DENVER – The campaign to raise Colorado’s minimum wage to $12 per hour is facing its second scandal in less than a week. 

Last week, reports emerged that Colorado Families for a Fair Wage had failed to compensate their own signature gatherers the $12 per hour that they seek to impose on all Colorado employers. The campaign was later forced to file an amended report that at least suggested they had paid their canvassers the wage they consider “fair” for every other employee in Colorado.

Today, CBS 4’s Shaun Boyd announced the latest blow to the job-killing endeavor, uncovering likely fraud on the part of the campaign’s signature gathering efforts. 
And it gets worse. Per Boyd:

“The signatures in question were all gathered by the same person from the Washington D.C.-based canvassing firm Fieldworks, a person who has a criminal record that includes aggravated robbery.”

Kelly Maher, Executive Director of Compass Colorado, suggested that the minimum wage campaign’s fraudulent, dangerous behavior is little more than a precursor to the harm that a minimum wage hike would have on the broader state:

“Colorado Families for a Fair Wage hired a convicted violent felon to collect signatures, and that same individual turned around and committed fraud against the people of Colorado. That seems neither ‘family’-friendly nor ‘fair,’ but given the moral bankruptcy of the campaign’s entire premise, nothing really surprises me about these folks.

“The fact remains that a minimum wage increase to $12 per hour would kill far more jobs than it could possibly hope to create, and almost all the jobs lost would be entry-level positions. By increasing government regulation on the Colorado job market, proponents of a minimum wage hike would do more harm than good to the very people they seek to help. For the sake of all low-wage Colorado workers, we must reject this nonsensical measure this November.”

###