Minimum wage petitions found insufficient

As expected, the city of Greensboro’s legal department determined that a local minimum wage committee’s petitions to establish a city ordinance to implement a citywide minimum wage of $9.36 per hour were insufficient.

Assistant City Attorney Terry Wood told me that the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee fell short of collecting signatures equal to 25 percent of those who voted in the city’s recent municipal election. As previously reported, the committee had expected its roughly 6,000 signatures to be counted against the 2005 election, when turnout was significantly lower.

Wood noted a second reason that the legal department determined that the petitions were insufficient: the North Carolina constitution forbids local governments from legislating labor standards.
“The constitution says that there will be no local laws with reference to labor, and I would take that to include a minimum wage ordinance,” Wood said. “The legislature may be able to give us that power, but they haven’t given us that power.”

Wood said the city clerk has sent the minimum wage committee a certified letter stating its determination, and the decision will be reported to the city council at its next meeting on Dec. 18.

Marilyn Baird, co-chair of the minimum wage committee, has told me in the past that her group would consider going to court to get the ordinance on the ballot, but she was not immediately available for comment today.

UPDATE (Dec. 14): Here's the text of Assistant City Attorney Terry Wood's opinion:

Date: December 10, 2007

To: Juanita F. Cooper
City Clerk

From: Terry Wood
Legal Department

Subject: Opinion With Reference to Sufficiency of Initiative Petition for Higher
Minimum Wage Within the City of Greensboro

Background

On December 1, 2006, pursuant to NCGS § 163-218, a Petitioner’s Committee registered an Initiative Petition with the Guilford County Board of Elections indicating that it intended to circulate the Petition among the citizens of Greensboro. The Initiative Petition was prepared pursuant to Chapter II, Subchapter D, Article 2 of the Greensboro City Charter. This Article, among other things, allows citizens to Petition the City Council to proceed with an Initiative on proposed Ordinances to require Council to adopt such an Ordinance or bring the Ordinance before the citizens for an Initiative vote on the issue.

The Petition was signed by a number of persons and was presented to the City Clerk on December 3, 2007. NCGS § 163-219 requires that if the Petition is to remain effective it must be filed within one year after the date it is registered. December 3, 2007, would be a proper date for filing with the Clerk since December 1, 2007, fell on Saturday, a non-business day. See NCGS § 1A-1, NCRCP 6(a).

To be declared sufficient a Petition must meet several conditions. First, it must be signed by at least 25%, in number, of qualified voters who voted in the last preceding election for City Council Members. Second, it must request the adoption of an Ordinance that Council has the authority to adopt and which is not prohibited by Greensboro Charter Section 2.71(a)(2) or State Law NCGS § 160A-174. Third, it must comply with all other local, State and Federal laws.

Questions Presented

Is the Petition valid on its face and do the provisions of State Law and the Greensboro Charter allow such an Initiative Petition to be presented for the purpose of establishing a local minimum wage for the City of Greensboro in excess of the Statewide minimum wage established by the State Legislature pursuant to NCGS §95-25.3 (Supp. 2006

Opinion

In our Opinion there are least two issues which require the Petition to be declared insufficient on its face. Those issues will be discussed separately.

First, Section 2.71(a)(3) of the Greensboro Charter requires that the Petition be signed by a number of qualified voters equal to “at least 25% of the qualified voters of the city who voted at the last preceding election for City Council members.” Attached is a letter from the Guilford County Board of Elections indicating that there were 33,752 ballots cast at the last preceding election for Council Members, which was held on November 6, 2007. Twenty-five percent (25%) of that number would be 8,438 and that is the number required on a valid Petition filed December 3, 2007. The Petition filed with the City Clerk contains approximately 6,385 signatures, which is well below the required total. If there is a perceived inconsistency between the City Charter and the registration provisions of NCGS § 163-218 and 219 the City Charter provisions for filing control. See NCGS § 160A-3(b). The signatures have not been further verified for sufficiency since that process cannot in any way increase the number.

The second facial insufficiency pertaining to the Petition is its subject matter. Charter Section 2.73(d)(2) states that the Petition must be determined insufficient if it proposes “an Ordinance not subject to the power under which the petitioners are proceeding.” The Petitioners are requesting the City to adopt an Ordinance authorizing a local minimum wage in excess of that adopted by the State Legislature in NCGS § 95-25.3 (Supp. 2006). The adoption by the State Legislature of NCGS § 95-25.3 indicates a clear intent on its part to enact a Statewide law with reference to minimum wage. For a City to have independent authority to enact varying minimum wages the Legislature must, if constitutionally allowed, specifically delegate such authority to the City. See the NC Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 24(1)(j), which says no local law may be adopted regulating labor. Certainly no legislative attempt has been made to give Greensboro such authority. See also, McQuillan, 7 Municipal Corporations, § 24:320, (3rd Ed. Rev. 2005).

The statute which gives the City authority to adopt ordinances, NCGS § 160A-174 (b)(2), states that a City has no authority to “make unlawful an act . . . which is expressly made lawful by State . . . law.” Pursuant to State law, it is lawful to pay a minimum wage lower than that being proposed by the Ordinance attached to the Petition. Subsection (b)(5) of the same Statute indicates that a City may not propose an Ordinance that “purports to regulate a field for which a State . . . statute clearly shows a legislative intent to provide a complete and integrated regulatory scheme to the exclusion of local regulation.” State law NCGS § 95-25.3 (Supp. 2006) clearly shows such an intent.

It is the Opinion of this Office that the Initiative Petition is insufficient on its face. If you concur, the Petitioners’ Committee should be so notified and Council advised by a Clerk’s Certification of Insufficiency at its next Regular Meeting. Section 2.73(g) states that your determination is subject to judicial review as set out in Charter Section 2.75 and that you take no further action on the Petition unless a court directs otherwise.

Minimum wage raise supporters turn in signatures, but did they fall short?

Supporters of a citizen initiative to establish a citywide minimum wage within Greensboro’s municipal boundaries of $9.36 per hour handed over a bin containing more than 6,000 signed petitions to City Clerk Juanita Cooper on Monday. The current state minimum wage is $6.15 per hour.

Should the city clerk find the petitions sufficient, the measure would automatically go before the city council for consideration. And if a majority of council were to reject the proposed ordinance — which is likely — the proposal goes before the voters. Jim Boyett, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee, said that might happen in either the primary or general elections next year.

Questions arose yesterday about whether supporters of the initiative had gathered a sufficient number of signatures. The Greensboro charter states that any initiative petition must be signed by qualified voters of a number equal to 25 percent of voters in the preceding municipal election. The group collected 6,412 signatures, according to committee member Fahiym Hanna. That number exceeds 25 percent of the qualified voters in the 2005 election — 19,294 — but falls short of 25 percent of the 2007 total — 33,752 — when an open mayoral seat drove a surge in turnout.

Supporters of the minimum wage initiative said they understood that the 2005 campaign statistics were operative.

“When the committee went to the election board for the procedure, we learned that there’s a one-year period to collect signatures,” said Ed Whitfield, a member of the committee. “The number of signatures is supposed to be 25 percent of those who voted in the last election. The only good-faith way we could figure out what that means is to refer to the 2005 election, since we didn’t know how many people would vote in 2007. We had a one-year time period starting Dec. 1, 2006 that is stamped on the front page that we handed in to the city clerk.” (Whitfield added that the committee was told by someone in the city manager’s office that since Dec. 1, 2007 fell on a Saturday they could turn over the petitions the following Monday.)

Charlie Collicutt, deputy director of the Guilford County Board of Elections, said he provided no assurance to the committee that its computation would be validated.

“I have spoken to these people in the past and all I have been doing is providing them statistics,” he said. “We have not authorized a certain set of numbers that they have to use because I am not an expert on the city charter, and we don’t have jurisdiction to make that decision.”

He added, “I honestly have no idea what numbers they’re supposed to use. From my rudimentary understanding of the city charter, it says 'the last election,' but I’m not an expert.”

The city clerk has five days to determine the sufficiency of the petitions and to forward them to the board of elections to validate that the signatures correspond to qualified voters.

Supporters of the initiative described raising the minimum wage as a “moral imperative.”

“We feel on the Minimum Wage Committee that companies and business that come into our cities to abuse workers, this has to stop,” said committee co-chair Marilyn Baird. “And what we’re saying here is that they can afford it. Nine thirty-six is what the spending power of the minimum wage was in 1968 when the minimum wage was a dollar and ninety cents.”

Whitfield argued that raising the minimum wage was a matter of both fairness and good economics.

“Productivity of workers has increased,” he said. “Profits have increased. Executive compensation has increased. The only thing that hasn’t increased is the wages of workers. We really think this is an important part of our quality of life.”

He added: “There are all kinds of predictions of doom and gloom economically, but in cities where this has been done like San Francisco and Santa Fe, their economies have improved.”

Supporters said they garnered signatures from three city council representatives (all African American), and County Commission Chairman Paul Gibson. District 2 Councilwoman Goldie Wells was on hand to express her support.



Baird said the petitioners ran into Wells in the parking lot of the Food Lion grocery at the intersection of East Market and English streets in the summer. “She agreed to sign it immediately,” Baird said. “We didn’t have to talk to her a lot, bending her arm and knocking her groceries out of her hands.”

Four council members have gone on record as being opposed to raising the minimum wage in Greensboro: Robbie Perkins, Zack Matheny, Mike Barber and Trudy Wade. Two, Sandra Anderson Groat and Mary Rakestraw, said in a recent candidate’s survey that they remained undecided.