On Oct. 6, the D.C. Council gave final approval to the Fair Initiatives Lend Transparency to Every Resident Amendment Act of 2025, tracked as B26-0436. The vote was 10 to 2, with Ward 5’s Zachary Parker and at-large member Elissa Silverman voting no, and Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George voting “present”, which counts as neither yes nor no.
Take the first letters of that title and you get FILTER. Washington does love an acronym.
The bill rewrites the rules for ballot initiatives, the route D.C. residents use to write a law themselves and put it straight to voters. Here’s what changes, why members split, and what comes next.
How initiatives work now
Under current law, you file your proposal with the Board of Elections, which has to turn it away if it isn’t a “proper subject” for an initiative. The board asks the attorney general and the Council’s general counsel for legal opinions, due within 15 business days. Once a measure is accepted, the board writes a plain-language summary of up to 100 words. To make the ballot, you need signatures from 5 percent of registered voters, including 5 percent in at least five of the city’s eight wards.
Voters use it. Initiative 82, which phased out the lower minimum wage for tipped workers, passed with 74 percent. Initiative 83, which brought ranked choice voting, passed in 2024. And Tuesday’s ballot has one, too: Initiative 86, on foie gras. The Council has a say, too: voters have weighed in on the tipped wage twice, and the Council repealed those measures in full or in part. Two more are in the works, a $25 minimum wage and a two-year rent freeze, and both could make the 2027 ballot if they collect enough signatures.
Here’s the wrinkle. Initiatives let voters go around the Council, and the Council writes the procedures for going around it. Depending on where you sit, that’s either the fox minding the henhouse or the farmer minding the farm.
What the bill changes
In a nutshell, the bill adds steps and puts more information in public.
One subject per initiative. If a measure’s parts can stand on their own, they have to be split into separate initiatives. The Council’s own summary puts it this way: “Initiatives are not multiple choice questions, they are true-false questions.”
More time for lawyers. The attorney general and the Council’s general counsel get 30 days, up from 15, to weigh in, according to City Cast DC.
A price tag up front. The Chief Financial Officer must issue a fiscal impact statement, an estimate of what a measure would cost the city, before the board decides whether it’s a proper subject.
More public information. Details about each initiative and its proposer, including donation details and public comments, go on the board’s website.
Two ideas didn’t survive. A requirement that petition circulators wear badges showing where they live and whether they’re paid, and a freeze on processing an initiative while a lawsuit over it is pending in D.C. Superior Court, were stricken before passage.
Quick Stats 101 break. Today the CFO writes these statements only for measures the board has already accepted. Moving the statement earlier means extra work only for proposals that get turned away, and the CFO’s office said that fewer than 20 had been ruled improper since 2019, adding that it could handle the new work within current resources. That suggests the extra workload would be small. It doesn’t tell you how many future proposals will be split or slowed, because nobody has run that experiment yet.
Why members split
The sponsor, at-large member Anita Bonds, has said the bill creates “a more predictable process.” She pointed to Initiative 83, which paired ranked choice voting with semi-open primaries, saying voters who backed one but not the other couldn’t split their vote. The committee report warns that outside groups can exploit initiatives, and it says paid signature gatherers are more likely to falsify signatures. The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, which has warned that a proposed $25 minimum wage initiative would affect every restaurant in the District, backs the bill.
Opponents say it adds hurdles. Parker called the bill “an attempt to undermine our initiative process.” Lisa Rice, a co-founder of Grow Democracy D.C., said “the solution isn’t to firebomb the process.” Gary Thompson, a former Board of Elections chair, criticized the bill in a nine-page letter, saying it aimed to choke off initiatives.
Silverman voted no from a different direction. She would prefer an indirect system like those in Massachusetts and Michigan, where the legislature gets a look first. In Michigan, a law proposed by petition goes to the legislature, which has 40 session days to enact or reject it without changes; if it doesn’t enact it, voters decide. So one of the bill’s critics wants the Council more involved, not less. Same vote, different reasons.
Lewis George, the Democratic nominee for mayor, voted present. The coverage we found didn’t include an explanation.
What happens next
The Council sent the bill to Mayor Muriel Bowser on Oct. 26, and her response is due Nov. 9. That’s her 10 days, not counting weekends and holidays to sign or veto it. Do nothing, and it counts as approved. After that, Congress gets its 30-day review, and those 30 days don’t count weekends, holidays, or long congressional breaks. If Congress lets it stand, the new rules can take effect once that clock runs out.
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