Photo from Rep. Kathy Rapp’s Facebook Page Rep. Kathy Rapp on the House floor last week speaking in opposition to a bill that would incrementally raise the minimum wage over the next several years.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives last week approved a bill that would push Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $15 by Jan. 1, 2026.

It passed the House 103-100 with two Republicans voting yes and one Democrat in opposition and certainly faces long odds in the Republican-controlled state Senate.

State Rep. Kathy Rapp was one of those no votes.

The economic condition of Forest County was the basis of her argument raised during floor debate on the measure.

“If you want to make a county like Forest County even poorer,” Rapp said, “then this is the bill that can do it.”

HB 1500 would raise the state’s current minimum wage – $7.15 – to $11 effective Jan. 1 2024 with further increases scheduled to $13 in 2025 and $15 in 2026. From there, a cost of living adjustment would be calculated based on changes to a regional consumer price index.

A legislative memo states that the wage for tipped workers would be set at $60 percent of the minimum wage.

The bill is an amendment to a 1968 piece of legislation that set the minimum wage at $2.65. The rate rose incrementally to $3.70 by 1989. That was followed by an increase to $5.15 in 1997, $6.25 in 2007 and then to the current rate later that year.

The memo accompanying the bill indicates that 30 states have a higher minimum wage than the federal rate, also $7.25. Legislators note there that a minimum wage worker earns $15,000 per year and “due to the rising costs, workers are unable to pay for basic necessities and (are) forced to rely on public assistance.”

Rapp said another representative had raised the condition of Forest County earlier in the debate, calling it one of the poorest counties in the state.

“That is true,” Rapp said, a video of the remarks posted to her Facebook page. “Forest County is unique,” she said, citing its two main communities, the presence of the state prison and substantial federal land ownership. “Forest County doesn’t even have a traffic signal.”

She said there are “lost of reasons” why Forest County is poor and “why they’re not paying maybe the wage you see in other counties including my own county….

“But at the heart and soul of Forest County is the family-owned businesses… that provided services to a small population that cannot afford to increase those wages…. Those small businesses cannot afford an increase in the minimum wage.”

SB 743 is the companion legislation in the Senate with Erie County Republican Senator Dan Laughlin as the prime sponsor.

It includes the same general scale for increases to the wage but limits the minimum wage for tipped workers to 40 percent of the minimum.

SB 743 was referred to the Labor and Industry Committee on May 31.