jonetta rose barras: Toss it out — Initiative 77 shouldn’t be enacted

No one should think the fight over Initiative 77 has ended. It is, in fact, just beginning, according to many opponents, including those with the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, Restaurant Workers of America, Save Our Tips and No2DC77.

“This is not over. We are still mobilized,” Kathy Hollinger, head of the Restaurant Association, told me in an interview one day after the June 19 primary.

That’s a good thing.

The DC Council may want to pre-empt Hollinger and her team, however. Legislators should overturn Initiative 77, and the reasons are myriad: redundancy between the initiative and the current law; potential fiscal impact; voter confusion; and unintended voter suppression — not to mention common-sense leadership.

As written, Initiative 77 promised the minimum wage would increase to $15 per hour for all workers by 2020. Tipped workers would see that wage increase directly from employers by 2026. And, beginning in 2021, the annual increase would be pursuant to the Consumer Price Index.

In a liberal-leaning city where progressives fight over who is more progressive, it’s not surprising that many voters saw the phrase “Increase minimum wage” and said yes; 55 percent of the 80,443 voters who cast ballots backed the measure, while 45 percent rejected it, according to unofficial results posted on the DC Board of Elections website.

“It’s always uphill fighting a ballot initiative,” Hollinger said. She, other business leaders and thousands of tipped workers should be commended for the battle they fought against proponents who deliberately misrepresented current District law while presenting the measure as some weapon against sexual harassment of women by customers.

Mayor Muriel Bowser and the majority of DC Council members publicly opposed the initiative. Talk can be cheap in DC, however. When I made my round of calls to elected officials to find out what steps they next intended to take, most, including Chairman Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Karl Racine, declined to comment or simply didn’t call me back.

Are they worried about voter response in the November general election? Not likely. DC is mostly a one-party town. To the Democratic Primary victor goes the spoils.

“We just need them to be leaders right now,” said Hollinger.

Elected officials may want to forget about that politically correct adage of protecting the voice of the people. Yes, 44,353 voters approved the initiative — but many of them were as confused as the 36,090 who voted against it. And let’s not forget that more than 4,000 individuals didn’t even punch in, although they voted for candidates on the ballot.

During the days leading up the primary, I communicated with my share of confused voters in person, by telephone and on Facebook. They didn’t know DC’s current minimum wage sits at $12.50 per hour. They didn’t know the “Fair Shot Minimum Wage Amendment Act of 2016” mandated that amount increase incrementally, reaching $15 per hour on July 1, 2020. They didn’t know that if an employee’s hourly tip earnings, added to the base minimum wage of $3.33 per hour, do not equal the full minimum wage of $12.50, “the employer must pay the difference.” They didn’t know that the law provided that beginning in 2021 — a full five years before Initiative 77 mandates — tipped workers could receive the same $15 per hour minimum wage. That figure would increase with the Consumer Price Index, even as the tipped-credit system remained in place.

Don’t blame them, however. Initiative 77 proponents mounted a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign that was aided, in part, by the media whose reporting did little to fully and accurately explain the issue.

Let me try: The District has a progressive minimum-wage law on the books that considers and protects all workers. Period. End of story.

The redundancy between Initiative 77 and the “Fair Shot Minimum Wage Act” may be reason enough for the council to set aside the June 19 vote. There are other problems, however, that cannot be ignored: The recently approved fiscal year 2019 budget does not include any allocation for the implementation or enforcement of Initiative 77, according to government sources.

DC’s chief financial officer has not conducted a fiscal impact study to determine how the measure could affect tipped workers or the health of the business community — particularly the hospitality industry, the city’s major economic engine. In 2016, the CFO found that moving to the current minimum law would adversely affect the income of some workers. He reasoned, however, that the salary increase could compensate for that loss. Would Initiative 77 have a more lasting negative effect, especially if businesses lose revenues or, worse, close?

Equally important, tens of thousands of voters didn’t even know they could vote in the primary, which is traditionally set aside for individuals who are members of the major political parties — Democratic, Republican, DC Statehood Green and Libertarian. The unintended consequence was voter suppression. According to the elections board, of the 78,731 registered Independents in the District, only 4,510 (5.34 percent) of them actually cast ballots on June 19.

That, my friends, is a serious challenge to those who might want to claim the people have spoken.

jonetta rose barras is a DC-based author and freelance writer. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.