POLITICIANS GET TO VOTE ON THEIR OWN RAISES …

[Algorem]

… Recently retired Cleveland public school teacher Michael Charney has a new lesson for young people: activism works.

Charney wants to recruit young adults to circulating petitions to place a constitutional amendment raising the Ohio minimum wage to $6.85 on the November 2006 ballot. That’s $1.70 higher than the federal minimum wage, and $2.60 more than Ohio firms not engaged in interstate commerce must pay.

At least 1,500 people will circulate petitions at the polls this November 8. Then, Let Justice Roll, a coalition of religious groups organized around raising the minimum wage as a moral issue, will be collecting signatures during Martin Luther King Day celebrations next January, Charney said. At that point, the campaign will raise funds to develop a long-term field operation...

State Senator C.J. Prentiss, Charney’s wife, presented the proposed constitutional amendment to the Senate’s Commerce and Labor Committee and got a hearing. But when proponents of the measure testified, the room became conspicuously empty. That reinforced her thinking that she would have to go directly to the voters...

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