OTHERS SAY A job for the locals

Two House Republicans, Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Gary Palmer, R-Ala., have introduced legislation that would override Initiative 77, the District ballot measure raising restaurant servers’ pay that passed in the June 19 primary election. Meadows and Palmer should bow out, for two reasons. First, Congress needs to respect home rule in the nation’s capital, as well as the political processes that go along with it. Second, local officials appear ready, willing and able to stop Initiative 77 from taking effect without intervention from Capitol Hill. A majority of the District of Columbia Council’s members have supported a bill that would block it.

On balance, we think that’s in the public interest. We might feel differently if Initiative 77 had been approved in a general election. As it happens, though, the measure passed with 47,230 votes out of nearly 85,000 cast in the primary; there are nearly 480,000 registered voters in the city. That’s hardly a mandate. And the council members have their own independent electoral bases and the democratic legitimacy that goes with that. The home-rule charter fully empowers them to alter or eliminate Initiative 77, as they would any other statute.

Revisiting the initiative would be good policy, because it was a solution in search of a problem. It imposes a rough quadrupling in labor costs on the city’s restaurants, most of them small businesses.

No doubt, ending the so-called tipped minimum would stabilize the income flow for some working families and free some tip-dependent servers from putting up with sexual harassment and other forms of customer abuse.

At the same time, many workers will see reduced hours or lose jobs; certain restaurants won’t get started at all, if they can be launched in Maryland or Virginia, which won’t have a rule like Initiative 77.

Yes, some council opponents of Initiative 77 might be contradicting majorities in their wards who voted for it—just as Ward 3’s Mary Cheh supports the measure against the wishes of a majority of her constituents. The truth is, though, that members of the council are elected not to consider issues in isolation, but to exercise their best judgment on how various pro

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