Push to raise Nev. minimum wage halted
By Megan Messerly, Las Vegas Sun
Amid the fervor of caucus season — the day that Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders visited union workers on a picket line outside of Sunrise Hospital, the day that they addressed Nevada issues at a town hall in front of a national audience on television, and two days before the Nevada Democratic caucuses — the minimum wage ballot initiative was quietly withdrawn.
The initiative, first put forward in November, would have gradually raised the minimum wage in Nevada to $13 an hour by 2024 from its current level, $8.25. The group backing the initiative, the Committee to Raise the Minimum Wage, would have needed to gather more than 55,000 signatures of registered voters by June 21 to get it on the ballot.
But a couple of weeks before the caucuses, the initiative’s supporters decided to withdraw the petition, said Laura Martin, associate director for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, known as PLAN, one of the main advocates of the initiative.