An effort to increase Youngstown’s hourly minimum wage to $10.10 has stalled
YOUNGSTOWN
A proposal, backed by a group of Youngstown Democrats, to increase the minimum wage in the city to $10.10 an hour, effective Jan. 1, has fallen short of the needed valid signatures to get on the Nov. 8 ballot.
The group turned in 1,751 signatures and needed 1,259 to be valid to be certified as a charter amendment proposal during the upcoming election.
However, the group is short by about 100 valid signatures, Thomas McCabe, Mahoning County Board of Elections deputy director, said Tuesday.
Board employees will double-check the petitions today, but it’s an almost certainty that the effort still won’t have enough valid signatures, McCabe said.
Jamael Tito Brown, director of programs and operations at the county treasurer’s office and a member of the committee that obtained the signatures, said he heard the effort fell short by about 200 valid signatures.
“This is the same initiative throughout the nation to give people a livable wage,” said Brown, the county Democratic Party’s vice chairman of minority affairs and a former city council president. “Youngstown has a 40 percent poverty rate, the sixth worst in the country. It’s time to start raising the bar in Youngstown. It’s something we need in the city.”
Most of the invalid signatures were from people who aren’t registered to vote or not registered at the address they listed on petitions, McCabe said.
The proposal called for the minimum wage – $8.10 in Ohio and $7.25 nationally – to increase to $10.10 an hour as of Jan. 1.
Additional minimum-wage increases would have been determined every Sept. 30, starting in 2017, by the rate of inflation for the prior 12 months based on the Consumer Price Index. Those increases would take effect Jan. 1 of the following year.
The minimum-wage committee will review the existing petitions to see if they can find enough valid signatures, but Brown said that’s not likely going to change the outcome.
“We’ll re-evaluate and decide when we’ll go the next time” to collect signatures to put the issue back on the ballot, he said.
Cynthia McWilson, a minimum-wage committee member and Democratic Party district leader in Youngstown’s 5th Ward, said, “It’s sad it didn’t get on the ballot. We didn’t do a good job of making sure people were registered. I asked that question of people who signed the petitions I had. Shame on us for not getting enough valid signatures to get on the ballot.”
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine issued a legal opinion June 30 that municipalities don’t have the authority to seek increases in the minimum wage. In the opinion, DeWine wrote that to do so would conflict “with the statewide hourly minimum wage rate enacted by the General Assembly.”
“DeWine is just the attorney general and that’s his opinion,” Brown said. “We’ll let the judicial system weigh in on this, and then we’ll see how it goes.”
Other members of the Youngstown minimum-wage committee are state Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan, D-58th; Tracey Patton-Oates, a staff representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Ohio Council 8; and Patty Bowser, a Democratic district leader in the city’s 7th Ward.
Two other citizen-initiative charter-amendment proposals will be on the city’s Nov. 8 ballot. One would ban fracking in Youngstown, and the other would give part-time workers increased rights such as health care benefits and equal hourly wages as full-timers.
Also, city council approved four proposals for the ballot. Three of them eliminate language in the charter amendment that isn’t currently enforced.
The other would require the redistricting of the city’s seven wards no later than 180 days after a U.S. Census if that report shows a difference of at least 10 percent between the most- and least-populous wards in the city.