Governor Christie has talked with Legislative leaders about their plan to boost the minimum wage in Jersey from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour - but he hasn't decided yet whether to support the proposal.

Governor Chris Christie, Acting Adjutant General Michael Cunniff and Freedom House CEO Fred Reihl
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Christie says he has had preliminary discussions with Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver and Senate President Steve Sweeney - and during the meeting a few weeks ago "I said to the Speaker that my disposition was not necessarily in favor of a minimum wage increase - however I'm willing to sit and listen to the arguments from the experts, as to why they think it should be done and I'm willing to talk to the Speaker and the Senate President about it."

The Governor says in the coming weeks he looks forward to consulting with "academic experts who have done studies about the impact of minimum wage increases in the past - both here and in other states- I want to speak to the business community - about how they think that will affect their ability to continue to expand- because we're seeing expansion in the state as you know - we've had 5 consecutive months of private sector job growth…I don't want to do anything to diminish that."

He adds "we're going to talk to people on all sides of the issue…I think that's our obligation to do that- any information that the Legislature wants to provide for- that they've been given by experts in the field - I'm happy to consider - and then like with all these other issues we have, we'll sit down and talk about it and see if we can work it out - if we can, great, and if we can't, then we'll all perform our Constitutional duties and see where it lands."

 

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