© 2024 KRWG
News that Matters.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Goodman: Questions Remain Regarding The Las Cruces Minimum Wage

Last Monday, the Las Cruces City Council voted to delay minimum-wage hikes set by the petition-initiated ordinance.  People keep asking me:

Was the City Council's action legal?

No, in my view; but it might survive a challenge.

The Council must follow the City Charter.  The Charter requires the Council to put the petition-initiated ordinance to a citywide vote or pass it unchanged.  Council technically did that, but with some councilors giggling about gutting it immediately – which they then did.  Unfortunately, since its draftspersons likely assumed Council would follow the law, the Charter lacks a further paragraph specifying what happens in this situation. 

Obviously the provision meant for Council to enact the ordinance and not tinker with it unless and until changed circumstances made that expedient.

City would argue that the Charter's omission of additional language was intentional.  City lawyers would explain to a judge (ideally with a straight face) that the Charter authorized the time-consuming initiative procedure but intended it to mean no more than some note dropped in a suggestion box.  

Would that argument fly?  Probably not.  Judges faced with absurdities or inequities frequently “imply” provisions to uphold legislative intent or the intention of parties to a contract. 

Secondarily, one councilor's wife gets paid to lobby for a restaurant group that violently opposes the minimum-wage; under the Government Conduct Act, that's the same as if he voted against something he himself got paid to fight tooth and nail.  (If he voted primarily for his personal financial reasons, that'd be a felony; but I prefer to assume he didn't.)  He should have recused himself, probably because of the “direct financial interest” and certainly to avoid the strong appearance of impropriety.

The Council's best argument would be that there's no “direct financial interest” because (presumably) the wife's contract doesn't specify that her compensation and job longevity could be affected by success or failure – or by a wrong vote by her husband.  Gotta say that if I were party to a trial and the judge's husband worked for my adversary, I'd be uncomfortable.   

But lawsuits are costly and time-consuming.

Why did Nathan Small change his mind?

Only Nathan knows – if even he knows for sure.  Judging from her appearance before the Council, Marcy Dickerson must hold some sort of world speed record for talking.  Maybe Nathan was mesmerized. 

Yes, the business community had announced a despicable effort to recall him and two others.  Nathan denies that was a motivating factor.      I'd like to believe him.  I did believe him, listening to him one-on-one last Sunday.

He said it was important to make this compromise with some businesspeople now.  He sounded sincere; but when I pointed out various reasons it would be better to “compromise” during the scheduled review in 2015, he smiled and nodded.  I never heard a compelling reason to ignore a majority of citizens, and perhaps the law.  He talked about certainty (which we don't have with the possibility of a lawsuit and the probability of a new initiative effort) and civil discourse (which business interests have pretty much sabotaged with the recall effort).  I never did quite understand, though I like and respect Nathan.  Maybe I hadn't had enough coffee.

What happens now?

Paid hacks will push the recall, trampling over our sense of community.  They'll say and do whatever it takes.  They'll even try to hide the obvious truth, that the recall was triggered primarily by the minimum wage hike, behind vague, misleading, or flatly false accusations of malfeasance.  Business-owners backing the recall will take our money and spend it shamefully.  Witness the slick billboards going up. 

The real movers and shakers cringe in the shadows.  

Note: I wrote this last Tuesday, to meet a deadline.  On further reflection: I do feel that Councilor Small's motives in changing his mind were honest, if misguided. Wednesday I found myself wondering: if we could go back to December 2013, when CAFé announced this campaign, and someone had told leaders of CAFé "Hey, without all the work and uncertainty, we could agree now to a deal in which the wage goes to $8.40 in January 2015, then $9.20 in January 2017, then $10.10 in January 2019, would they have taken it?  I wasn't involved and don't know; but if someone had forged this compromise earlier, it wouldn't have been unreasonable, in my uneducated view.  I wish business leaders had been willing to participate in meaningful discussions at that time.

Secondly, the Recall effort is getting pretty silly, but will cost us all a lot before it's finished.

Peter Goodman is a local writer, photographer, and sometime lawyer.   He initially moved to Las Cruces in 1969, holds two degrees from NMSU, and moved back here in 2011 with his wonderful wife.  This is his most recent Sunday column in the Las Cruces Sun-News.  His blog Views from Soledad Canyon contains further information on this subject, as well as other comments and photographs, and past newspaper columns.