Kansas House committee recommends increasing state’s minimum wage

? A House panel endorsed a bill Wednesday that would tie the state’s minimum wage to the federal level.

The Commerce and Labor Committee amended the bill and sent it to the full House for debate. The bill would raise the state minimum wage to $7.25 an hour on Jan. 10, 2010. The federal rate is set to increase to $7.25 on July 1.

Kansas adopted a minimum wage law in 1978, setting the rate at $1.60 per hour. It jumped to the present $2.65 in 1988, the lowest in the United States. Efforts to raise the rate to mirror increases in the federal rate have repeatedly failed in the Legislature over the past two decades.