Our View: Group’s vision for city assumes dark forces at work

Envision a Spokane where the lowest paid worker makes $13.31 an hour, where low-income housing is abundant and situated in the appropriate neighborhoods (not yours), where everyone has health care coverage and lives in neighborhoods that are free from chemicals and big box retailers belonging to national chains. It’s a place where the public costs from new growth are absorbed by developers, who pass some of the costs along to new residents. Longtime residents and those who developed their neighborhoods would get a free pass on their impacts.

Why, it’s a Land of Enchantment; no, it’s better than that. Santa Fe, N.M., home to wealthy refugees from around the country, has the highest minimum wage ordinance in the nation, at $9.85 an hour. By next year, Spokane’s baseline wage for employers with 15 or more workers could be $13.31 an hour, if one of Envision Spokane goals – they’re listed at envisionspokane.org – is realized. So the least a dual-income, full-time working couple could collect is $55,369 and they would have a legal right to health care coverage.

Envision Spokane is an effort to bring living wages, pristine environments and growth controls all under a single umbrella of happiness. Left unanswered is who will pay for all of this. Beyond filing lawsuits, it’s not clear how this would be implemented and enforced. It seems to work on the Capt. Picard Principle. Jean-Luc Picard is the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” commander whose signature phrase is “Make it so.” If only it were that easy here on Earth.

A coalition of labor, environmental, neighborhood and social justice groups wants to put its proposed community bill of rights on the ballot in November. It’s holding town halls across the city to start the conversation. People presumably get there by walking, because driving would violate the Fourth Amendment: “People have a right to a healthy environment,” which includes the right to unpolluted air.

The fatal flaw in this effort is that it presumes there are dark forces that preclude the rest of us from living the way we’d like to. Such people have untoward influence over government and, apparently, more than one vote each when it comes to electing leaders who agree to undermine their own laws to keep us miserable and their benefactors happy.

For instance, the Eighth Amendment – “Workers have a right to be paid a living wage” – presumes that employers are unwilling, rather than unable, to do this. So with a wave of the wand, those employers with 15 workers or more will suddenly have the cash on hand to fulfill this right. Never mind that some businesses near the margins would cease to exist or would survive by whacking enough workers to get below the 15-person threshold.

Certainly, government has a duty to step in under limited circumstances to assure the neediest citizens’ basic needs are met. But the genius of America is that it provides opportunities – not guarantees – for those willing to seize them. It’s unrealistic to think government can or should remove the struggle that precedes success.