Greensboro council defeats minimum wage initiative

The Greensboro City Council stamped out an initiative to raise the city's minimum wage to $9.36 early this morning by rescinding a vote last month that essentially called on the city clerk to greenlight the petitions by counting them against the 2005 election instead of the 2007 election, when turnout surged.

The 5-3 vote in which Mayor Yvonne Johnson and her two fellow African-American council members found themselves overwhelmed by the white majority mirrored a similar vote in April 2000 to defeat a living wage ordinance. That vote also broke down along racial lines.

Assistant City Attorney Becky Jo Peterson-Buie said the Guilford County Board of Elections had determined that signatures collected by the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee fell short of 25 percent of the total turnout for the 2005 election, and they had been given until Friday to collect additional signatures to make up the difference. Before the council short-circuited the process, the committee had the opportunity to collect the sufficient number of signatures, put the measure before the council for a vote, and failing council support, get the initiative on the ballot as a referendum.

At-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw, who voted in support of the initiative in December, made the motion to reconsider it. She was joined by Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Anderson Groat, District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny, District 4 Councilman Mike Barber and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade. At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins was absent.

Citing opposition from the Greensboro Merchants Association and several small business owners, Barber argued that allowing the minimum wage initiative to go on the ballot would give the city a public-relations black eye.

"For most of 2008, we are going to be advertising that we are going to be an island of unfriendliness to small business," he said.

Councilwoman Goldie Wells, who represents majority black District 2, angrily confronted Barber, alluding in her comments to a complaint leveled by the committee that counting the petitions against the 2007 election instead of the 2005 election fit a pattern of racial trickery.

"Look at me, Mike," she said. "This is what I'm talking about when I say, 'The rules change when it comes to us.'"

Barber, in turn, criticized lawyer Jim Boyett, co-chair of the committee, for fumbling the initiative.

"There was an attorney that guided them through this process and it was not timely," he said. "And they missed the deadline. There was a new election and the numbers changed."