Frustrations persist for Olympia officials pushing to raise minimum wage, adopt bill of rights
Olympia City Council member Jim Cooper is questioning why there isn’t a plan in front of the city’s Finance Committee to move forward with raising the minimum wage and adopting a Workers’ Bill of Rights.
Assistant City Manager Stacey Ray said during the Feb. 18 committee meeting that staff was tasked to get a better understanding of the city’s economic environment, different potential scenarios, who would be affected and how to look at the Workers’ Bill of Rights as a whole package rather than separate minimum wage.
Ray said very little has been done from the staff perspective and understanding what the research package would look like. She said the city is in the middle of recruiting a new economic development director. Mike Reid left to become the Director of Community and Economic Development for the Port of Olympia.
“Very little pen has been put to paper, I suppose, in terms of what this will look like,” Ray said. “So tonight is really the start of a scoping conversation, and the opportunity for you to pose questions and curiosity so that we can start to put something together.”
Cooper asked during the meeting why the committee doesn’t already have a plan in front of it.
“We talked about this at the retreat, and we all said a whole bunch of things we wanted,” he said. “So isn’t that the thing we know we want? And can we start there?”
He apologized to Ray for his frustration and said he feels like he’s in the movie “Groundhog Day.”
City Manager Jay Burney said the Feb. 18 meeting was a chance for staff to check in with the Finance Committee to ensure there’s nothing else to be added to the scope of work.
The research
Cooper did have some additional items for staff. He said an academic should be contracted to help with research, not just a consultant. He said the City of Seattle has had a University of Washington professor on contract since the city first passed a minimum wage increase. That professor helps study the impacts in detail and compares the city’s efforts to other jurisdictions who have made similar moves.
He said the city should also contact Ali Modarres, the Assistant Chancellor for Community Engagement at University of Washington Tacoma. Cooper said Modarres is an economist who specializes in poverty research.
“Really just kind of look at what the known research is,” Cooper said. “To me, I don’t need us to do research. I want to know what the known research is, where the gaps are. And there will be some gaps in the protection side of the non-wage side of things, but I think even that research is starting to be more emergent.”
He said staff should also be looking at what the effects of such an initiative would be to the city and local businesses. He said the language that’s currently being proposed around enforcement of a higher minimum wage is loose, and he’s worried about the cost of enforcement.
Cooper said he and other city officials have tried speaking with commercial workers to ensure it’s not just one sector seeking worker protections, but that all workers are included.
He said he also worries about how city staff will talk to the community about the proposal. He said he doesn’t want to go into conversation with a blank slate, and there should be a proposal to workshop around.
“That’s all we were trying to do last year, was have some proposal to have a process around and know that the outcome of that would be done the Olympia way in the end,” he said. “And so I don’t know how to do that now, like we do some research, and then we all spit ball what we want to have on worker protections or Workers’ Bill of Rights? Or we just start by analyzing the one that’s sort of in the community?”
Council member Kelly Green said she knows the council has heard from a number of local businesses who have concerns about raising the minimum wage, but she wondered just how many businesses have been heard from.
She said the largest employers in the community are state government and healthcare. She said both of those environments are heavily unionized. Another factor is many classified positions start well below the kind of ranges discussed in the proposed bill of rights.
“So what does that impact look like? Because those are also organizations and unions that extend beyond the borders of Olympia,” she said.
Green said she’s curious what the risks are in an environment like Olympia, where borders with Lacey and Tumwater are muddy. She said there are some locally-owned businesses that have branches in different parts of the county, which presents a unique challenge to raising the minimum wage only in Olympia.
Ray said with these notes and those from earlier conversations and the City Council’s retreat, she should be able to craft a scope of work.
Burney said the city had allocated $150,000 for annexation work that isn’t going to happen this year. Instead, that money will go toward researching an increased minimum wage and adoption of a Workers’ Bill of Rights.
Finance Committee Chair Clark Gilman said it’s his hope and intention that staff do this research and the council executive staff goes, “Holy cow. We’ve got to take some action.”
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