Minimum wage workers in North Carolina are as close as they've been in nearly a decade to a mandatory raise. The state House and Senate approved separate bills Thursday that would increase the minimum by $1 an hour.

The only question now, it appears, is how the two chambers will come together to adopt the increase. The House tentatively passed a bill dealing just with the increase; the Senate put the increase in its state budget proposal.

Earlier in the week, Gov. Mike Easley endorsed the $1 boost.

Should the Senate pass the House bill, or should both chambers agree to it in the state budget?

"Well, we'll deal with that when the time comes," said House Speaker Jim Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat.

The minimum wage has been $5.15 an hour since 1997, when the federal government last increased it. About 130,000 employees in North Carolina could see their wages grow by 19 percent if the increase becomes law. Full-time employees making the minimum wage would see their annual incomes grow from $10,712 to $12,792.

"It's about lifting up North Carolina's poor," Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat, told her colleagues Thursday. "You know, the minimum wage has become a poverty wage."

She was among 68 House members to vote for the increase, nearly all of them Democrats. All 39 opponents were Republicans.

Opponents said the increase would hurt small businesses, which would lead to job losses.

"These are jobs that are in our economy because employers have made them possible," said Rep. Leo Daughtry, a Smithfield Republican. "And if you say people are entitled to $6.15 an hour, you may not have these jobs."

Daughtry sought to limit the increase to those age 21 and older, so that employers who provide summer jobs or part-time jobs to teenagers would be spared. That amendment failed by a 48-58 vote after Democrats said the break would come at the expense of the working poor, who would find themselves at a disadvantage competing for those jobs.

Several House Democrats, including Black, said they plan to help small businesses that will bear the brunt of the wage increase by giving them a tax credit for health insurance they buy for their employees. There's talk of a similar tax break in the Senate.

"I want to make clear that when I approve an increase in the minimum wage, I also have a concern about finding ways for small business to deal with that," Black said.

It's so unlike last year

The support for the minimum wage boost is a swift turn of events from last year, when House leaders did all they could to keep legislation that would raise the wage alive.

They barely won passage of an 85-cent increase by tacking on the health insurance tax credit for small businesses, but the Senate didn't take up the legislation.

This year, it is nearly a final decision, less than a month into the legislative session. One detail to be worked out is when an increase would take effect. In the Senate measure, it's Sept. 1. In the House bill, it's Jan. 1, 2007.

Polls this year have shown that most people in North Carolina and nationally support an increase. Advocates have been aggressive. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, has stumped for it on Jones Street and across the nation.

It's also an election year, with the entire legislature up for grabs and little else competing for voters' attention.

At a time when lawmakers have been criticized for catering to special interests, a $1 increase in the minimum wage sends the message that they're trying to help people who can't lavish them with perks or campaign contributions.

Ran Coble, executive director of the nonpartisan N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, said that lawmakers are trying to please everyone and that a $2.3 billion budget surplus makes that task easier. Just look at the Senate's $18.8 billion budget proposal, he said.

"The tax-cut package helps the high-income taxpayers, the minimum wage increase helps the low-income taxpayers, and then the sales tax cut helps everybody," Coble said. "This is a classic pattern of, in an election year, try to please as many as possible."