Emergency Workers Take Complaint to Court

Some emergency workers will have to wait for a court to decide if their bid to have collective bargaining rights put on the November ballot will make it there. Secretary of State Matt Blunt says one Congressional district is 226 signatures short. But John Corbett with the group trying to get collective bargaining says organizers started the petition drive in December 2000 with some of the signatures gathered before the new congressional districts were drawn and some of those signatures should be counted in the district that came up short. Corbett argues the new congressional districts shouldn’t be used yet. A spokesman for the Secretary of State, though, says those districts went into effect immediately upon passage of the reapportionment law.