Controversial restaurant wage bill vote delayed amid uncertain support from Colorado lawmakers

A controversial bill intended to help struggling Colorado restaurants by cutting servers’ pay stalled out early Tuesday morning as the measure’s sponsors attempted to shore up support from leery fellow Democrats.

House Bill 1208 was set for a second committee vote Monday, with full votes in front of the House coming next. But after hours of testimony that stretched past 1 a.m. Tuesday, the measure’s sponsor — Denver Democratic Rep. Alex Valdez — asked that the bill be laid over, delaying it for at least a week.

The bill would clip the tipped minimum wage paid to restaurant workers in Denver and several other cities with higher rates than the state’s minimum, and it’s aimed at shoring up an industry that says it’s reeling from high costs. Under current state law, tipped workers can be paid $3.02 less per hour to account for tip income. As written now, the bill would require Denver and other local governments to lower their tipped minimums.

While the bill is sponsored by Democrats and backed by Gov. Jared Polis, its provisions have divided Democrats, both in the Capitol and in Denver. Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, who testified against the bill Monday night, said it was “appalling” that Democrats were supporting the measure.

The rhetoric and debate around the bill — which has played out in crude flyers depicting the bill’s sponsors — has become sharp enough to draw a rebuke from the House’s leadership; they condemned the flyers in a statement Monday.

Supporters said Monday that they had asked fewer restaurant owners to come testify because those who had testified at a prior hearing were later insulted and targeted with bad online reviews.

“It’s been the worst hearings in the seven years that I’ve been here,” Valdez said Tuesday morning, several hours after the vote was delayed. He’s co-sponsoring the bill, which would lower the tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers in response to restaurants’ warnings of high costs and a reeling industry, with fellow Denver Democratic Rep. Steven Woodrow.

Whether the bill had enough support to pass the House Finance Committee, which has an 8-5 Democratic majority, is unclear.

Valdez told The Denver Post that it “definitely” had enough support but that he wanted to work on finding a consensus among fellow Democrats, who hold near-supermajority status in the Capitol.

He said he wanted to delay the vote because “we’re not trying to stuff anything down anyone’s throat here.” He had prepared several amendments, including one to soften the wage reductions in Denver and to make clear that restaurant workers would always be paid at least the state minimum wage.

“We’re negotiating with members of the caucus,” he said, referring to House Democrats.

But Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat and a critic of the proposal, said the bill didn’t have enough support — from either Democrats or Republicans — to pass Tuesday morning.

“It does not actually help anybody in the restaurant industry,” she said of the bill. “I mean, where was there ever any proof that cutting wages supports an industry?”

Rep. William Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat and the Finance Committee’s chairman, said he didn’t know whether the bill had enough support to advance. The bill comfortably passed its first committee vote, though the committee Lindstedt leads has more progressive Democrats who’ve openly opposed the proposal.