June 20, 2024, Portland, Maine—A local effort to fix Portland’s emergency wage ordinance reached a milestone today, filing more than 2,000 signatures for their proposed ballot question, An Act To Amend The City Of Portland’s Emergency Wage Provision, which should appear on the November ballot. The original ordinance was passed in 2020 during the pandemic but has applied to storms that didn’t impact Portland workers and caused some businesses to close during extended state emergency declarations.
“Our proposal is straightforward: it empowers Portland’s local officials to determine when the conditions necessitate using the emergency wage. This is a shift from the current system, which automatically triggers the State of Emergency declared by the Governor, a response that may not always reflect local hazards. State law does not allow the Governor to exclude individual municipalities like Portland from Emergency Declarations, even when there is no impact on that municipality. Importantly, our proposal does not eliminate the emergency wage; it simply allows for local control over its application,” explained Tamara Gallagher, owner of a Portland childcare center and campaign treasurer.
The modification to the ordinance came to light during storms in September 2023 and January 2024. When the governor declared a state of emergency in Portland, the only municipality with an emergency wage ordinance, businesses had to adjust their pay to 1.5 times the minimum wage. This included the 2-day September declaration for storms Downeast and the weeklong January declaration that extended well beyond the storm impacts in Portland We cannot accommodate the increased costs for childcare centers and other critical services when working families already pay too much for childcare and state subsidy does not adjust for these sudden spikes in wages.
“The trickle effect of the current ordinance, when it’s triggered while conditions are not hazardous, is genuinely impactful to our customers and operations. We had to make the difficult decision to close for the duration of the emergency, which leaves parents and guardians scrambling to adjust. All we are asking for here is that the city can make decisions based on conditions in Portland,” said Gallagher.
With predictions of increasing weather events, the campaign believes that the city must have more control over decisions regarding the emergency wage. Days following weather events this year were followed by seasonal conditions Maine residents are accustomed to during winter.
“We are delighted by the response of Portland voters signing the petition that recognizes we can make small but meaningful changes that make sense locally,” said Gallagher.
More information about the campaign can be found online at www.keepitlocalportland.com or on Facebook by searching Keep it Local, Portland.
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