(Photo by Rachel Sadon)

(Photo by Rachel Sadon)

The campaign for a $15 minimum wage in D.C.—until now, a complicated affair to get the issue on the ballot amidst a Board of Elections crisis—just got a major new ally: Mayor Muriel Bowser.

One of the biggest surprises of the mayor’s 2016 State of the District address was her announcing full-throated support for the so-called Fight For 15 and plans to introduce legislation to get it in place by 2020.

“An hourly minimum wage of eleven dollars and fifty cents will only stretch so far,” she said of the current wage. “In a city as prosperous as ours, we can level the playing field and we can make sure our residents are paid a good wage so fewer families are forced to leave.”

So when the D.C. Council returns to the dais next month, Bowser said she will send legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020—putting the District in the same league as San Francsico, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as the movement continues to gain ground.

“If a fair wage is not at the end of that cliff or the job training program, our families will be forced out. So we must fight for 15, and I will,” Bowser said.

While seven in ten District residents said they would support a $15 minimum wage in a recent D.C. Vote-Washington City Paper poll, the move will almost certainly draw opposition from the business community. It is also a departure from the mayor’s earlier skepticism about the effort to get the issue before voters, which has since become mired in a lawsuit over the “proper constitution” of the three-person Board of Elections that approved the language for a ballot initiative.

“I think the Council actually went through the right process in raising the wage that has not put the District at a competitive disadvantage,” Bowser told DCist in December—referring to the 2013 law that gradually raised the wage from $8.25 up to $11.50 by 2016. She specifically took to issue with the effort to do it via ballot initiative, saying “let me just put it this way: If it gets on the ballot, it wouldn’t affect the federal government or the D.C. government. That doesn’t sound right to me.”

At the State of the District, she didn’t give many other details about what her proposed legislation would look like, or if it would include a key provision that activists have been pushing for: extending the minimum wage to restaurant workers who earn tips (they currently make $2.77, unless tips don’t bring the total up to $11.50).

“I’m glad to see that after months of pressure from our coalition, the Mayor has come to see that the struggle of D.C. workers is very real,” said Delvone Michael, the executive director of D.C. Working Families, which is part of the coalition fighting for the $15 minimum wage. While the group is “more than happy to work with mayor and the council to make $15 for D.C. a reality,” Michael told DCist they will continue their efforts toward getting the measure on the ballot “until the mayor and the council have made good on her promise.”

Said Gaby Madriz, the director of ROC-DC: “We are happy to see the issue of raising the minimum wage moving forward and urge the Mayor to include all D.C. workers, including those who make the tipped, subminimum wage of $2.77 an hour, in her proposal.”

As for the ambitious proposal to expand paid family and medical leave well beyond any U.S. state, Bowser said that a task force would present findings about its feasibility in six months.

The other major surprise of the speech—besides two decent good streetcar jabs (“People ask me all the time: ‘What surprises you about being Mayor?’ If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that, we could build the rest of the streetcar line!” and “We can make fun of streetcar, but we’re not gonna take it from a Senator from Kentucky!”)— was her announcement that the administration would take over operations at D.C. Jail. “This will allow us to bring back more of our federal prisoners sooner, so we can give them extra support and services before they head home,” Bowser said.

She chose to open her speech, though, with some bright education numbers, the announcement of an additional $220 million investment into modernizing schools, and kudos for Akilah Johnson, the 10th grader who won Google’s annual Doodle contest this week. The mayor also announced another $3.6 million to improve childcare and a new working group to come up with recommendations toward expanding “early childhood opportunities.”

And Bowser closed the speech by cheering the District’s recently hard-won right to control its own tax dollars without Congressional approval. A D.C. Superior Court judge upheld the Budget Autonomy Act, which more than four of five voters approved back in 2013, on Friday.

“Budget Autonomy means we are one big step closer toward statehood. How is that for change you can believe in, Eleanor?” Bowser said to some of the evening’s biggest cheers.

But the mayor reserved her most impassioned words for her plan to close finally close the homeless shelter at D.C. General, which has drawn criticism for a lack of transparency and applause for what appears to be, at long last, a viable plan to close the dilapidated facility,

“D.C.’s families deserve better than D.C. General. Five year old Dwayne deserves better. Two year old Crystal deserves better. And little Relisha deserved better,” she said in reference to the disappearance of the then eight-year-old two years ago from the shelter. I urge us not to be distracted by arguments based on fear…..or convenience….or apples and oranges comparisons that falsely represent the cost of lifting families out of homelessness. Because make no mistake. If we fail to act—or if we do not move forward with one of the sites—we will not be able to close D.C. General. Not now, not any time soon, and maybe never.”

A small group of protesters with the group We Are D.C.—which is behind one of two websites that have cropped up in recent days that are demanding scrutiny of plan—held up signs outside of Arena Stage, but said their goal isn’t to stop the closure of D.C. General.

“We’re focused on financials and transparency,” said Jeewon Serrato, who lives in Ward 6 and rattled off monthly costs that far exceed luxury housing near the proposed site. “These deals do not look like a good deal for the homeless or taxpayers.” The group charges that politically collected developers are getting a huge payout, in many cases on land that the city won’t have control over when the leases end in two or three decades.

Inside, though, Bowser framed the issue as one of NIMBYism and anxiety about bringing homeless families into local communities.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you and I believe that hope should conquer fear, so I ask: will you stand with me and together close D.C. General once and for all?” she asked.

The crowd leapt to its feet for the longest sustained applause of Bowser’s speech, and one man shouted back: “Thank you.”

Filed Under: $15 minimum wage, bowser, d.c. general, homeless, homeless plan, homelessness, mayor bowser, minimum wage, soda, state of the district,