Voters may boost Abq. minimum wage

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - It's one of the mostly hotly debated questions for city voters, but new numbers show a proposed hike in the city's minimum wage has broad support.

If approved Albuquerque's current minimum of $7.50 an hour would jump by a dollar to $8.50 an hour.

The proposal has gone through grassroots organizing to the state Supreme Court and now onto the ballot.

Poll results published in the Albuquerque Journal Wednesday indicate the measure is favored to pass by a comfortable margin.

The survey conducted for the Journal by Research and Polling Inc. showed voter support reaching 62 percent overall and leading its opposition by a 2-1 margin.

Thirty percent oppose the measure, and about 8 percent of those polled were undecided.

The poll found almost 80 percent of left-leaning voters want the increase, and almost half of right-leaning voters are in favor.

The measure has gotten a lot of backlash, though.

The Rio Grande Foundation, a libertarian-leaning think tank, estimates the increase will cost the city 1,300 jobs.

The Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce says it is worried about the potential burden put on employers of minimum-wage workers.

"An increase of a dollar an hour to many people sounds good, but most people don't realize the repercussions economically that a one dollar an hour increase means," Carlo Lucero of the chamber said.

KRQE News 13 attempted to OLÉ, the organizers that collected 26,000 signatures to put the increase on the ballot, but has not heard back.

And there is still more drama connected to the ballot measure. Later in the day Albuquerque city councilors Trudy Jones and Dan Lewis are expected to file an ethics complaint against an out-of-state group they say had been sending mail to residents without being properly registered in the city.

There will be more on that on News 13 at 5:30.