Petitioners seek increase in Nevada’s minimum wage

Kirsten Searer and Cy Ryan

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.

The flurry of initiative action continued Monday and today.

Today is the deadline for filing petitions to get initiatives on the November ballot.

One petition calling for a 20 percent reduction in auto insurance rates and another that would scrap the medical malpractice award limit will be filed today with county clerks, Gail Tuzzolo, a spokeswoman for People for a Better Nevada, said.

Her group has more than 75,000 signatures of Nevada voters on its petition, Tuzzolo said. She said the initiative petition regarding medical malpractice has 72,000 signatures. Each must have 51,337 signatures of registered voters and they must include 10 percent of the voters in 13 of the 17 counties.

The signatures on the petitions must be verified by the county clerks, but Tuzzolo said her group already has verified that those who signed are registered voters.

To qualify as amendments to the Nevada Constitution, the intiatives would have to be approved by voters in the 2004 election and again in 2006.

One of Tuzzolo's group's petitions calls for insurance companies to reduce auto insurance rates by 20 percent before Dec. 1, 2007. The second petition would scrap the $350,000 punitive damage limit on medical malpractice cases that was imposed by a special session of the Legislature. It would also penalize lawyers to bring or defend frivolous lawsuits.

An initiative to regulate marijuana so that adults could legally possess up to one ounce, and an initiative to institute a cap on property taxes similar to the Proposition 13 measure California voters passed in 1978 are still out.

Meanwhile the activity on other initiative efforts continued Monday as Democrats and union activists held a rally to promote a new petition aimed to raise the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour.

No full-time worker should struggle to make ends meet in Nevada's thriving economy, the crowd at the rally said.

Yet a full-time minimum wage worker earns less than $11,000 a year.

A $1-an-hour increase would net the average worker an additional $2,000 a year.

About 100 people gathered in support of a constitutional amendment, which would require Nevada's minimum wage to be changed so that it is always $1-an-hour over the federal minimum wage. It also would go up when the cost of living increases.

"It's going to have a positive effect on our economy because minimum wage earners spend their money, and they spend it where they live," said Danny Thompson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO.

Supporters said they turned in about 80,000 signatures, more than the roughly 50,000 they would need to qualify for the 2004 ballot. If they have enough valid signatures and the measure passes, voters would have to approve it again in 2006 for it to go into effect in 2007.

Yet the proposal already has sparked complaints from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and other pro-business advocates who say the minimum wage increase eventually would force companies to cut jobs and drive up costs of goods and services that everyone, including minimum wage earners, must buy.

The national minimum wage has been $5.15-an-hour since 1997, though a new bill proposed now by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., would raise the federal minimum wage to $7 an hour.

The Nevada proposal also would allow up to a 3 percent minimum wage increase each year based on the Consumer Price Index.

"The petition specifically ties the minimum wage rate to cost of living increases, which makes it difficult for businesses to do any sort of financial planning," said Catherine Levy, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Chamber. "You never know what those cost of living increases will be."

Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, called the initiative "a pro-union, pro-labor initiative petition."

"It will hurt small business owners," said Tiffany, who owns a small business that buys and sells items on eBay. "You have mandates forced on us to either make us close down our doors or hire less people, and that's why I'm always very, very concerned on forced labor mandates."

And Keith Schwer, director of The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said more inexperienced workers will suffer.

"Anybody that's relatively new coming into the workforce would be at a disadvantage," he said. "The supply of labor is greater than the demand."

Supporters said Monday that six out of 10 minimum wage earners are female, and more than 25 percent are single mothers.

An estimated 101,000 workers in Nevada make less than $6.15 an hour, and an estimated 51,000 workers make the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, Thompson said.

"The key to all of this is people need to make a decent living," said Democratic Congressional candidate Tom Gallagher, a former casino executive who said he supports the initiative.

The minimum wage increase would help more than just the bottom of the pay scale, said Antonio Villaraigosa, a Los Angeles City Councilman and a former Speaker of the California Assembly who was at the rally Monday.

"It's setting the (higher) floor that pushes everyone up," he said.

Villaraigosa was there on behalf of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Villaraigosa said Kerry supports the proposed minimum wage increase in Nevada.

Some states already have higher-than-federal minimum wages. Alaska's for example, is $7.15 an hour, Oregon's is $7.05, and Washington's is $7.16.