Cuomo's Fast Food Minimum Wage Regulations Are As Half-Assed As His APPR Teacher Evaluation System

Whether you're in favor of or opposed to Cuomo's imposing a minimum wage of $15 an hour on the fast food industry, the haphazard way in which it is going to be applied should raise concern.

Jimmy Vielkind wrote about this last night on Capital NY, noting that national chains will have the wage regulations imposed on them while local chains will not:

ALBANY—Mr. Subb won't have to pay its workers $15 an hour, but Subway will. In Buffalo, the local favorite Mighty Taco will be exempt from the higher minimum wage. Not so, though, for Taco Bell patrons.

When the state Department of Labor posted Friday the formal report of the wage board it convened to study an increase for fast food workers, it came complete with an appendix of 137 restaurant chains it believes meet the criteria of its proposed order for a $15 hourly rate.

Cognizant of the impact the higher wages could have on mom-and-pop restaurants—the across-the-board minimum wage in New York will rise to $9 an hour by year's end—the three members of the wage board narrowed their recommendation to national chains, which they defined as having 30 or more locations. That captures the obvious, like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Starbucks.

The resulting list seems to favor smaller, regional chains like Mr. Subb (formerly Mike's Neba), which counts 18 locations in Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady and Saratoga counties.

It gets worse.

Convenience stores like Stewart's and 7-Eleven are not on the list, but the national fast food restaurants that share space in those convenience stores are.

So you'll have some employees in a 7-Eleven subject to the rule while others won't be.

And then there's just inexplicable stuff like this:

Old Country Buffet is covered, but Golden Corral is not. Upstate, Bruegger's Bagels makes the cut, but Long Island's Bagel Boss does not. (Manhattan Bagels is subject to the wage orders.)

For hot dogs, Ted's Hot Dogs in Buffalo will escape the new mandate, as will Troy-based Hot Dog Charlie's. Nathan's Famous, of Coney Island fame, is subject to the new requirements.

Cuomo's new fast food minimum wage recommendations seem to be as messy and nonsensical as Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system that has 50% of an art teacher's rating based upon state test scores in math or evaluates some teachers on test scores of students they don't actually, you know, teach.

The list of businesses subject to the new rules has not been finalized yet, but just looking at the nature of the preliminary list, you can see it's another example of Cuomo's genius at work.