One could say business interests won a couple of battles this week on the issue of minimum wage increases across the country. First, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh vetoed a local ordinance that would have set a Baltimore minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2022. Maryland law provides that the current minimum of $8.75 increase to $9.25 on July 1 and then to $10.10 by 2018. At a news conference announcing her veto of the increase, Mayor Pugh said that Baltimore would be at a competitive disadvantage and “become the hole in the doughnut” if it was to mandate $15 as the hourly minimum wage. City Council passed the increase by a vote of 11-3, but 12 votes are needed to override the Mayor’s veto. Elsewhere in the minimum wage world, the Iowa Senate this week sent to Governor Terry Branstad a bill outlawing minimum wage increases in excess of the $7.25 state minimum at the city and county level. Four Iowa counties (Polk, Johnson, Linn & Wapello) had already implemented increases above the state minimum, but those increases will be rolled back if, as expected, the Governor signs the bill into law. And in the state of Arkansas, the House of Representatives has advanced a bill to clarify issues surrounding the state minimum wage law. The issue stems from a court case where the court ruled that businesses were required to pay workers for the time it took them to get in and/or out of their required uniforms, protective gear, wash their hands or other required activities before actually beginning “work”. The bill is now pending in the state Senate. And lastly speaking of court cases, a Miami-Dade circuit court this week struck down the Miami Beach minimum wage law passed unanimously in the city council in June. The ordinance mandated an increase in the minimum wage to $10.31 beginning January 2018 and then increasing $1 per year for each of the next three years to a cap of $13.31 in 2021. The court found that the local increase violated a state law prohibiting the creation of local minimums in excess of the state minimum of $8.10 as of this past January. Municipal officials have promised to appeal the decision to the Florida Supreme Court.