JOHNSON COUNTY, Iowa - (Iowa's News Now) — Johnson County's Board of Supervisors says businesses in the county should pay employees more. The board voted Thursday to increase the recommended minimum wage to $11.56 an hour, though recommend is about all the board can do.
The county has upped its minimum pay several times since 2015, when the board first voted on minimum wage increases indexed to inflation. While that number has increased every year, since 2017 it's been nothing more than a suggested benchmark. That year, Governor Terry Branstad made local ordinances raising minimum pay unenforceable by Iowa law.
Iowa's minimum wage has stuck at $7.25 since 2008.
Johnson County's new standard, which will take effect in July, is the least they can do, says supervisor Rod Sullivan. With 18 years on the board, he knows how the whole situation has played out.
"I've been through the whole thing, yeah," Sullivan grins. "Simply because we want people in this community to know what they should be paying as a minimum wage."
Yet some businesses say they've been paying more than minimum to keep employee retention to a maximum.
"Even after the governor and the legislature took away the ability to ever raise it again and they lowered it back down, we had a number of businesses that didn't lower it back down," Sullivan says.
At SugaPeach in North Liberty, co-owner Chad Simmons says minimums don't serve his business.
"We do not follow the minimum wage but what we do follow is the market,"...
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