STATE’S VOTERS favor measure on wage increase.

Arkansas voters approved a measure Tuesday to raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.50 to $11 an hour by 2021. Issue 5 lifts what already is the highest base rate of pay for workers in the region comprising Arkansas and its six neighboring states.

With 1,590 of 2,607 precincts reporting, the incomplete, unofficial returns were: For .................472,590 Against . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219,715

Voters weighed arguments made by Issue 5’s supporting committee, Arkansans for a Fair Wage, which contended that a wage increase could boost thousands of families’ standard of living, against the views of an opposition group that said a pay increase could cost the state business opportunities and jobs.

“We’re feeling really good about what we’re seeing so far. This is what we expected from the conversations we’ve had with voters across the state,” Kristin Foster, campaign manager of Arkansans for a Fair Wage, said about the early returns.

She emphasized the impact the group expected that the measure, if passed, would have on poverty and food insecurity in Arkansas. “For working parents, this is going to have a huge impact on their ability to put food on the table,” she said.

In a phone interview earlier Tuesday, Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Randy Zook, who led the opposition group Arkansans for a Strong Economy, said it looked as though the measure had a chance of passing, and he expressed concerns about its effects on the state’s job seekers.

“The people who will pay for it are not the business owners,” he said. “I’ve had dozens of employers tell me, ‘Well, I’ll just cut the number of people I’m working.’”

Under the initiative, the first wage increase would be set for Jan. 1, when workers would get a raise to $9.25 per hour from the current minimum wage of $8.50.

The measure survived legal challenges that centered on questions about the signatures Arkansans for a Fair Wage had gathered to petition for its inclusion on the ballot.

In July, Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office notified the committee that after reviews, 17,289 of the originally submitted 69,413 signatures were invalid, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. This triggered a 30day “cure” period in which the group was allowed to gather and submit additional signatures, which it filed on Aug. 3.

Arkansans for a Strong Economy then challenged the validity of the secretary of state’s determination in court, arguing that the initial number of signatures submitted did not meet the threshold required for a “cure” period and that the secretary of state should be barred from counting votes for the measure.

But after a signature count by a court-appointed special master, the seven-member Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against that claim on Oct. 18, ensuring that Issue 5 would be decided by voters.

Proponents of the measure argued for its potential benefits to working families. They pointed to a rising cost of living that they said burdens even full-time, minimum-wage workers, who earn less than $18,000 per year, and to the roughly 300,000 Arkansans who would get raises under the measure.

Issue 5 opponents said the initiative would hobble industry and erode the job growth the state has enjoyed in recent years. Younger and low-skilled workers would pay the price, detractors said, as business owners looked for ways to trim labor costs.

Arkansas last raised its minimum wage in 2014, also through a ballot measure, lifting the wage from $6.25 to $8.50 an hour over a threeyear period. (Act 643 of 2017 prevents Arkansas cities and counties from raising their minimum wage above the state minimum wage.)

On Tuesday, neighboring Missouri also voted on a ballot initiative to raise that state’s mandated wage from $7.85 to $12 an hour by 2023.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have state minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Washington, D.C., and the state of Washington, with minimum wages of $13.50 and $11.50, respectively, currently have the nation’s highest minimum wages, though many increases are scheduled around the country at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019.