Minimum Wage Initiative Petition Leader Believe Not Enough Signatures Gathered

Wednesday, June 28th 2006, 5:31 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) The leader of an initiative petition drive to raise Oklahoma's minimum wage believes an insufficient number of signatures have been gathered to submit the issue for a statewide vote.

``We got close but not close enough,'' Linda Murphy of Raise Oklahoma, the group circulating the initiative petition, said Tuesday.

The federal and Oklahoma minimum wage are $5.15 per hour. The petition proposed increasing the Oklahoma minimum wage by $1 an hour beginning Jan. 1 and by $1 more per hour beginning Jan. 1, 2008.

The signatures were due in the secretary of state's office on Wednesday.

The organization had to get 117,101 valid signatures of registered voters on the document to get the proposal before Oklahoma voters.

The group's goal was to collect at least 150,000 signatures in case mistakes were made during the process, Murphy said.

She doesn't know how many signatures were gathered, and the petitions still are being counted. But the number won't be enough, she said.

Murphy said the group will try again.

``We're not done,'' she said. ``We're coming back.''

The Oklahoma Constitution requires signatures on an initiative petition to be collected within 90 days of beginning the petition drive.