$20 minimum wage in Tacoma? City leaders are working on a proposal
Tacoma city leaders are reviving conversations about raising the city’s minimum wage to $20 an hour.
A ballot initiative seeking to do so last year, in addition to outlining stronger protections for the city’s workers, has been held up at the state Court of Appeals amid allegations that local leaders deliberately stood in the way of putting it on the ballot. In the meantime, Deputy Mayor Joe Bushnell has been soliciting feedback from business owners, labor unions and other stakeholders to develop and implement a proposal for a minimum-wage increase by the end of the year.
The change could either end up on the ballot in November – though the city only has until Aug. 4 to make that happen – or the council could vote and implement it directly. Council members on the city’s economic development committee, where conversations have been taking place, expressed an interest in deciding on the measure at the council level instead of putting it to the voters.
“Let’s just get it done,” council member Latasha Palmer said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Bushnell offered an array of options at Tuesday’s meeting, including soliciting feedback before drafting a proposal for the City Council later in the summer. He said he wanted to wrap up the process by the end of the year.
The city could immediately implement an across-the-board $20 minimum wage; it could implement gradual minimum-wage increases to eventually reach $20; or it could raise the minimum wage to a set amount above the state’s minimum wage, he said.
The state’s minimum wage, which Tacoma adheres to, is $17.13. Certain jurisdictions have set their minimum wage at a different rate than the state, like in Seattle which is at $21.30 and Bellingham at $19.13.
The council also could decide not to change Tacoma’s minimum wage and continue adhering to the state minimum wage. Bushnell said if it did so, the state minimum wage would likely reach $20 around 2029 or 2030 – because state law requires that the state’s minimum wage change annually based on changes to the Consumer Price Index.
Members of the economic development committee weighed the merits of the proposals, but a clear majority of council sentiment won’t be evident until the entire nine-member group hears the proposal. Some on the committee questioned whether a gradual approach would be effective and whether it made sense to exempt certain job-training programs or organizations from a wage increase.
Tuesday’s meeting was a packed house, uncharacteristic for such committee meetings. About 20 people spoke during public comment about the potential for a $20 minimum wage, mostly labor union leaders and faith leaders who supported the efforts. Some argued that the city should consider raising the minimum wage even higher than $20, but said $20 was a good place to start.
They said raising the minimum wage to $20 would bolster economic development in Tacoma as families would have more disposable income to spend at local businesses and would allow Tacoma residents to stay in Tacoma for work.
“As Tacoma grows, the people who keep the city running should be able to afford to live here,” Malando Redeemer, president of the Tacoma NAACP, said at the meeting. “Economic development should create opportunity for everyone, not just those at the top.”
Only one attendee spoke against a potential $20 minimum wage – Lori Forte Harnick, president and CEO of Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region. She said that an immediate jump to a $20 minimum wage would hinder the organization’s ability to offer job-training programs, costing it about $1.8 million every year.
“We would have to run a budget deficit to cover those costs in [2027] and beyond,” she said.
The ballot initiative that proposed a $20 minimum wage in 2025, also known as the “worker’s bill of rights,” also included a proposal to bolster protections for the city’s workers.
It was set to appear on the ballot via the city’s initiative petition process, in which citizens of Tacoma can draft and put measures to the voters if those measures clear certain hurdles. When the measure came before the City Council to implement it directly or put it to the voters to decide, the council opted for the latter – but did so after the county’s deadline to do so.
Since then the measure has been the subject of a protracted legal challenge at the state’s Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 15, according to court records.
