Kansas City takes steps to remove $15 minimum wage initiative from ballot

Now that the Missouri General Assembly has acted to prohibit local control on the minimum wage, the city attorney of Kansas City says he’ll work with election authorities to remove a $15 per hour minimum wage proposal from the November ballot.

The city will seek a court order before Tuesday to remove the petition initiative from the Nov. 3 local ballot.

A group of civil rights and low-wage worker advocates had gathered enough signatures for a Kansas City ballot initiative calling for a $15 per hour minimum wage by 2020.

But the General Assembly on Wednesday overrode Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that prohibited local municipalities from adopting any minimum wage above the $7.65 an hour statewide rate.

City Attorney Bill Geary said that in light of the legislature’s action, the local petition initiative would be invalid.

Vernon Howard, a spokesman for the group that pursued the $15 per hour petition initiative, said the petitioners should be part of any discussions about that change in direction but have not been contacted by city officials.

Geary said that he soon would also prepare an ordinance repealing a council-approved measure from July that called for gradually raising the minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2020. That July ordinance never became effective because of a separate referendum petition by business groups that said $13 per hour was too high.

“If minimum wage workers in Kansas City are to receive an increase in their $7.65 per hour wages, they must look to their employers, the Missouri General Assembly or a statewide initiative petition,” Geary said in a statement.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 2:40 PM with the headline "Kansas City takes steps to remove $15 minimum wage initiative from ballot."