It looks like there’s a chance that the City Council is going to try to pass a “living wage” bill over the objections of Mayor Bloomberg. Or such is the betting after the hearings yesterday on the idea to require certain companies doing work for the city or getting its tax breaks to begin next year paying $8.10 an hour, or $9.60 an hour if the job has no health benefits. At the hearings, the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, presented City Hall’s opposition. He characterized the bill moving through the council as one that would require “entities that do business or even have a tangential relationship with either the City or other public agencies to pay employees a mandated hourly wage greatly in excess of the State-mandated minimum wage and provide significantly enhanced benefits.” He warned of losses in tax revenues and jobs. He estimated the fiscal impact of the living wage bill would be more than $100 million in the 2003 fiscal year and that it would grow significantly thereafter.

The way Mr. Doctoroff framed his argument shifts the debate away from ideological and policy differences and toward financial constraints in a way that our reporter, Ben Smith, notes in his dispatch on page three, is becoming a hallmark of the Bloomberg administration. Whatever works is fine by us. It’s amazing, after all, to see the City Council trying to raise the wages of city contractors and others at a time when every other fiber of the municipal management is trying to deal with the need for budget cuts and constraints. But the ideological questions raised by the living wage bill are not small ones. It fosters an anti-business environment at precisely the moment when employers are trying to decide whether to remain in New York City. A “job killer” is the way the New York Post aptly described the bill yesterday. It damages not only the city’s ability to deal with its fiscal problem, but it also erodes New York’s comparative advantage as companies and their employees decide where to seek their fortunes.