Lawrenceville Living Wage Coalition - Recap of Town Council Meeting

August 15, 2006
Laura Lynch

It'll be in the papers on Wednesday and Thursday, but here's what happened:

Tonight, the Living Wage Ordinance was on the agenda at the Lawrence Township Council meeting. The Township had rejected the ordinance on the grounds that they felt it superceded state law. Our attorney had argued otherwise, but the ordinance was rejected again.

Lawrence Township is a Faulkner Act township: if the Town Council rejects an ordinance that its residents want, the residents can put the ordinance on the ballot. All we had to do was collect a certain amount of signatures from registered Lawrence Township voters. That's what we did. When we went door-to-door and canvassed public places, the response was overwhelmingly in our favor. We collected more than enough signatures, and, according to the Faulkner Act, the ordinance must now either be accepted by the Township Council or put on the November ballot.

We were told at the beginning of tonight's meeting that we should hold our comments until the ordinance was discussed. Lawrence takes public comment at the beginning of each meeting instead of at the end. We waitied patiently for over an hour. Finally, the ordinance came up.

That's when the township attorney pulled a fast one: he declared that he would be seeking judicial guidance from the Mercer County Superior Court, and possibly even the NJ Attorney General, as to the legality of the ordinance. In other words, he was recommending that Lawrence Township litigate against its own people, with funds collected through taxes from those very residents. The Township Council agreed to initiate the lawsuit and tabled the motion to vote on the ordinance. Once the motion was tabled, public comment was disallowed. So we never got the chance to make our case, despite having been told to hold our tongues earlier because we'd get the chance now.

Needless to say, most of us were irate, but we bit our tongues and gathered in the lobby. Our attorney had somewhat anticipated that the Township might do this, so he was prepared to submit his own documents to prove that our ordinance is in complete compliance with NJ and federal law. He also mused that he could bring up the breach of our First Amendment rights.

We agreed among ourselves that the Township is too afraid to pass the ordinance but too afraid to vote "no" because of the ordinance's popularity. They know their jobs are on the line and they want the decision made for them by a court so that they can say their hands were tied.

The Township Clerk is required by the Faulkner Act to submit the ordinance to Mercer County for the ballot by September 8. The next Township Council meeting is September 5. The Township needs a ruling from the court by then. The Township attorney admitted, though, that he'd requested guidance from the Attorney General several months ago but never received a response. The ordinance's legality and its requirement to be on the ballot are two separate things; the Township is attempting to conflate the two.

We waitied for the press to come out of Council chambers. They were in there talking to the Council and to two business representatives (who were chatting up the Township attorney, by the way). Our attorney made an eloquent case to the two newspapers covering the meeting.

Read all about it tomorrow...