Boulder County Commissioners voted 2-1 to roll back scheduled minimum wage increases at a Nov. 20 meeting, putting the county on a wage schedule that will allow the City of Boulder’s minimum wage to outpace the county’s.
The county minimum wage only affects unincorporated Boulder County — about 22,000 of the county’s total 194,000 workers. It was scheduled to reach $25 an hour by 2030, but a new ordinance will instead match the county’s minimum wage to the city’s wage in 2026, and increase it with inflation thereafter. That would slow the pace of county minimum wage increases considerably, likely causing it to fall behind the city within a year or two.
The previous schedule raised the minimum wage by over $3 each year. Under the new ordinance, it is unlikely to rise by more than $1 each year.
Commissioners began reconsidering the minimum wage in August, after hearing from farmers and Niwot business owners who said rising labor costs could soon price them out of the county. The topic has garnered considerable interest from both sides of the debate; commissioners received thousands of online form responses over the past few months
Commissioners Marta Loachamin and Claire Levy voted in favor of the new wage ordinance, while Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann voted against it.
“Increasing minimum wage is the most powerful thing we could do to thwart a recession,” Stolzmann said. “It’s one of the most powerful things we could do to show young people that we’re dedicated to their future and success, and one of the most powerful things that we could do to help businesses.”
Loachamin argued that the county’s minimum wage will remain higher than the state’s, and she wanted to give business owners who had come to commissioners with concerns the “benefit of the doubt.”
“I just want to remind folks that in the State of Colorado, the minimum wage right now is $14.81, and we have been able to collectively move workers in unincorporated Boulder County $1.76 [above] that, so I actually don’t look at this as going backwards,” Loachamin said.
Levy said the decision was “by no means easy,” but that the original wage ordinance had not been established by a popular vote either, and that raising the county’s minimum wage would not help people living within the cities in the county.
“I have to believe the businesses and the farmers that came to speak to us today. I do not think they are making up the fact that they cannot afford the schedule of wage increases that we passed back in 2023, and I will not ignore people who come to us in good faith, basically open their books to us, and ask us to change course,” Levy said.
During over three hours of public comment on Nov. 20, workers’ advocates pushed back on the reductions, arguing that the county’s current minimum wage is already about $10 less than the local living wage – the wage necessary to support an individual working 40 hours a week without government benefits.
“The high cost of living already burdened citizens across the state and our country, especially for younger folks,” said Matthew Logan, senior policy manager at New Era Colorado.
Advocates also cited harsh economic conditions, recent SNAP cuts and possible future federal threats to food assistance and other safety net programs. They further criticized the county for holding a public comment period in the middle of the workday on a Thursday, making it difficult for affected workers to comment.
However, Michael Moss, owner of Kilt Farm and president of the Community Farmers Alliance, said the slower wage schedule gave “farms and small businesses, the people who help feed this county, who hire first-time workers and who steward open space, a realistic chance to survive.”
He said labor already accounts for “50 to 55% of our revenue — that is nearly twice the national average for small businesses.” Unlike other industries, he added, “we can’t raise prices whenever we need to. We can’t move production overseas. We can’t automate the harvest. We compete every day with farms across the Front Range, California, Arizona and Mexico.”
The county minimum wage is higher than those in any of the cities within it or counties around it, which business owners have argued makes it hard for them to compete.
Stolzmann, siding with the worker advocates, also argued that the morning meeting was contrary to standard county practice of holding meetings with a large degree of public interest in the afternoon or evening. Separately, she said that the county had not followed state law requiring local governments to consult with surrounding local governments and engage stakeholders before enacting any changes to minimum wage laws.
Boulder County Attorney David Hughes said which governments the county consulted was up to statutory interpretation, but “it would be certainly a logical interpretation” to include the cities within the county, like Boulder and Longmont, on that list.
“We’ve simply not done that in plain terms and in any reasonable interpretation of the law,” Stolzmann said, moving to delay a vote until proper legal procedures could be followed. The other commissioners did not take up the motion.
After the vote, labor groups condemned the decision. “We are disappointed that a proposal which will only depress wages further, negatively impacting small businesses just as much as it will for workers, moved forward in one of the most expensive counties in Colorado,” Alejandra Beatty, president of the Boulder Area Labor Council, said in a statement. During the public meeting, she also accused commissioners of taking “plenty of meetings” with business owners but failing to meet with labor interests.
I heartily disagree and I’m a life-long business person and former small farmer.
A living wage isn’t “pro-labor” it’s just doing what is right and will work best.
Our economic system is bizarre, being based on keeping millions of people in poverty. We intentionally pay people less than they need for food and shelter, and then tax ourselves and give money to the same people we just under-paid. It’s ridiculously inefficient.