Court orders Glendale to process ballot measure to raise hospitality workers' minimum wage

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered Glendale to finish processing a proposed ballot measure that would give hospitality workers a $20-an-hour minimum wage if voters approve it in November.

It’s a ruling that the city intends to challenge by appealing it to the state’s highest court, a Glendale spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

The city has five days from Monday to file the appeal through an expedited process the state allows in election-related cases.

The move to appeal comes a day after Superior Court Judge Scott McCoy rejected the city’s single-subject argument for denying the voter initiative that the labor union Worker Power submitted last month. He found that the provisions outlined in the group's measure legitimately dealt with one issue.

Worker Power wants to raise the minimum hourly pay for local hotel and event center employees, as well as impose regulations to enforce the new wage.

Worker Power believes the employees’ wages are too low, forcing them to live paycheck-to-paycheck and pricing them out from participating in the local economy.

Arizona’s minimum hourly wage sits at $14.35.

Opponents of the initiative believe that the wage hike will negatively impact Glendale’s economy. They argue that hotels in the city’s booming tourism industry will raise room rates and cut staff if voters pass the measure on Nov. 5.

Nearly 9,000 of Glendale’s voters reportedly signed Worker Power’s petition to have the measure placed on the ballot — far more than the 5,905 valid signatures required.

Glendale City Clerk Julie Bower, however, declined to advance the initiative because, she claimed, it didn’t comply with the Arizona Constitution’s “single-subject rule,” a provision requiring acts, or laws, to pertain to one topic.

In her rejection letter, Bower stated that the initiative, the “Hotel and Event Center Minimum Wage Protection Act,” isn’t “limited to one subject” and therefore “doesn’t meet the constitutional requirement” for ballot placement.

The group disputed that assertion and took the city to court, where it alleged that Glendale and Bower didn’t have the authority to reject the proposal and accused the clerk of delaying the process.

The delay, the group argued, threatened the measure’s ability to get on the ballot in November. Citing the time-sensitive nature, Worker Power asked the court to force Bower to continue processing the measure, even as the matter went through the legal system.

McCoy agreed with Worker Power. He found that the measure “embraces ‘one general subject.’”

“All the city has to do is comply with its ministerial duties required by law,” the ruling stated. “As a general proposition, Arizona’s public policy strongly favors the initiative process.”

Pending the appeal, Glendale must accept and process the initiative.

The city is appealing the decision to Arizona’s Supreme Court, it said in a one-sentence text message.

Worker Power praised the ruling late Tuesday, calling it a “tremendous victory.”

It “affirms what we already know: voters deserve the opportunity to weigh-in on the issues that affect them and their community,” Brendan Walsh, Worker Power’s executive director, stated in a news release.

If the measure goes to the ballot and gets approved by voters, the minimum wage for Glendale’s hotel and event center workers will rise to $20 an hour. It will also provide them with yearly pay bumps to reflect cost of living increases.

The measure will also impose limits on how many rooms attendants can clean in an eight-hour workday before their pay is doubled, give workers all the service charges hotels collect from guests and establish a local labor standards agency.

The litany of provisions is at the heart of the city’s objection to the proposal.

The initiative, the city said in court filings, will amend the Glendale City Code “to impose a sweeping array of new requirements on both employers operating within the City of Glendale and on the city itself.”

The Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association argued just as much. In what’s known as a friend-of-the-court filing, the organization stated that the “quiver of burdensome regulations (will have) a devastating impact on Glendale’s economy — and particularly its small businesses.”

McCoy stated that such a claim doesn’t fall within the court’s purview. He cited case law to note that it’s up to voters to determine whether a proposed measure is good policy.

In his view, McCoy also wrote, that the measure establishes a minimum wage for hospitality workers while providing a mechanism to enforce the increase and prevent employers from skirting it. Therefore, the provisions fall under one general idea.

Shawn Raymundo covers the West Valley cities of Glendale, Peoria and Surprise. Reach him at [email protected] or follow him on X @ShawnzyTsunami.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Glendale appealing court order to process minimum wage ballot measure