By Peter Marcus
Durango Herald, July 25, 2016
DENVER – Proponents of an effort to gradually raise the minimum wage in Colorado submitted more than double the amount of signatures necessary to make the November ballot. Colorado Families for a Fair Wage submitted around 200,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office on Monday. It takes 98,492 valid signatures to make the ballot. ... The effort would gradually raise the minimum wage to $12 by 2020. Proponents took the question to voters after the Legislature failed to act.
The proposal aims at addressing the current wage of $8.31, which hasn’t kept pace with the state’s increasing cost of living, according to proponents. ...
[S]ome small business owners are already on board with the proposal.
“We have a choice today about what state we want Colorado to become,” said Yoav Lurie, chief executive and founder of Simple Energy, a Boulder-based company that works on energy conservation.
“We have a fantastic workforce,” Lurie continued. “Nobody who works full time in Colorado should live in poverty.”