As I have learned over the last 19 years working in this body, the effect of a law is often very different than the intentions of the people who drafted that law. This is certainly most true when a piece of legislation is drafted as a conglomeration of mixed agendas. This is even true when all of the mixed agendas involved are well intentioned.

Here, we have a piece of legislation that combines three different agendas. And, all of these three agendas are well intentioned—and in isolation—represent principles I support.  The objective of insuring that service industry workers in this city earn a living wage is a principle I support—and it is a principle this whole city council should support. We need to insure that working people earn enough to pay for the basic needs of housing, clothing, transportation, et cetera. This is not only a moral obligation for a local government; it is good fiscal policy in that this city and county spends hundreds of millions of dollars filling those gaps.

The objective of insuring that service workers, including those that work substantial part-time jobs, have health insurance for themselves and their family is also a principle I support. Again, I believe this is both the right thing to do for the workers, and that ultimately such legislation would save this city and our county government hundreds of millions of dollars in health care services we provide to the working poor.

The objective of protecting union employees at union shops such as Jewel and Dominick's from the predatory practices of certain big boxes is also a principle I support. I believe that a carefully crafted law might also accomplish such an objective.

When you mix these three agendas into one law, however, the result in this particular case is an arbitrary law, with an arbitrary cutoff, that will not protect employees at some of the smaller union shops, that doesn’t even get close to touching the majority of low wage workers in Chicago who work in national chain stores that use less than 90,000 square feet of retail space to sell their wares and underpay their workers, and a law that will eventually be overturned because it is pre-empted by federal law.