— CUMBERLAND — A proposal to hike Maryland’s minimum wage to $10 by 2013, well above the current federal minimum wage of $7.25, could either be a boon to low-income workers and the state’s economy, or result in fewer jobs for low-income employees and hurt the state’s economy, it all depends with whom you’re talking.

The proposal, backed by an organization called Progressive Maryland, is sponsored by Sen. Robert J. Garagiola and Sen. C. Anthony Muse in the Maryland Senate. While no state can pay below the federal rate, states may raise the minimum wage above that figure, and that’s exactly what Progressive Maryland wants.

“If we raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, it will prompt close to $1 billion of spending into Maryland’s economy,” said Rion Dennis, executive director of Progressive Maryland in a phone interview with the Times-News. There’s apparently also strong public support for the measure. A poll conducted for the organization last month found that about 80 percent of voters favored such an increase.

“I haven’t seen these particular polls, but that wouldn’t surprise me,” said Michale Saltsman, a research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute, which “is a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth. In particular, EPI focuses on issues that affect entry-level employment,” according to the organization’s website.

“This is an issue where there has always been a divide between the public and economists. People think ‘that’s a great way to help the working poor,’ but it’s not,” Saltsman said. An increased minimum wage is coming out of someone’s pocket, in this case a business owner, and that will result in job cutbacks. Grocery stores aren’t going to pay people to bag groceries when it’s cheaper to have customers doing it themselves, Saltsman said. And, a jump in the minimum wage doesn’t always help the people it’s designed to help.

The average family income of those in Maryland benefiting from the last federal increase in 2007-09 was $67,000 a year, Saltsman said. What that means is that it benefited secondary income earners, or children in the family. “Only one of eight was a single parent raising children,” Saltsman said.

“This is in no way an anti-government thing,” Saltsman said. A better way to help the working poor is to expand the earned income tax credit, available to families with earnings between about $13,500 and $43,000, depending on family size.

But Dennis says the increase is needed. “Maryland’s minimum wage is roughly $15,000 per year for a full-time worker and that’s not enough to provide for our families,” he said.

Allegany County Delegate Kevin Kelly thinks now is not the time to be discussing increasing the minimum wage. “I would have reservations about the state raising the minimum wage,” Kelley said. “It will have a negative impact on business small and large.”

“If you raise the minimum wage $2.75 an hour over the federal rate, it’s going to terribly impact business, cut the state’s work force and further drive business out of Maryland,” he said.

Those supporting a minimum wage increase say those views aren’t correct.

“Research shows that increasing the minimum wage stimulates consumer spending and helps working families,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “The weight of opinion among economists has shifted dramatically toward a belief that the minimum wage improves the lives of low-wage workers without adverse effects. The proposed minimum wage increase will not cost jobs, and will provide a crucial stimulus for the Maryland economy precisely when it needs it the most.”

If the goal is to raise Maryland minimum wage about 40 percent, Saltsman countered, what needs to be considered is what happened when the federal minimum wage was raised between 2007 and 2009 to $7.25. In the 19 states where that federal action raised the minimum wage, 98,000 jobs for teenagers were lost, he said.

“What is left out of this debate is that many minimum wage earners get raises on their own through their own hard work,” Saltsman said.

Progressive Maryland describes itself as “a nonprofit grassroots, organization of more than 15,000 members and supporters and over 50 affiliated religious, community, and labor organizations.”

For more information on Progressive Maryland, see progressivemaryland.org.

For more information on the Employment Policies Institute, see www.epionline.org.

Contact Matthew Bieniek at mbieniek@times-news.com.