Oregon’s minimum-wage weirdness offers cautionary tale
Evidence keeps mounting that Washington is no longer the bellwether for a fair and consistent minimum wage. In SeaTac, Seattle and most recently Tacoma, the “15 Now” movement has flashed hot the past few years, forcing hourly pay increases in sporadic bursts. And six states – including Alaska, California and now Oregon – lifted their minimum wages this year above Washington’s former nation-leading mark.
Even so, lawmakers in Olympia are in no rush to raise the inflation-indexed wage floor, which now rests at $9.47. They didn’t do it in 2015, and they apparently won’t in 2016. They’re slow because they know there are right ways and wrong ways to implement wage reform.
And then there’s the distinctly Oregon way.
The Beaver State will be the first in the U.S. with a geographically based minimum wage. The Oregon Senate and House last month agreed to a bill that will carve the state into three zones and gradually raise the wage bar in each zone through 2022. Gov. Kate Brown gave it her signature Wednesday.
In what sounds a bit like socioeconomic gerrymandering, Oregon’s minimum wage will top out at $14.75 in the Portland area, $12.50 in the lowest-income counties and $13.50 everywhere else. Then, after six years, the wage in each tier will increase according to the Consumer Price Index.
Oregon politicians barely had time to bask in their creative accomplishment during the short session before they started plotting to change it. Some cooked up tax breaks for industries that would be hurt by a higher wage floor. Some pushed to expand the lowest-wage tier to include all coastal counties. A debate even broke out — and cries of conflict of interest were exchanged — about whether legislators would see their own pay raised, or maybe lowered.
Like the slogan says: “Keep Portland Weird.” (Everyone knows the state Capitol is just an extension of Portland.)
Oregon has given Washington so much already — McMenamins, the Death with Dignity law and “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening. Now our southern neighbor is providing a cautionary tale, a painful case study of leaders trying to make important policy on a too-tight timeline.
The prevailing view in Salem is that lawmakers felt an urgency to find a compromise before a pair of union-backed ballot measures seeking more generous wages are able to gain traction. Sound familiar? Washington Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens, pitched a plan in January to phase in a statewide $12-an-hour minimum wage, fully aware that labor activists here were filing initiatives demanding as much as $14 an hour. His bill, as well as a handful of other minimum wage nonstarters, are all but dead this year.
Hobbs, of course, was stealing a page from Tacoma political and business leaders who rolled out a $12 alternative to the “15 Now” ultimatum on November’s ballot. Tacoma voters went with the reasonable choice rather than the nuclear option. On Feb. 1, the first step of the increase kicked in, giving Tacoma hourly workers an immediate boost to $10.35.
Tacoma offers proof that setting a palatable minimum wage while under pressure to swallow an unsavory alternative can work, at least on a limited scale.
It gets much messier when applied across an entire state, as Oregon is learning.
Washington lawmakers should put minimum wage and sick leave reform near the top of their “to do” list for the 2017 session. It’s inevitable that they will be working at least through the spring, so they’ll have ample time to do it the right way.
The Washington way.
This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Oregon’s minimum-wage weirdness offers cautionary tale."