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hour to $9.50 an hour by 2016. Hawaii, Maryland, Connecticut and Massachusetts also plan gradual increases.
• In the city of Seattle, council members voted earlier this month to gradually raise the minimum wage in Washington's largest city to $15 an hour.
• Weiland, a Sioux Falls businessman and one-time staffer for former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, helped carry the petitions for the ballot measure to the Secretary of State's office.
• He said the initiative would benefit about 62,000 South Dakota workers -- and that group goes far beyond teenagers flipping burgers. Most of those people are working full time, Weiland said, and 80 percent are adults and about half are women.
• "I just don't think a buck and a quarter is going to be a hardship," he said. "I think that money goes right back into economy."
• Rounds said he opposes the ballot initiative because it has a built-in an inflation multiplier, which he thinks could increase unemployment in the state. And he said many of those earning minimum wage are students working part time.
• He also said the issue should be reviewed annually by the state Legislature to balance the potential benefit with the number of small-business jobs that could be lost.
• "When you put the automatic inflation rider into it, I think that takes it out of the hands of the Legislature," Rounds said.
• But Weiland noted that lawmakers haven't raised the wage despite the need.
• "Tie it to the cost of living, then you solve the problem," Weiland said. "We don't have to sit there and let this gap develop like there has been over the past several years."
•

• BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Residents throughout much of the waterlogged Dakotas were on alert for flash flooding Friday as a storm system swept in from the Rockies.
• The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch through Friday night for western and central North Dakota, and for western and north central South Dakota.
• Forecasters said the storm system moving from west to east could drop as much as 6 inches of rain.
• "Everyone is going to have to keep an eye on the weather," meteorologist Todd Hamilton told The Bismarck Tribune.

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