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It is important to remember that none of this would have been necessary had Olympia not cowardly reimposed I-747 after Tim Eyman’s fiscally irresponsible tax-limiting initiative had been ruled unconstitutional:

Over the objections of some advocates, the Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously approved forwarding to the August ballot the creation of a Seattle Parks District to provide a new and permanent source of funding for the city’s parks and recreation programs.

Seriously. How is it that our local daily continues to cover this story without covering the context?

Also, you know how some of the establishment folk continue to roll their eyes at Kshama Sawant for being some sort of ridiculous one-and-done accidental council member, inflexibly incapable of pragmatic compromise?

City Councilmember Kshama Sawant said she agreed that additional property taxes placed a burden on middle-income residents when the “superwealthy and big business” should be paying a larger share.

But she said the city had limited taxing authority and that low-income residents and those on fixed-incomes are some of the heaviest users of parks and community centers.

“Sometimes, these are the only services they have access to. It’s important that we’re doing this as a council.”

That’s crazy talk! Amiright?

I’m not surprised that King County Metro’s Proposition 1 failed at the polls during a special election, but like most other observers I am surprised that it failed by such a wide margin. Late ballots have softened the blow somewhat, but there aren’t many late ballots remaining. When the final vote is tallied, Prop 1 will have failed by about eight points.

By modern American standards, eight points is almost a landslide.

So the question remains: had the county gone to the ballot with the more progressive Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET) we requested from the legislature (a 1.5 percent tax on the value of your car), would voters have approved that at Tuesday’s election? And I think the answer would likely have been a resounding “No.”

Editorial board opponents had touted the regressive nature of Prop 1’s car tab/sales tax combo, but of course that was disingenuous. All our taxes are regressive, and there’s no support from the Blethenites to fix that. The truth is, any Metro funding solution that didn’t involve busting the bus drivers union would have earned a “no” endorsement from the Seattle Times.

Not that there wasn’t a sizable contingent of “no” voters on the left who failed to weigh the regressive nature of bus cuts versus the shitty reality of the tax authority we have. But I just don’t believe that’s a large enough swing vote to overcome an eight point margin. The fact is, most voters just aren’t going to distinguish between an MVET and a VLF (Vehicle License Fee)—they are both taxes that you pay when you renew your car tabs.

King County voters voted against raising taxes on their cars. Period. By eight fucking points. So it would be a mistake to read too much nuance into Tuesday’s results in order to presume that an MVET would have fared much better.

That’s why, unless the legislature is prepared to give King County councilmanic authority to levy an MVET without the approval voters—and the legislature most certainly is not—I believe Olympia’s failure to act is probably now moot. We can’t pass an MVET in a special election, and maybe not in an off-year general election either. Perhaps in 2016, during a high-turnout presidential election, but even that wouldn’t be a sure thing. In the meanwhile, systemwide Metro cuts are now unavoidable.

Politically, that means two things. First, Seattle must act on its own to save our in-city bus service from the cutting room floor. We can do that. Prop 1 passed handedly in Seattle precincts. And we have plenty of funding options.

Second, our county’s legislative delegation must wrap its collective mind around the fact that an otherwise crappy state transportation funding package is no longer a price worth paying in return for Metro MVET authority. The hostage has died. So don’t make major concessions elsewhere in return for a non-councilmanic MVET authority we likely can’t use.

Elections have consequences, and most of Tuesday’s consequences are bad. But let’s not compound them by pretending they didn’t happen.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray packed a conference room at city hall this afternoon to announce that he has no minimum wage proposal. At least not yet. Oh well.

Murray did outline several main points. If he had made a proposal it would phase in to $15 (eventually), indexed to inflation (eventually), with a slower phase-in for small businesses, however “small” is ultimately defined. There would be no “exemptions” we’re told, but there would be a phased out deduction for the cost of providing some benefits. And maybe a tip credit. That’s still under discussion.

I don’t mean to come off as snarky here. This isn’t easy. But he’s pretty much talking about all the things we’ve all been talking about, but without providing much specificity.

So, yeah. No news, really.

It’s not like I write in a vacuum. So when I posted this morning that we should pursue Plan C, and buy back Metro bus service cuts within Seattle, it’s not like I didn’t know that transit advocates had been discussing exactly such an option. But I had no idea that they were prepared to move this quickly:

SEATTLE — Friends of Transit today announced it will file an initiative for the November 2014 ballot that would save bus service within Seattle city limits. The measure could raise up to $25 million a year for the next six years, enough to reverse most cuts to King County Metro routes that serve Seattle.

… The proposed initiative would increase the city’s property tax by $0.22 per $1,000 of assessed value between 2015 and 2021. The measure is estimated to generate $25 million a year in revenue, enough to fund as much as 250,000 hours of bus service. This funding would help stave off cuts to routes operating completely within Seattle, and may help reduce cuts to routes operating between Seattle and other cities. The property tax increase requires a simple majority vote for approval.

I suppose a property tax makes as much sense as a car tab, though at $0.22 per $1,000—$88 a year on a $400,000 home—it will personally cost me a tad more than Prop 1. Either way, I’m all for the city pursuing self-sufficiency in the face of inadequate revenue at the county and state level.

Friends of Transit has a content-free website at the moment, but with endlessly energetic transit advocate Ben Schiendelman behind it, I’m sure that will be remedied in a heartbeat.

– Run on the ACA or at least Medicaid expansion, Democrats.

– I didn’t think Veep was as good as The Thick Of It, but I’m still glad it’s being renewed.

– 40% of Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions are from road transportation, and 41% of trips are under 3 miles

– We know the real voters.

– More Bertha not going.

– Smart guns

After Rodney Tom dropped out of his reelection race, I quoted some speculation about who might run for what. And I hoped that the party wouldn’t push McBride into taking the House seat if she didn’t want it.

I don’t know the district as well as he does, but I’d be wary of the party trying to push her out for one of the current representatives. She got in the race when it was going to be a tough election. The party recruited her, and she stuck her neck out for them. I’m not saying if one of the House Dems runs, she shouldn’t run for their seat, but I hope the party will stay out of it if there is a primary.

I don’t know how much pressure there was behind the scenes, but Representative Habib is going to run for Senate, and McBride will run for the House seat he’s vacating.

Apart from it being total bullshit, I’m not sure that the “total compensation” crowd has fully thought through their proposal, particularly when it comes to health care benefits.

Because total compensation would allow employers to deduct from their minimum wage obligation the cost of providing health insurance, it effectively shifts the entire cost of health insurance premiums onto the backs of minimum wage workers. Accept your employer provided health insurance and the cost of the employer’s share will be deducted from your paycheck. Cancel your employer provided health insurance (say, because you are covered under your spouse’s insurance), and your take-home pay will rise according.

Whatever your decision, your employer’s cost of labor remains exactly the same. As such, your health insurance benefit ceases to be a “benefit” when your employer’s share of the premium is effectively zero.

And yet under the Affordable Care Act (you know, “ObamaCare”), employers with 50 or more employees will soon be required to offer  affordable coverage to all of their full time employees—”affordable” meaning that the worker does not have to spend more than 9.5 percent of income on premiums.

So what constitutes “income” and what constitutes “premiums” under a total compensation system? These are questions that would surely be litigated, but a quick look at the typical American pay stub makes clear that your federal taxable income (the relevant figure for ACA purposes) is your compensation minus the cost of your health insurance premium. So if your entire premium—including the alleged employer share—were deducted from your paycheck, it would lower your income accordingly.

Now presume a total compensation $15 minimum wage in which your only benefit is health insurance at a cost of $2 an hour ($344 in monthly premiums divided by 172 hours of full time work), bringing your federal taxable income to only $13 an hour. But your $2 an hour in premiums would come to more than 15.3 percent of your $13 an hour income, meaning that your premiums would not qualify as “affordable” under the 9.5 percent rule of the ACA.

Business lawyers might argue that the employer portion of the premium should not be counted toward the employee’s insurance premium costs, but that’s not how it would appear on the pay stub. Both portions of the premium would be listed as deductions to be subtracted from gross earnings. Thus any distinction between the two becomes purely fictional.

Throw in additional deductions under total compensation, and the employer’s ability to meet the ACA employer mandate becomes even less mathematically plausible, exposing the employer to up to $3,000 in annual penalties per employee. Like I said, I’m just not sure the total compensation camp has entirely thought this thing through.

But perhaps just as important to the larger discussion is how the ACA employer mandate rules once again expose total compensation for the lie it is: it simply does not pay $15 an hour. Thus any suggestion that total compensation proponents “aren’t arguing with the $15-an-hour goal,” is a lie as well.

A decade ago, in reluctantly rejecting a guest column I had submitted (a modest proposal on how to increase per-student spending in Washington’s public schools), an editor at one of our region’s dailies lamented that, alas, too many newspaper readers lack “the satire gene.” Well, apparently some newspaper reporters lack this gene as well:

Business leaders aren’t arguing with the $15-an-hour goal. In fact, the OneSeattle website calls the current state minimum wage of $9.32 “undeniably less than it costs to support yourself.”

Yeah, that’s right: Seattle Times reporter Lynn Thompson quotes the wonderfully satirical fake OneSeattle website from a page that is so outrageous (it counts time texting on the job toward total compensation) that it’s hard to believe an informed reader wouldn’t get the joke. But she didn’t. Which has the 1Seattle.org folks crowing.

Amazing.

In other questionable reporting news, the Seattle Times taps a Von Trapp’s bartender as the voice of tipped employees opposing a $15 minimum wage, just days after printing an anti-$15 guest column from Von Trapp’s owner. Hmm.

UPDATE: Ha! I’ve once again earned my reputation as the Seattle Times’ volunteer ombudsman:

Information in this article, originally published April 19, 2014, was corrected April 21, 2014. A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed two quotes to business group OneSeattle’s website.

– Get your ballot in the mail by tomorrow, King County.

– Link and the Rising Seas

– Apparently the Bundy Ranch standoff is like Rosa Parks and Gandhi rolled up in one.

– Admitting privileges for doctors who perform abortions is such a problem. Part 2,874,098,236,930,671 in an infinity part series.

– The fact that I liked the explodey fun time action sequences means that a movie in which Captain America is pretty much straight up Chelsea Manning and the security state is literally nazis means that it’s secretly glibertarian and in-group approved… but… since we’re on the subject, HOW DARE HE SPEAK AGAINST THE GLORIOUS SECURITY STATE! HAIL HYDRA!

I honestly have no idea what this editorial is trying to say:

THE Legislature already faces the difficult job writing a balanced, education-focused budget when it reconvenes in January. That job got harder two weeks ago with an $80 million bill sent, as if in a time machine, from 2003.

According to a state Supreme Court ruling, the bill is owed to about 22,000 contracted in-home care providers for the state Department of Social and Health Services’ clients with disabilities.

[…] In this case, the state Supreme Court adds to an already hefty bill it imposed in the education-funding McCleary decision, which is coming due. While the court’s job is not to budget, it also does not operate in a vacuum.

Feel free to read all the in-between parts, but it’s not going to help. The Seattle Times editorial board is arguing what…? That the Supreme Court shouldn’t enforce an $80 million judgment against the state? That the Supreme Court shouldn’t enforce McCleary? I presume there’s an opinion in here somewhere.

No, it’s not the court’s job to write the budget. But if the state lacks the financial resources necessary to meet its legal obligations—as determined by the highest court in the state—shouldn’t our editorialists be urging the legislature to write a budget that raises the revenue necessary to obey the law, rather than chastising the court for, um, something?

I dunno, just seems to me like the responsible thing to do.

I know I promised that yesterday’s post on a “Tip Adjusted Benefit Deduction” would be my last creative stab at proposing a minimum wage compromise that benefits both sides, but I’ve got one more wonky little provision that should be a part of any debate over a so-called “tip credit”: the size of the credit should be indexed to a fixed percentage of the effective state minimum wage for tipped employees, not Seattle’s minimum wage.

Here’s how it would work: Let’s say Seattle set it’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, indexed to inflation, with a maximum allowable “tip credit” set to 50 percent of the effective state minimum wage for tipped employees, currently $9.32 an hour (also indexed to inflation). That would make Seattle’s tip credit $4.66 an hour. Simple.

But because Seattle’s tip credit is indexed to the state minimum wage, it creates within Seattle’s powerful restaurant industry a very strong incentive to politically oppose any effort to establish a tip credit within state minimum wage law. For example, let’s say a bill were proposed in the state legislature to establish a minimum wage for tipped employees set at 50 percent of the state minimum wage. This would effectively halve the allowable tip credit in Seattle to only $2.33 an hour! I’d love to see the Washington Restaurant Association try to maintain unity over that.

It is essentially a poison pill provision aimed at addressing labor’s very legitimate concern that passing a tip credit here in progressive Seattle could set a political precedent that enables the imposition of a tip credit statewide, thus lowering the incomes of tens of thousands of tipped workers outside city lines.

Don’t get me wrong: I oppose a tip credit. I find the arguments in favor less convincing than the arguments opposed. But if we’re debating whether to impose a tip credit we should also be debating the nature of the tip credit itself. I have now proposed a number of variations that could make a Seattle tip credit a helluva lot less worse than the restaurant industry giveaway imposed at the federal level. For example, a tip credit indexed to the state minimum wage for tipped employees as described above, combined with a substantial monthly threshold and exemption, and conditional on meeting strict business and account practices designed to impede wage and tip theft, would have a very different impact than the out-of-the-box tip credit the restaurant industry is demanding.

Both sides would be asked to give a little. Both sides would get a little something in return. That is the essence of political compromise.

Trust me, these series of posts on potential compromises aren’t going over well with my friends at 15 Now, while the folks on the business side of the table continue to pretend that I ceased to exist the second I left the pages of The Stranger. But I know that city council members are still reading me, and they are the ones who will ultimately craft a minimum wage ordinance, not the arbitrarily appointed members of Mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Advisory committee.

If the business community can have the gall to attempt to redefine such a common word as “wage” through their bullshit “total compensation” proposal, then it is certainly reasonable to redefine such a vague and inaccurate term as “tip credit” (which is, in fact, a “tip deduction“) in the service of promoting better economic incentives. Instead of simply opposing or supporting a tip credit, we should take this debate as an opportunity to rethink it.

My sincere advice to both sides as they head into the nitty gritty of final negotiations is to think creatively before digging into an intractable position that triggers a risky winner-take-all confrontation at the ballot box. A modified tip credit that serves to impede wage and tip theft while removing existing economic incentives to push employees into part-time non-benefit work, could actually prove a win-win for businesses and workers alike.

Or maybe not. But it’s worth exploring.

– I can’t imagine city leaders pushing for a freeway through their downtown, but I guess Olympia in the 1950’s is strange.

– TRAP Laws and the Emptying of ‘Roe’

– I’ve probably walked past that bike shop 10000 times. Who could have predicted they’d be a chop shop? Other than I sort of assume that about all bike shops.

– Shoe truthers, sure.

– Why is there a different standard between McAllister and Vitter? Shut up, that’s why.

– Today in “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should,” it’s the Rattlesnake Rodeo—or, more accurately, the Rattlesnake Pile of Snakes Just Kind of Lying There—in Opp, Alabama. The annual event includes snake races, snake handling, snake milking, and snake touching.

When I offered last week my “Five Proposals for Making a ‘Tip Credit’ Less Worse,” I got exactly the sort of response from the business community that I expected: crickets. The restaurant industry really isn’t interested in discussing the pros and cons of the traditional tip credit; they just want it, period. So there wasn’t much risk in proposing compromises that the other side would refuse to consider.

Which is why I have one more tip credit compromise to propose—one which borrows from the arguments made in support of the bullshit “total compensation” proposal—that offers cost savings to employers while removing their incentive to push workers to part-time employment. For want of a better term I dub it: a “Tip Adjusted Benefit Deduction (or TAB Deduction).”

A TAB Deduction is a variation on the traditional tip credit that further limits the credit to an amount not to exceed the cost of providing certain defined benefits. A TAB Deduction would assure that all Seattle workers take home a minimum of $15 an hour in cash compensation, while incentivizing employers to shift involuntary part-time tipped workers to full-time jobs. A TAB Deduction would also be conditional on meeting strict business and accounting practices intended to impede wage and tip theft, while facilitating the investigation and prosecution of claims thereof.

How does the TAB Deduction work?
A qualified employer would be permitted to deduct from its minimum wage obligation an amount equal to the smaller of A) the cost of providing permissible benefits, B) the amount of tips actually received by the employee, or C) the difference between Seattle’s minimum wage and the effective minimum wage for tipped employees under city, state, and federal law.

For example, assume the minimum wage for tipped employees is WA state’s current minimum wage of $9.32/hr, while Seattle’s minimum wage is $15/hr—that makes the maximum TAB Deduction $5.68/hr. Now assume that an employee earns $4/hr in tips and $3/hr in benefits. The employer may deduct the smaller of the three figures—$3/hr—from its minimum wage obligation, with the employee ultimately receiving $12/hr in wages plus $4/hr in tips for a total of $16/hr plus benefits.

Only those benefits defined in ordinance, and in maximum amounts approved by regulators, may be applied to the TAB Deduction. Further, the TAB Deduction would only be made available to employers who follow strict business and accounting practices.

How does a TAB Deduction benefit workers?
While it would guarantee all workers a minimum cash compensation of $15/hr, a TAB Deduction would also modestly reduce take-home pay below what a straight up $15/hr minimum wage might otherwise provide to tipped employees who receive benefits. But the TAB Deduction does broadly benefit labor in two distinct ways:

First, a TAB Deduction removes from employers existing economic incentives to eliminate benefits, or to force workers into part-time work in an effort to cut costs by denying them benefits. In any workplace where average tips routinely exceed the cost of benefits, the labor-cost differential between part-time and full-time work is all but eliminated.

Second, the TAB Deduction addresses our epidemic of wage and tip theft by forcing employers to adhere to strict business and accounting practices (defined in ordinance and approved by regulators) in order to qualify. The TAB Deduction thus serves as a carrot for enticing employers into imposing stricter business practices upon themselves.

How does a TAB Deduction benefit employers?

It saves them money, duh, by permitting qualified employers to deduct the cost of providing benefits from their minimum wage obligation, up to the maximum allowable tip credit.

Conclusion:
Again, my preference would be for a straight-up $15 minimum wage, no tip credit (and certainly no “total compensation,” a proposal that only achieves $15 by totally redefining the meaning of the word “wage”). But if we’re going to talk about compromise, the least we can do is talk about these compromises creatively.

There’s more at stake here than simply the wages of Seattle workers. If we pass a $15 minimum wage, the rest of the state and the nation will look to us as an example. So in a nation where a tip “credit” is already deducted from the incomes of most tipped employees, anything we do to set a precedent for a better tip credit could end up improving the lives of millions of minimum wage workers. Likewise, anything we do to undermine Washington’s position as one of only seven states without a tip credit (or even worse, to set precedent for “total compensation”) could have a dramatically negative impact far outside Seattle’s borders.

That said, I don’t believe that many on the pro-business side of the table are negotiating in good faith, and I don’t believe that they are truly interested in debating compromise. But they are welcome to prove me wrong.

I suppose because a 15.6 percent cut in Metro bus service would be totally all right:

THE campaign for King County Proposition 1 says 600,000 hours of Metro bus service would be cut if voters don’t approve the measure.

At best, that’s disingenuous. The facts matter when asking voters to increase car tabs from $20 to $60 and to raise the sales tax 0.1 percent on the April 22 ballot.

In fact, Metro has known since at least March 13 that better-than-expected tax collections would reduce the expected cut down to 550,000 hours. That’s because King County’s trampoline rebound from the Great Recession netted Metro $5.4 million more last year than had been projected. Metro is now forecast to receive $13.7 million more in 2014 and $15.9 million more in 2015.

First of all, the editors at the Seattle Times are the last people who can straight-facedly critique the math of others. But Jesus… talk about nitpicking. Are they seriously making the case that voters should reject Proposition 1 because Metro only faces a 550,000-hour 15.6 percent cut in bus service as opposed to the 600,000-hour 17 percent cut threatened? Accept their math and the region is still facing a devastating cut in bus service at a time there is demand to expand it (not to mention our region’s growing backlog of deteriorating roads—40 percent of Prop 1’s revenue goes to road repairs). If this is the strongest case the editors can make against Prop 1, it only emphasizes the need to pass it.

As to modestly rising sales tax forecasts, yeah, that’s true. But sales tax revenue is notoriously volatile. Indeed, this recent uptick in revenue comes on the heels of a 10-year $1.2 billion sales tax revenue shortfall from previous forecasts. So much for forecasting sales tax revenue. And with reserve funds now standing near nil, Metro has little margin of error before a couple bad quarters forces additional cuts.

Look, time has run out. Prop 1 isn’t perfect, but after two years of waiting for Olympia to stop dicking around with our transit funding, this is the only option we have left. Pass Prop 1 or cut 600,000 hours of Metro bus service—give or take a 100,000 hours.

Hey Uber drivers… welcome to the wonderful world of unregulated for-hire, where the TNCs can just cut you off without notice, for any reason and any time, and you have absolutely no legal recourse:

“My rating went to a 4.6 (out of a five-star rating) and they suspended me. They just turned my phone off. They didn’t give me a warning; they didn’t give me a week’s notice. I just woke up in the morning to go to work and my phone was off. And they’ve done that to a lot of people,” said former Uber driver, Will Anderson. “That’s huge—if you make an investment in a vehicle and you have a family you need to feed.”

Hooray for the free market and the efficiencies it imposes! No doubt Uber knows what it is doing, so we should just trust them.

A panel of TNC and town car drivers will be holding a public forum to air concerns about Uber’s “predatory practices” on Sunday, April 13, 2 pm, at the Yesler Community Center, 917 E Yesler Way in Seattle. Seattle City Council members Kshama Sawant and Mike O’Brien are scheduled to be there.