In nation’s capital, $15-hour minimum wage expected to appear on 2016 ballot

By Aaron C. Davis
July 22 at 2:32 PM - The Washington Post

Voters in the nation’s capital are likely to decide next year whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, in a referendum given a green light Wednesday by D.C. elections officials.

The proposal puts the District at the center of a wage fight that has become a touchstone in the Democratic presidential nominating contest. It would be the first East Coast city to vote on such a high minimum wage.

An elections board ruling released Wednesday allows proponents to move ahead with the petition drive for the referendum. Following a signature-gathering effort that even opponents expect will be successful, D.C. voters would decide in November 2016 whether to join Seattle, San Francisco and, recently, Los Angeles in a burgeoning, urban liberal vanguard on higher wages.

“This ballot measure will force a conversation and give residents in D.C. who are struggling a chance to be heard,” said Delvone Michael, director of the District’s Working Families coalition. “We’re talking about mothers not having to spend their one day off at the welfare office; about people walking with their heads held high. That’s what we’re talking about. People should not work a full-time job and live in poverty.”

The ballot measure — in a place with the symbolic importance of Washington, and in concert with similar campaigns being waged by labor proponents in New York, Chicago and San Diego — could propel a national debate over the minimum wage in the presidential race.

On the left, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill with four congressional Democrats to set a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. He then addressed hundreds of striking low-wage workers outside the U.S. Capitol, calling the current federal minimum of $7.25 per hour a “starvation wage.”

Another Democratic presidential primary candidate, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, also recently endorsed a $15 national minimum wage, shooting past the increase to $10.10 that he supported just last year as governor.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, however, has not been precise about what figure she thinks is appropriate, either for local jurisdictions or nationally. She has given arms’ length support to the $15 idea by dialing into a labor group forum that supported the campaign in Chicago a couple of months ago, but recently on a campaign stop in New Hampshire she said $15 may be appropriate only in large urban areas such as New York or Los Angeles. Clinton is expected to give a speech on wages later this summer at which she will be under pressure to provide a figure.

On the right, meanwhile, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has garnered headlines in his first weeks on the GOP presidential campaign trail by blasting the existence of any minimum wage as “lame” and without purpose economically.

At $15 an hour, the District’s proposed new baseline would more than double the national hourly minimum. It would also tee up another potential showdown between the city’s Democratic majority and its Republican overseers in Congress.

Although some bipartisan support exists on Capitol Hill for raising the minimum wage, a $15-per-hour rate is viewed by many conservatives as an affront to market economics. As they tried this year with the District’s marijuana legalization effort, congressional opponents could use their oversight powers to block the ballot measure either in part or completely from taking effect.

The D.C. measure would mirror Seattle’s by phasing in a flat $15-per-hour minimum wage by 2020. That would be 30 percent higher than the $11.50 rate that the D.C. Council and mayor, as well as adjacent counties in Maryland, agreed to last year.

As in San Francisco, the measure would also for the first time force D.C. restaurants to pay workers the minimum wage plus tips. Restaurants in the District are currently required to pay only $2.77 per hour, as long as tips bring servers up to the equivalent of minimum wage.

Beginning in 2025, D.C. restaurant workers would be due $15 an hour, plus tips. The minimum wage would also be indexed to inflation.

Several D.C. business groups opposed the ballot measure and in briefs and testimony over the past month urged the District’s Board of Elections to reject the ballot measure. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce released a poll of business owners showing more than half said they would need to cut their employee numbers in the District if the minimum wage reached $15 an hour.

Kirk McCauley, a spokesman for an industry group representing service stations in and around the District said the higher rates would amount to “unbearable economic hardship,” causing a number of D.C. small businesses to simply shutter their doors.

The business groups also alleged a possible Human Rights Act violation in the District if the wage measure were to make the ballot.

No ballot measure in the District is allowed to obligate the District government to spend money. To get around that issue, proponents exempted government workers and contractors from the proposed higher wages.

The District’s Human Rights Act states that no class of workers can be discriminated against based solely on their source of income.

D.C. lawmakers questioned the work-around, saying it would be politically unpalatable for the District government not to raise its wages as well. “I think it’s a little too clever — clever by half,” D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said last week while the board was awaiting a final decision.

In a ruling released Wednesday, however, the elections board rejected every argument by opponents.

“While the Board recognizes and can appreciate the concerns of small business owners who bemoan the prospects of increased operating costs, the Board is not authorized to reject initiatives due to financial hardships on private business owners,” the ruling stated.

Supporters must now gather about 23,200 signatures, or 5 percent of District voters, to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Proponents said they are confident the measure will clear the signature hurdle and also prevail once on the ballot.

Polling that backers commissioned during the spring showed support in the District for a $15 minimum wage at about 70 percent.

“I think it’s so popular because middle-class folks are feeling squeezed, too. Everyone understands this is an issue,” said Michael of D.C. Working Families.