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EDINBURG — Community activists are alleging that officials here are refusing to comply with a federal court order mandating that the Edinburg City Council be presented with a proposal to implement a $15 minimum wage for all city workers and contractors.
In response to what they say has been months of inaction since the March 9 order, members of La Union Del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, attended a council meeting to urge Edinburg leaders to take action.
“As of now, the city has not responded to legal petitions that have been filed and given to the city secretary,” said Michael Mireles, LUPE’s director of civic engagement, just before the meeting got underway.
“And knowing that a judge has asked the city to do so, and seeing that they haven’t complied, that’s why we’re here,” he added.
For more than a year, LUPE Votes, a self-described “sibling organization” to LUPE, has been trying to get the $15 “living wage” proposal before the Edinburg City Council for a vote.
The proposal calls for the city to not only pay all its employees a minimum of $15 per hour in direct wages, but also to require any contractors doing business with the city to do the same.
Currently, the lowest wage earner on Edinburg’s payroll makes just $12.24 per hour, according to a city spokesperson.
In 2022, LUPE Votes teamed up with another progressive grassroots nonprofit, Ground Game Texas, to circulate a petition in support of placing the issue on a meeting agenda for the city council’s consideration.
While normally, items are placed on an agenda by city leaders, the Edinburg City Charter contains provisions which allow for residents to petition to propose an ordinance.
Petition signatures must come from people who are registered to vote in Edinburg.
Ground Game and LUPE collected more than 2,000 signatures and presented them to the city secretary last April.
But the city secretary rejected the petition for not meeting all of the requirements as set forth in the charter, including that the petition circulators be registered to vote in Edinburg.
“The rejection of the petition when it was submitted was done purely because the city charter said that there was a requirement that was not met,” Edinburg City Attorney Omar Ochoa explained Wednesday.
In June 2022, Ground Game took Edinburg to federal court, alleging the city was violating the petitioners’ rights to free speech.
Ultimately, Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane found in Ground Game’s and LUPE’s favor.
In a 22-page order handed down on March 9, Crane found that the charter’s requirements violated the First Amendment by imposing a “severe burden on speech that is not warranted by a compelling governmental interest.”
Crane subsequently ordered Edinburg to “no longer enforce its policy of limiting who may circulate a petition.”
“The City Secretary shall certify the ‘Living Wage’ petition submitted by (Ground Game) and submit the initiated ordinance to the Edinburg City Council,” the order further stated.
Thus far, however, the proposal has not been put before the city council.
“At this moment, we believe that you are violating the constitutional rights of the community members that we represent,” Tania A. Chavez Camacho, executive director of LUPE and LUPE Votes, said to the council during the open forum portion of Tuesday’s meeting.
“All we’re asking is that the constitutional right to petition — as mandated by a federal judge — be granted and that the signatures be presented to the city council to be recognized,” Chavez Camacho added a moment later.
But Ochoa disputes that characterization, saying the city has begun taking action since the court order came down.
“The city disagrees with the assertion that it’s not in compliance with the order,” Ochoa told The Monitor on Wednesday.
He added that, since the court order, city officials have met once with the community advocates.
“The city has already met with Ground Game and with LUPE to discuss a resolution to the issue and so I expect the city council is going to move forward with some type of a resolution that adopts a plan to reach the $15 minimum wage for city workers and for vendors who do business with the city within some period of time,” Ochoa said.
He further described the discussions as positive, adding that Edinburg’s rejection of the petition was never about the substance of the proposal, but rather about following the rules as laid out in the city charter.
“The city can’t necessarily pick and choose which charter provisions to follow and which ones not to, even if it disagreed with them. So, it really did require a federal judge or a court to tell the city that it doesn’t have to enforce that requirement of the charter,” the city attorney said.
However, that response didn’t satisfy LUPE.
“The problem we have with that is that’s not what was asked for by the judge,” Mireles said, reiterating that Crane’s order calls for the city to put the measure before the council, not to continue discussions that are ancillary to the $15 minimum wage proposal.
Mireles was referring to a compensation study Edinburg is currently undertaking, as well as ongoing fiscal budget talks — issues Edinburg explained to LUPE in that single meeting since the court order.
“It really feels like they’re stonewalling,” Mireles said. “There isn’t like a strong enough reason, we believe, for them to keep prolonging putting this up for an actual vote.”
Meanwhile, one of the other topics the council deliberated Tuesday involved the formation of a charter review committee.
“We would like to have a charter review committee to look and comb through the entire charter and bring recommendations to the entire council,” Edinburg City Manager Myra Ayala explained to the council.
Ayala added that portions of the charter may have become obsolete or in contravention of new laws.
When asked if the Ground Game litigation had anything to do with Edinburg’s plan to review the city charter — portions of which the judge found contravened Texas law — Ochoa said it may have played a role.
“I think that was definitely part of the consideration, but even prior to all of this, right, there has been the sense that it was time to do some type of charter update because it’s been so long since there was a comprehensive update,” Ochoa said.
The city council plans to appoint members to the charter review committee at its next meeting; however, it remains unclear when the $15 minimum wage proposal will also be set before them.
