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# Living wage hypocrisy
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/living-wage-hypocrisy-editor/
- Published: 2002-10-31T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:50:15.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Montana, #archive-import

*By Dr. Michael Gruning Santa Monica*

In order to get an unvarnished and unimpassioned view of what reality is in the City of Santa Monica, a little distance is required — say 49 million miles.

What is the initial view? An allegedly caring, concerned majority of five out of seven council members who have only the best interests of downtrodden workers mired in dead-end jobs at heart. To that end, they crafted a “Living Wage Ordinance.” You may ask, how did this come about? In the spring of 2001, while chairing a meeting of the Montana Merchants Association, I had a chance to speak with Councilman Kevin McKeown. Question: “Kevin what is the genesis of this ordinance?” Answer: “It’s a broad based coalition of concerned citizens and clergy.” Q: “How many would that number be?” A: “In the hundreds.” Q: “So what you’re telling me is that in a city of about 85,000 citizens, you are going to force an ordinance with unknown consequences down peoples’ throats on the basis of a whim of a few hundred people. If you really believe that it is the best thing for the city, why not put it before the voters?” A: “It’s a very complicated issue.” How DISMISSIVE of the intellectual capacity of the electorate!

Does this concern extend to all low-wage jobs in Santa Monica? Curiously not. It resides only in an arbitrarily drawn, gerrymandered area called the “coastal zone.” And what is this mythical coastal zone? It is an area that contains the majority of nonunion hotels, and a variety of restaurants. How is it that these five council members knew in advance that these establishments in the zone could afford a minimum wage of $12.25 an hour, almost double the current minimum wage? Perhaps in addition to the title “council member,” they were also given the gift of clairvoyance, which allowed them to divine what the profits, not gross revenues, of these heavily debt burdened businesses were. More likely, they relied on the unproved hypothesis of a sole economist (Professor Pollin) to respond to a proposal for analysis of the impact of the living wage sent out to 50 leading economists nation-wide. Surprisingly enough, this sole respondent had already literally and figuratively written the book “How Cities Can Prosper With a Living Wage.” Shouldn’t we find it just a bit curious that the council didn’t even bother to ask its own in-house and well-respected Director of Economic Development Mark Richter what his analysis of the impact of a living wage would be? Do you suspect that they had a damn good idea of what his analysis would have been?

After a recent Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce-sponsored discussion of the living wage, I spoke with the Rev. Sandie Richards (one of the clergy whom Kevin McKeown had earlier alluded to as spearheading the cause). I mentioned the quandary of the Lobster Restaurant, which is in the zone and over the $5 million threshold.

Because there is no tip credit in the proposed ordinance, the overwhelming majority of the employees (who can easily earn over $50,000 annually) would have to be brought from the current minimum of $6.75/hour to $12.25/hour, thereby costing the Lobster over $500,000 annually. Her response was that the restaurants can ask for a hardship exemption. Since there is currently no language specifying what a hardship exemption would be, they may or may not be able to be saved by one. When I asked her further “so what you’re saying is that the restaurants can get a hardship exemption but because the hotels gross far beyond what the restaurants gross and would therefore be ineligible for any hardship exemption, the only real targets of this ordinance are the hotels.” She chose not to respond. She also could not explain away the paradox of why a luxury hotel like the Viceroy, which is exempt from the ordinance because it is a union hotel can pay a starting wage of $8.50/hour, whereas all the nonunion hotels would have to pay $12.25/hour under the new ordinance. How do you spell hypocrisy?

Why should 85,000 Santa Monicans have to pay inflated prices and watch businesses close to satisfy the whim of five council members who owe their political lives to the unions who have regularly financed their campaigns? Many will be hurt, but few will be helped by this ill-conceived, discriminatory ordinance! Maybe there really is intelligent life on Mars.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/103102.pdf?ref=smdp.com)