and localities raising the wage
this year reflects the successful
work of fast-food workers and
organized labor, according to
Tsedeye Gebreselassie, senior
staff attorney at the National
Employment Law Project, as
well as federal inaction on the
wage. The national minimum
was last raised, to $7.25, in
2009.
“These aren’t only teens
trying to make some pocket
money,” she said. “Increas-
ingly it’s adults who are using
this money to support their
families.”
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