In typ­i­cal­ly breath­less fash­ion, the New York Dai­ly News reports on the Super­mar­ket health care bill:

Large gro­cery stores and super­mar­kets will have to fork over more green stuff for their work­ers’ health care under a bill set to be passed today by the City Council.

The Health Care Secu­ri­ty Act would require some 300 employ­ers to spend up to $5,000 a year for each of their work­ers for their health care coverage.

Accord­ing to back­ers of the bill, that’s the “pre­vail­ing expen­di­ture” for health insur­ance cov­er­age in and around the city.

While the bill is aimed exclu­sive­ly at large food and gro­cery retail­ers, its sup­port­ers hope to impose the same require­ment on oth­er indus­tries, includ­ing build­ing ser­vice employ­ers, con­struc­tion employ­ers, hotels and laun­dry operations.

A per­sis­tent com­plaint about the Big Box stores is that they make it uneco­nom­i­cal for local busi­ness­es to offer ben­e­fits, or even a liv­ing wage. This puts addi­tion­al bur­den on local social safe­ty nets, includ­ing Med­ic­aid, CHiPS, food stamps, etc. There’s been reg­u­lar debate over a “liv­ing wage” for new devel­op­ment in Lawrence, and some­thing like this would be a nice addi­tion to that mix.

One of the great things about Lawrence is that it’s pre­served its down­town. The main drag is a beau­ti­ful and vibrant street full of local­ly owned busi­ness­es and quirky char­ac­ters. I think most of them have found ways to sur­vive the Home Depot and Wal­mart, though I wor­ry about the lit­tle hard­ware store.