For the second time in roughly four years, D.C. voters will determine how tipped workers get paid, this time through the Initiative 82 ballot measure.

What’s happening: The initiative would require employers to pay minimum wage to tipped employees such as restaurant servers, nail salon workers, and valets regardless of how much they earn in tips. 

Currently, employers can pay less than minimum wage as long as each employee makes enough in tips to meet or exceed $16.10 an hour.

• For example, Waiter A makes $5.35/hour from their employer and earns $7 in tips over the course of an hour, so their employer has to pay an additional $3.75 to ensure they meet the $16.10 minimum wage.
• Waiter B makes $5.35/hour from their employer and $20 in tips in one hour, so they’d exceed the minimum wage and their employer doesn't have to pay them any extra.
• Initiative 82 would require employers to pay waiters A and B the same base pay of $16.10 an hour. 

OK, so are tips eliminated if I-82 passes? No. Tipping would still be your choice. 

• Some servers want the status quo because they make well beyond $16.10 an hour and worry that diners will stop tipping if things change.
• There are also concerns that small, independent restaurants would have to close due to the added costs, and that business owners might cut back on staff.

So who might benefit if I-82 passes? Those in favor of the initiative argue it would help to erase disparities faced by marginalized back-of-house staff who usually make much less than their front-of-house peers. In a Washington Post op-ed, one I-82 proponent argues that young line cooks and other highly skilled staff often give up on the industry due to low pay.

• There's also an argument that employers don't always follow the rules and make up for gaps between minimum wage and hourly tips. Passing the ballot measure would keep this from being an issue.

Learn more about what I-82 means for D.C. workers.

A new bill would open up D.C.'s much-criticized mobile sports betting program to big-name apps such as FanDuel and DraftKings.

Why it matters: Since legalizing sports gambling in 2019, the D.C. government has allowed only its own GambetDC app to be used for online betting, except inside sports arenas and sportsbooks.

• Users have long complained about glitches on the GambetDC app and the inability to access more well-known apps that are available across the river in Virginia.
• D.C. initially projected to make $25 million off GambetDC, but it actually lost $4 million in its first year. GambetDC also crashed during the Super Bowl.

Driving the news: Council member Elissa Silverman introduced a bill on Monday that would allow sports betting on other regulated apps, ending the city’s total control over the market.

• Supporters of opening up the market hope competing apps will be more popular among users and increase revenue for the city.

Read the full story.

📬 D.C. mailed almost 600 incorrect ballots ahead of the midterm election. Affected residents are receiving calls and emails to inform them that those ballots will not be counted and that the Board of Elections is mailing new, correct ballots. (Washington Post)

• Meanwhile, Virginia elections officials sent mailers with the wrong polling locations to 60,000 residents, half of whom are in Northern Virginia. Corrected notices are going out, but some Democrats blame Gov. Youngkin’s busy travel schedule for the error.

🤒 An unknown illness with flu-like symptoms left 1,000 Stafford County High School students out sick last Friday; 670 students were absent yesterday. The school building is undergoing daily deep cleanings. (Fox5)

A four-year-old was among those injured in a shooting in Northwest D.C. Monday night. Two men were also shot and all three have non-life-threatening injuries. (WTOP)

💰Starting in January, the University of Maryland will fully cover tuition and fees for in-state students who are eligible for Pell Grants, which are need-based grants for low-income students. (DCist)

👟 A pickleball-centered entertainment venue could be coming to D.C. A North Carolina-based company is scouting locations for the concept, which would include multiple indoor and outdoor courts. (Washington Business Journal)

Twenty years ago today, the D.C. snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were caught at a Frederick County, Maryland rest stop. 

• Their capture ended three weeks of terror in the Washington region that left ten people dead.
• Muhammad was executed in 2009. Malvo, who was 17 at the time, is serving multiple life sentences in Wise County, Virginia.

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Woe to the poor souls who ventured out to Markoff’s Haunted Forest this month and went home without their phones. Apparently, that’s a lot of you! 

The Markoff’s crew recovers fifteen to 20 phones per night, the haunt’s head of operations Paul Brubacher told our podcaster friends at City Cast DC:

• “People just use them as flashlights or they’re taking selfies and they get scared, and the phone goes out in the middle of nowhere."
• The team finds all kinds of other valuables, too, including cash and jewelry. Says Brubacher: "We’ve had people lose their wedding rings.”

ICYMI: Markoff’s — out in the woods of Dickerson, Maryland — is a 30-year tradition for haunted-house-loving Washingtonians, and not one for the faint-hearted. 

• 🕷️🐍 As in: spiders, snakes, and a spook at every turn of the three-quarter-mile trail. 

Details: Tickets ($30-$50) remain for Thursday night, Oct. 27, through Halloween. Not recommended for kids under age twelve. 

The bottom line if you visit: “Number-one tip,” Brubacher says, “is do not take your cell phone out.”