Greensboro city council preview

The Greensboro City Council will hear a report from City Attorney Terry Wood at its meeting on Tuesday about an initiative petition to raise the city’s minimum wage above that of the state of North Carolina. Materials attached to the meeting agenda indicate that the Guilford County Board of Elections certified that 6,089 Greensboro residents signed the petition — short of the 8,438 signatures needed to put the initiative on the ballot. The city charter requires that 25 percent of citywide voters in the last municipal election signed a petition in order for it to qualify. The initiative committee submitted its petition last October, so the signatures were counted against the 2007 municipal election, which saw a turnout of 33,752 voters.

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The use of federal recovery zone facility bonds to finance the downtown luxury hotel is not on Tuesday's agenda. A knowledgeable inside source tells me that's because the partners agreed at Mayor Bill Knight's suggestion to pull together a business plan to present to council. I'm not sure exactly when the deadline falls.

Regardless, supporters of the project are being asked to show up at council chambers to express support. The following is an e-mail from Ole Asheboro Neighborhood Association President Barbara Akins:

To all who have been supportive to us on this journey... building a legacy is never easy, it takes peering into the unknown in order to form a vision that works for all. This requires each of us to think about how we fit into this legacy rather than ways to disagree. We need to support this effort each in our own way because our collective future is at stake. This is our opportunity where we can build capacity as a community... a future as a city... and a legacy as a people.

The Ole Asheboro Street Neighborhood Association (OASNA), United Hotel Group (UHG) and other partners in this project request your support for this initiative both in writing and your presence in front of the Greensboro City Council on January 19th.... Let's fill the council room! Let others know about this meeting!

Interested citizens, take note: The council will discuss the use of federal recovery zone facility bonds to finance the project during a briefing in the plaza level conference room at 3 p.m. before the regular meeting. The regular meeting begins at 5:30 p.m.

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Government watchdog Keith Brown brought to my attention that the developer interesting in building student housing at the edge of College Hill has delayed taking its case before the Greensboro City Council. As previously reported on this blog, Edwards Communities had planned to make its request in early February. But a letter from Edwards lawyer Henry Isaacson included in that attachments included with Tuesday's agenda states that the developer is requesting to be heard on March 2. The rezoning case is on Tuesday's agenda, with a notation that "council is being asked to continue this item until the March 5, 2010 council meeting with further advertising."

Isaacson writes to Mayor Knight:

If this request is granted we would use this additional time not only to complete the new site plan and elevations, but would also continue to pursue a resolution of the case with the College Hill neighborhood and their counsel. Some neighbors have recently suggested that the buildings be modified from their original design, and we are attempting to respond to those requests, however, those changes will require additional time and effort on the part of our architects and engineers. Knowing this, I wanted to advise all the interested parties of what we believe will be a longer than expected delay in completing such work, and to request the additional time.

Whitfield responds to legal opinion on minimum wage initiative

Proponents of raising Greensboro’s minimum wage go before the city council tonight as the city clerk presents an opinion by the legal staff that the petitions are “insufficient.”

Ed Whitfield, a member of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee, contests Assistant City Attorney Terry Wood’s opinion on the initiative in a formal response posted last night on the Greensboro Minimum Wage Campaign blog.

In Whitfield’s view, the council has some latitude to decide whether to accept the city clerk’s certification of insufficiency, and should review the matter because of confusion surrounding which municipal election should be used to set a 25 percent threshold. (For a citizen initiative to be put on the ballot the number of signatures must equal 25 percent of the number of people who voted in the last election.)

Whitfield: “We hope that the city council would consider using their power under Sec. 2.73 of the city charter to clarify this initiative system so that everyone will know what election will be used in determining what constitutes ‘25% of voters who voted in the last previous election’ referred to in the law.”

Whitfield also casts doubt on an assertion by Wood that municipal action to raise the minimum wage would violate the North Carolina constitution’s prohibition against municipalities regulating labor. If the initiative is truly unconstitutional, Whitfield’s letter suggests, then the city is already in violation of the constitution.

Whitfield: “We would also like to understand the ability of our city to offer huge incentives to individual corporations if it cannot be involved in regulating ‘labor, trade, mining and manufacturing.’”

Finally, he argues that Wood’s interpretation of the constitution is selective, and that federal and state labor laws merely set the floor, not the ceiling, on wages. Whitfield quotes the relevant statute as also saying, “The fact that a state or federal law, standing alone, makes a given act, omission or condition unlawful shall not preclude city ordinances requiring a higher standard of conduct or condition.”

Minimum wage committee contests legal determination

I just spoke to Jim Boyett, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee. He said he hadn’t yet been informed of the city legal department’s determination on the committee’s citizen initiative to raise the city’s minimum wage to $9.36. He wasn’t too surprised that the petitions were determined to be insufficient.

He argued that the city council has the power to override a certification of insufficiency by the city clerk based on the legal staff’s advice.

“We’ve got a determination by a staff agency,” Boyett told me. “The clerk and the legal department work for the city council and they can give all the advice that they want. [The council is] the ones who make the decision. Just like if I’m your lawyer, I can advise you, but it’s your decision. I ultimately think that this is a political issue.”

Anticipating the outcome, co-chair Marilyn Baird, has called the legal department’s determination “foolish” in a post over at the Greensboro Minimum Wage Campaign blog, and has urged supporters to contact council members and “ask them to do the right thing.”

Boyett told me he believes that a state law giving petitioners a limit of one year to gather signatures does not “coordinate” with a city ordinance requiring petitioners to come up with signatures equal in number to 25 percent of those who voted in the last election. I’m not sure I follow, but here’s how he puts it in the aforementioned blog post:

“A lack of clarity exists in the present City rules regarding initiatives, referendums and recall petitions. This lack of clarity was caused by the State of North Carolina passing two statutes that added the requirement to register an initiative petition with the County Board of Elections prior to obtaining signatures and setting a time limit of one year on the gathering of signatures. These State changes have never been addressed by City ordinance to clarify their effect upon the City’s Initiative Procedure.”

Confusion engendered by state and municipal law aside, I harbor strong skepticism towards the claim that the city council members have any latitude to override a decision by the city clerk. Here’s what Section 275(a) of the Greensboro code of ordinances states: “If a petition is certified insufficient under Section 2.73(d)(1), a majority of the committee of petitioners may elect to amend the petition; but if a majority does not so elect to amend the petition, the clerk shall present his certificate to the council at its next meeting and that certificate shall be a final determination as to the sufficiency of the petition.”

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.