Committees approve amendment removing countyannual minimum-wage impact report

Chair Natalie Fanny Gonzalez presiding at a joint work session of the Montgomery County Economic Development Committee and the Health and Human Services Committee said the panels approved an amendment to Bill 1-26 that eliminates the countyrequirement for an annual Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) report on the local minimum wage's economic impacts. Gonzalez emphasized the change is technical and does not change the countyminimum wage.

Co-chair Lorien Sills described the legislation as timely and said the Office of Legislative Oversightreports and quarterly Economic Development Corporation data are helpful, but recent federal and state changes have reduced the value of the specific annual report required by the county. "Given the federal government's decisions to stop providing or eliminating information from their website that's making it harder for us to predict and understand economic decisions," Sills said, thanking the Office of Legislative Oversight for its work.

Chris Tyler, identified in the session as an OLO staff member, explained the practical reasons behind the amendment. He said the report was created after the countyminimum-wage increase to monitor whether the change produced negative impacts on county businesses. "The original purpose was basically to show... we developed a set of indicators that we compared to other jurisdictions," Tyler said, and added that two developments have undercut the report's usefulness: state-level minimum-wage law changes that complicate trend comparisons and the federal governmentstopping publication of several data points used in the analysis.

Council staff noted that OLO did not take a position on the amendment because it would affect OLO; the only formal filing was a fiscal impact statement that indicated no anticipated effect or a de minimis impact. Chair Gonzalez asked for questions from committee members and the public; none were raised.

Gonzalez moved to approve the amendment to Bill 1-26; the motion was moved by Council Member Don Lukey and seconded by Council Member Andrew Fritzen. The committee approved the amendment unanimously. Gonzalez closed the item by thanking staff for their presentation. The change removes the annual reporting requirement but does not alter the countyminimum wage itself.