Longtime Democratic Party activist Bart Dame is an experienced and knowledgeable observer of the legislature and its dynamics.
Following the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature’s defeat of a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage, despite the party’s strong support for such a measure, Dame told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
“It looks like the legislative leadership of both chambers is just out of touch with the real conditions facing working people in Hawaii, who are struggling to pay basic expenses,” he said. “They’re just so out of touch with the actual conditions faced by working people that they can play games and kill a bill like this when there’s no good reason for doing it.”
In a Facebook comment, he added a more detailed assessment of the potential for moving forward politically from here.
Here’s a lengthy excerpt, reprinted with his permission from a longer Facebook comment.
Given the current composition of the legislature, given the limited number of activists working to raise the minimum wage, given the level of organized public support (and resistance from the business owners) the drive to raise the minimum wage this year failed. So how do we create new circumstances which increase the chances of raising the MW next year?
Both the Senate and the House are controlled by lawmakers who have found it is much more important to have good, mutually supportive relationships with business owners and their lobbyists, who are well-organized, with a lot of resources, than with the poorly-organized, under-resourced “do-gooder” activist types, who are either volunteers (and amateurs) or who hold low paying jobs with public interest nonprofits.
“Community” or party-based activists can rarely arise above the level of being a nuisance, presuming a right to make demands on lawmakers.
So how do we set about to “create facts on the ground” that will increase our chances of greater success next year? Next year is an election year, a time when our ability to be a “nuisance” that affects those elections
Increases, if only slightly.The internal dynamics in both chambers could become more supportive with the election of a few more Democrats who actually hold “Democratic” beliefs, values. In the Senate, recent votes show the factional alignment of votes, and with them, “leadership” is pretty shaky. Leadership in both chambers tried to push through an approach to AirBnB (and Expedia) that pretty much surrenders to the power of the market, legal or illegal, only asking for payoffs in the form of taxes. The “Leadership and Lobbyist Alliance” prevailed easily in the House, but failed in a 12-12 floor vote last night in the Senate. (It would have been 13-12 against, but one Senator was absent).
The attempt by the “Leadership and Lobbyist Alliance” to pass the A&B “Water Theft Bill” also passed easily in the House, But has stalled out (so far) in the Senate (with a slightly different alignment of senators). Another sign the Senate leadership’s control is shaky.
The “facts on the ground” in the Senate appear to be more conducive to change. The “facts on the ground” in the House are much less so. The current leadership has a much more stable control, which leads me to adopt a view that we need to change the “Gestalt” within the Democratic Caucus in the House. To not aspire to replacing the leadership but to strengthening the influence of progressives within the caucus with an assumption the leadership’s policies would shift to reflect that more progressive composition. Some incumbents need to be knocked off and replaced with Democrats who actually uphold “Democratic” values more than a cynical, amoral “professionalism.”
Progressive efforts have started with HAPA’s Kuleana Academy. But need to step up and to become a bit more realistic in what it takes to build a movement AND to recruit and produce electable candidates.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
With due respect to Bart, what is interesting is he identifies factions without their ideas. An that’s what id interesting about the post legislative discussion the unstated assumption, you had the right ideas, the second you have a strategy. I believe the strategy should rest on bringing real benefits to the middle and below class (workers). Right now the legislature is still imprisoned by supply side economics, that taxes and regulations lead to economic stagnation. The minimum wage bill is a good example. This was a somewhat half hearted attempt, at least on the administrations part. The other side of that was how much actual thought went into demanding $17, or even $15? It was DBEDT says a family of 4 needs a a full time job of $17 per hour. The very next step should be what proportion of the labor force earns $17/hr. And how many are full time workers. Same thing with the minimum wage. And then what effects would moving the minimum wage to a certain level. With the governor’s support this is done through DLIR, who in turn ask me. This happened, but it seemed half hearted. On my part I was hamstrung because I could not download the Current Population Survey data set for Hawaii because of the government shutdown. Appleseed center relied on Economic Policy Institute which was not quite adequate to what was needed above. The first thing we should understand in this situation is we need to change people’s minds, including the legislature’s. Then getting new elected officials is easy. I’m worried this might sound patronizing, but I mean this sincerely. Since 1998 I have been one of the few to testify in favor of the minimum wage. I sensed this year was much different lots of activism, that’s great. What you have to understand is lobbyists provide information, often you don’t know what it is untill you get the testimony. In this case their information won.
Just one further thought, you never get anywhere by accusing large numbers of people of being corrupt who disagree with you.
DBEDT does a biannual self-sufficiency study. (not minimum, not even living wage, but self-sufficiency–what it takes to live here without govt support). the most recent one, for 2016, shows the need for $28/hr for an adult with one pre-school aged child.
Folks can see it here: http://files.hawaii.gov/dbedt/economic/reports/self-sufficiency/self-sufficiency_2016.pdf
Living wage…Democratic party favors business like pre 1959 Republicans loved the Big 5. Bills usually die when enough donations are made by opponents. No rich proponents or party for poor. Same thing happened to union expansion. U.S. Senator advocated organizing small farmers to strengthen pay and industry it never started. Oligarchs of party, business and unions lie happily together in the same bed….good night!
great analysis Bart. thanks for sharing Ian.
While I agree with much of Lawrence’s first comment and have been, on occasion, “one of the few to testify in favor of the minimum wage” alongside him, appreciating the data he would bring to the discussion.
But I am disappointed to see my argument so crudely distorted in his second comment. Nowhere did I accuse “large numbers of people of being corrupt who disagree with” me. Like Lawrence in his first comment, I attribute the votes of the legislators to the dominance of what he is calling “supply side” economics, though I call it “neoliberalism.” I think it is reinforced by the social experience of most legislators who are professional class folks, sometimes small business owners and investors who associate with other professional class folks and business owners. They see the world from that perspective rather than from those who live life closer to the bone, who have to choose between paying the rent, buying groceries, buying new clothes for the kids, etc.
The pro-investor bias gets further reinforced by the dependence of lawmakers upon private funding for their re-election campaigns, which drives them closer into relations with business owners and their fellow professionals. In addition, most of the lobbyists working the building have been hired by those same interests. As I said in my comments, those lobbyists are “well-organized, with a lot of resources” compared with “the poorly-organized, under-resourced “do-gooder” activist types, who are either volunteers (and amateurs) or who hold low paying jobs with public interest nonprofits.”
Lawrence appears to attribute the failure of the bill to pass this year to his personal inability to gather good enough data to convince the legislators. WOT?
Sorry, “with all due respect” to Lawrence, I do not think the legislator reluctant to raise the minimum wage would have been influenced by better data. I think the increases in the wage we managed to win in 2014, which increased the wage 39%, from $7.25 to $10.10 provided a real world experiment sufficient enough to draw reasonable conclusions. Contrary to the “doom and gloom” predictions of the Chamber of Commerce and Restaurant Owners, there were not mass layoffs, but an increase in hiring, including in the sectors most directly reliant upon workers earning the MW or slightly above it, the restaurant and retail sectors.
A proposed hike to $15 over 5 years would have continued the same rate of increase into the future. The challenge, as I am sure Lawrence would agree, is to find “the sweet spot.” How quickly can the MW be raised, with the hope of narrowing the gap between the MW and what DBEDT has defined as the “self-sufficiency wage” without leading stresses on businesses to the point where there is a net loss in employment.
The leading groups on the other side in the lobbying effort, the Chamber of Commerce and the Restaurant owners did not prevail because they had more convincing data. In fact, they recycled the same arguments they had made in 2014. One of their most prominent advocates claimed that hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour would force them to raise the price of a plate lunch $5.
Good data can be helpful. But contrary to Lawrence’s experience as a data guy, my belief is that lawmakers are at least as interested in getting re-elected as enacting good policy. As I watch the arm-twisting and horse-trading that is going on in the Legislature trying to get senators to change their votes and, despite the public assurances that the bill is dead, to pass out the bill to give Alexander and Baldwin the right to $62 million worth of water they do not own, I envy Lawrence his belief legislation is passes (or not) based upon which side has the best data.
Finally, my extended comments were intended to suggest how we might improve the chances of getting a minimum wage hike next session. I noted that our ability to win such an increase is improved by the fact it is an election year. I know many of us have become very frustrated with the results of this session. Some are calling for a change in leadership in both chambers. I offered reasons to believe the Senate leadership is shaky, as well as my assessment the leadership in the House is pretty safely ensconced. My advice to those wanting better results from both chambers is the same: elect fewer legislators under the sway of “supply side economics” and the campaign contributions that reinforce that influence.
Unlike some people, I do not assign all the actions (or inactions) of the chambers to their formal leadership. For example, I believe there is a great deal of reluctance within the House Democratic caucus to a MW hike and the decisions of the leadership reflects that more general reluctance. I hope Lawrence finds the data he thinks will shift their thinking. I will follow my strategy, which relies more upon building pressure within the districts, resulting in lawmakers either voting more consistently with the “Democratic values” most of them profess to uphold or their replacement by politicians who will.
Haleiwa_Dad
1 day ago
Just ask your weekend warrior gardening crew leader – the market already calls for at least $12/hr cash for outdoor work, for the least productive, and $15/hr cash for the more productive and reliable ones….equivalent to the net wage cost on a payroll job paying (including Medical 600/mo / 172 hrs, UI/TDI/WComp about 10%, + SSec-Medicare 7.5%) =$3.48 + 17.5% * the rate) a minimum wage of $15.48 + 2.10 = $17.68. If you put the floor up to $15.00 on payroll you’ll encourage more under-the-table employment and fewer hours on existing jobs combined with more part-timer positions, plus price increases on customers. …and don’t forget, the real minimum wage is ZERO – the wage for the unskilled teen or young adult you don’t hire because the output isn’t worth the cost….Oh, and anyone willing to clean toilets and tidy up a vacation rental (30,000 locations in the state), with their own tools and car, can charge $30.00 per hour cash, equivalent to about $40 per hour if it were a payroll job (most of these operators don’t run a payroll for their service people). …. The market has already priced useful labor way above the ‘minimum’ wages being discussed. If the legal minimum creeps up to $15 or $17 for easy indoor work employers will buy less of it, one way or another.
Liberals/progressives long said that marijuana was mostly benign (at least no more dangerous than tobacco and alcohol) and not the real drug problem and, in any case, could not be suppressed by law enforcement because it was too popular, so marijuana should be out in the open and taxed. Much the same seems true of short-term home rentals like Airbnb, but the same liberals/progressives just cannot see that.
I’m yet to be persuaded that raising the minimum wage is a good idea. And I don’t think I’m out of touch with the lives of hard-working people trying to make ends meet. And by the way, I consider myself progressive. I would probably support a national guaranteed basic income and Medicare for all. On the other hand, free college for everyone strikes me as unrealistic.
Thank you Bart, for your discerning comments.
What is “water theft”? We talk about “Big Five” companies stealing water from the little guy, but small agriculture is very inefficient. Maybe the status quo is benefiting the majority of the population who do not want the rural way of life, and the small farmers are piggybacking on an infrastructure developed by others (taxpayers, corporations). I was once for the small taro farms, but now I’m not sure what to believe with all the exaggerated talk about “cultural genocide”.