SANTA FE — Lawmakers are moving quickly to help the state, cities and counties avoid millions of dollars in overtime pay for police, firefighters and some other workers.
The Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that's to fix a problem that occurred last year when the state enacted a higher minimum wage.
The legislation will allow:
_Fire protection, law enforcement and correctional employees to work longer shifts and not be subject to overtime pay. That flexible scheduling had been allowed previously without overtime, but the provision was eliminated last year when a state minimum wage change was enacted.
_State and local governments to offer compensatory time rather than cash for working overtime. Unless the bill is enacted, the Legislature and state agencies will have to pay overtime rather than "comp time'' for some staff.
Cities would need to spend $25 million to comply with the overtime pay requirement unless the legislation is passed, according to the New Mexico Municipal League. Counties would have to pay $10 million a year.
Federal law provides exceptions, such as for law enforcement, from a requirement that employees working more than 40 hours a week be paid time and a half their regular rates of pay.
The legislation would make clear that federal exceptions apply to state and local government employees. Those exceptions were left out of legislation last year that increased the state minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.50 an hour effective Jan. 1.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, warned that local governments might have to lay off workers to cover the higher wage costs unless corrective legislation was approved.
"It's going to create a lot of havoc in our communities because of the amount of money that they're either going to have to come up somewhere — either raise the taxes to maintain the levels of service that are in those communities or they're going to have to lower the number of individuals they are paying,'' said Jennings.
The city of Albuquerque has estimated it would have to pay $12 million a year in overtime.
Senate GOP Whip Leonard Lee Rawson of Las Cruces opposed the bill, saying the current overtime provision helped boost pay for law enforcement and could help in recruiting and retaining police in some areas of the state.
"By lowering this how do you expect to attract the type of folks we need in law enforcement and we can't fill them now. In essence when we pass this we're lowering the wage for law enforcement,'' said Rawson.
If the legislation is enacted, Jennings said, governments still could enter into labor agreements with their police or firefighters to pay overtime.
Supporters of the bill stressed that it dealt only with overtime provisions and did not exempt state and local governments from the state's new minimum wage rate.
The state minimum wage will increase to $7.50 starting in January 2009. The federal minimum wage rose to $5.85 an hour in July and goes up to $6.55 an hour on July 24, 2008, and to $7.25 an hour starting July 24, 2009.
Employers must pay whichever minimum wage is higher, the federal or the state rate, according to the Labor Department.
The bill passed the Senate 37-2 and was sent to the House. Rawson and Sen. Clinton Harden, R-Clovis, voted against the measure.
Lawmakers are fast-tracking the legislation in hopes of getting it passed this week and then quickly signed into law by the governor. The Senate took up the measure on the second day of the legislative session, bringing it up for debate without having it first considered by committees.
news 
E-mail Story
Print Friendly
