The General Assembly approved a bill yesterday that will incrementally raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by July 2018.

On the last day of the legislative session, the House of Delegates officially passed the Maryland Minimum Wage Act of 2014, 87-47, after it passed in the Senate on Saturday with revisions.

The bill calls for a minimum wage hike from the current $7.25 per hour to $8 per hour on Jan. 1, 2015, followed by yearly increases: to $8.25 on July 1, 2015, $8.75 on July 1, 2016, and $9.25 on July 1, 2017. The raises will be complete on July 1, 2018, when the minimum wage reaches $10.10 per hour.

With support from Gov. Martin O’Malley, the bill’s approval came as no surprise. Other states, such as Delaware, West Virginia and Connecticut, have also raised their minimum wages. This state is following in the footsteps of the Prince George’s County Council, which passed a gradual minimum wage increase in December, and complying with President Obama’s plan to increase the minimum wage on the federal level.

“I think this is one of the most important bills that we passed this year,” Del. Mary Washington (D-Baltimore City) said.

Washington said that while many people usually see the minimum wage as an “introductory salary and that it’s mostly [for] young people,” some people go through their whole lives making minimum wage and cannot make enough money to ensure their families a positive future.

“I am a bit disappointed that it’s taking so long to get to $10.10, but I suppose that justice can move slowly,” Washington said.

Freshman Bridgette Roa works as a retail sales associate, making minimum wage, to help pay for school. Roa said any increase would benefit her and her coworkers, many of whom have been working for years, yet still earn the current minimum wage.

“It is really expensive to live, especially on campus, and with all the costs of college in general,” said Roa, an early childhood education major. “I know that they had been talking about it, so the fact that it got passed is really cool.”

The university will have to comply with the set schedule from this legislation. As far as adjusting the wages after January, university departments will “just have to keep making up the difference,” said University Human Resources Director Dale Anderson.

“It’s going to be an additional cost that the institution will have to come up with,” Anderson said.

Anderson said a change like this will likely impact some students and staff members at this university in the coming months and years, although maybe not immediately. The additional 75 cents should not cause serious adjustments to departments that already allocate $7.25 an hour to employees, and it’s unlikely that there will be fewer hourly jobs or additional costs to compensate for the increase, he said.

When the campus releases its fiscal year 2015 budget, Anderson said, appropriate adjustments will be made to cover the additional costs of the raise.

“Those departments that do have students hired are going to have to find the money to make these salary adjustments,” Anderson said.

Sophomore neurobiology and physiology major Gyyoung Oh works as a community assistant for the university, earning slightly more than the current minimum wage. She said balancing a part-time job with homework and campus involvement can be busy and tiresome, but mandated wage hikes would be helpful.

“It’s a good idea,” Oh said. “Even if we were to be paid $10.10 right now, it’d be good for us. We work crazy hours.”

While she said she would benefit from a larger paycheck, Oh said she isn’t sure the university can afford to pay minimum wage employees more money across the institution.

“They could cut work,” Oh said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they fire people or lay people off.”

But Anderson said the university would find a way to make it work.

“If it’s become law, we’ll figure out a way to live with it,” Anderson said.

Opponents of the bill insist that a minimum wage raise this high might lead to people losing their jobs and businesses closing.

“It’s a deceptive bill; it gives people a false hope,” Del. Neil Parrott (R-Washington) said. “Those jobs that used to go to college students, people who are really unqualified for the higher level jobs, are not going to have those jobs as much as they had them before because businesses … are simply going to close their doors or go out of business.” 

The bill’s wage increases will not be indexed to the cost of living as originally planned before amendments. Washington said although she would have liked to see indexing in this bill, the General Assembly might try to index to the cost of living years from now after analyzing benefits from this current bill.

“I do think it’s fair to let things settle, let people see that, ‘Hey, we were able to raise this minimum wage, businesses were able to manage it, people were able to do better,’” Washington said.

However, Parrott said this session’s bill is bad enough.

“We’re not going to see the effects … until we get to $10.10, and when we do, that’s when a lot of these jobs, we’re going to start losing,” Parrott said.

Senior staff writer Jim Bach contributed to this report.