If you’re making $5.15 an hour, don’t count on a raise anytime soon. The Alabama House Commerce Committee has sent a bill to raise the minimum wage to a subcommittee this week, effectively pigeon-holing it.

The bill proposed by Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next two years. The House committee nixed the bill just weeks after the Legislature approved for itself a 62 percent pay raise.

More after the jump.

Prize Patrol

On Monday the Pulitzer Prize committee at Columbia University in New York will announce this year’s prize winners. The Birmingham News is a finalist for a Public Service Pulitzer, the most prestigious of all the prizes. The newspaper is in the running for a series of stories uncovering widespread corruption and malfeasance in Alabama’s two-year college system. Among the other nominees in the Public Service category are the Washington Post for a series on farm subsidies, and the Wall Street Journal for its work on corporate executives backdating stock options. Winners will be notified Monday afternoon and the results posted shortly thereafter on the organization’s website.

Conspriacy Theories

Mayor Bernard Kincaid is accusing a member of the Birmingham school board of using his resignation to prop up Councilor Valerie Abbott in the mayoral election this October. The mayor told The Birmingham News this week that board member Mike Higginbotham is timing his resignation so that his replacement will be on the ballot at the same time as the mayoral election this fall. On the school board, Higginbotham represents District 3, the same district Abbott represents on the council.

In the mayor’s mind, there is a conspiracy afoot to draw out more of Abbott’s voters to the polls. He accused Higginbotham and Abbott of playing racial politics and called on Higginbotham to expedite his resignation, so his replacement could be elected in a June referendum.

Higginbotham told the News that he intends to support Council President Carole Smitherman for mayor, the same candidate he supported four years ago. Abbott said there is no conspiracy and called the mayor “paranoid.”

— Kyle Whitmire