Raise the Wage campaign undeterred by adverse finding

Marnie Thompson says the Raise the Wage Committee will forge ahead despite a finding (referenced here) by the Greensboro City Clerk that a petition to raise the citywide minimum wage to $9.82 per hour contained an insufficient number of signatures.

The committee sent out a letter on Jan. 15 notifying supporters that the petition had been declared insufficient on two grounds in spite of the fact that the committee submitted more than 12,000 signatures because "a large number of signatures were declared invalid by the City Clerk and/or the Board of Elections, putting us 502 signatures short of the 8,438 we needed."

The committee hopes to overcome this hurdle:

We are examining the disqualified signatures to see if some are actually valid—if only 12% of the signatures that were disqualified are actually valid, then we are back in business on the first issue. The disqualification rate is extraordinarily high, especially for the supplementary signatures we added in December, so we have some hope we will succeed in making the count.

Still another challenge has arisen -- a legal opinion by City Attorney Terry Wood "that the petition asks the city to enact a law that is not within the city's power to enact," to use the committee's words.

We’re thinking through the issues raised by the City Attorney in his legal opinion and looking for legal representation to challenge his argument in court. Our standing in court pretty much hinges on being able to get enough signatures qualified, however, so that is the first order of business.