At the regular monthly breakfast meeting among District leaders Tuesday, things grew so tense between D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser that few people ate.
Bowser sparred with Mendelson, a fellow Democrat, over his handling of the family leave legislation, blasting what she called "secrecy" surrounding the details of the proposal just weeks before he plans to bring it up for vote in November.
“It’s a huge expenditure that has so many moving parts that has changed so much,” said Bowser, adding that several revisions have been made to the legislation since public hearings were held but that Mendelson has not made them public. “What is the secrecy around it?”
“We want to be helpful,” she said. “You are not giving us the information that we need to be helpful. So it puts all of us, I think, in a very bad position come time to vote on a $400 million (piece of legislation).”
Mendelson responded that there was nothing secretive about the legislative process and that his staff is still working on the contours of the bill, including the lynchpin of the legislation - how much paid time off employers will be required to provide. The originial bill provided for 16 weeks. Mendelson said the final version will be something less than 12 weeks.
He fired back, saying that the mayor’s staff has refused to meet with the council staff to discuss the bill.
Bowser and Mendelson were seated across from each other at a rectangular table, with council members and administration staff scattered between them. The accusations flew during a tense exchange that stretched 30 minutes.
The mayor also questioned whether paid family leave was the best use of city funds. “You want to raise taxes,” Bowser said. “That’s not my recommendation. There has to be a reasonable consideration of other priorities.”
Mendelson has made the bill, which would guarantee paid time off to workers to care for themselves or new children, his top priority this fall, the latest pro-labor proposal to emerge from a legislative body that has grown increasingly liberal.
But Bowser is concerned about the bill's impact on the District's business climate and whether money collected from a new payroll tax on businesses to fund paid leave would be better spent on other priorities, including school construction and affordable housing preservation.
At the meeting, Mendelson did offer a few new details, saying he rejected an alternative proposal from the D.C. Chamber of Commerce and Consortium of Universities to require only large employers provide eight weeks of paid leave. Instead, Mendelson wants to stick with a proposal for a universal program that would be funded by a tax on all employers and apply to all workers.
After the meeting, Mendelson told reporters that the mayor’s sharp questioning seemed to signal her opposition to the bill, not a good-faith effort to find compromise with the council.
“It was an effort to throw cold water on this. And it’s not going to work,” said Mendelson. “This bill is so popular that in the end those who don’t like it are going to come around.”
In an interview, Bowser said she would support paid family leave if it’s affordable, but said analyses of earlier versions suggest it would be economically devastating.
Tuesday’s acidic back-and-forth between the mayor and Council chair was the latest in their sometimes tense relationship.
In May, Mendelson accused Bowser's administration of "obfuscation" in the development of a network of shelters for homeless families and offered an alternative plan that he said would still close the troubled D.C. general supershelter on time. Shortly after, she called him a ""f------ liar."