Today in Good Governance

The Minneapolis City Council has decided to postpone the issuance of liquor licenses to the Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel for a month in order to get public comment.

In case you are wondering, these are hotels loaded to the gills with ICE and CBP agents, so I rather expect that they will be getting a LOT of public comment on this.

A Minneapolis City Council committee delayed action Tuesday on renewing liquor licenses for two Minneapolis hotels that have housed federal immigration officers.

The committee, made up of all the council members, voted 8-5 to delay a decision on the licenses for Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel until the next meeting on Feb. 17. The council also voted to schedule a public hearing so residents can weigh in on the matter.

The hotels have been the targets of protests because federal agents were believed to be staying in them during the immigration enforcement surge that has brought 3,000 of them to the state. Two days after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis, about a thousand people converged outside the two hotels, blowing whistles and banging drums to disrupt agents’ rest.

The move to delay action on the liquor licenses was controversial, with some council members saying denying the licenses would set the city up to be sued and lose. Representatives of the hotels were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment.

Committee Chair Aurin Chowdhury said she felt it was important for the council to have more discussion of the licenses and give the public the chance to share their stories, noting her sister lives on the University of Minnesota campus near two hotels that have housed federal agents, disrupting the lives of neighbors.

………

Council President Elliott Payne said it’s fairly routine for the council to evaluate whether there should be conditions added to licenses. He said the council is holding the renewal so it can have a “fact-based conversation.”

Here's a potential condition, no booze for anyone who carries a gun as a part of their job, like ICE and CBP agents.  They need a clear head. 

Walking the Talk

What follows is the full text of the new rules banning hotel junk fees, as Zohran Mamdani promised during his campaign for Mayor 

3 weeks from swearing in to a rule. Not too shabby 

FYI, DWCP = Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

Mamdani Administration Bans Hotel Hidden Fees and Unexpected Credit Card Holds

What you should know 

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning hidden junk fees and unexpected credit card holds on hotel stays, ensuring transparency for consumers and saving millions of dollars overall.
• In 2025, the City’s DCWP received hundreds of complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds

NEW YORK, NY – TODAY, the Mamdani administration issued a final rule banning hotels across the city and country from charging consumers hidden junk fees—often mislabeled as “destination fees,” “resort fees,” or “hospitality service fees”—as well as unexpected credit card holds or deposits, that cheat consumers and hurt honest small businesses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning junk fees on hotel stays. This rule will protect both consumers coming to New York City, and New Yorkers traveling elsewhere around the country. Some economists estimate that banning hotel junk fees will save consumers more than $46 million in 2026. The junk fee prohibitions of the final rule go into effect in New York City on February 21, 2026.

When you book a room, the price you see is often not the price you pay. Many hotels utilize “junk fees,” advertising a base room rate and only later revealing additional mandatory charges that make it harder for consumers to understand the true overall cost. Many hotels also issue unexpected credit card holds or deposits with misleading terms. In 2025, DCWP received over 300 complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds.

To address this problem, DCWP proposed a rule modeled on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that makes it a deceptive trade practice under the City’s Consumer Protection Law to offer, display or advertise a price for a hotel without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price of the stay, including all mandatory fees. The new rule goes a step further than the FTC's rule requiring transparency on mandatory credit card holds or deposits taken as well.

Today’s announcement builds on the work the Mamdani Administration is doing to hold companies accountable and protect New Yorkers from deceptive practices, including issuing two Executive Orders that crack down on citywide junk fees and subscription traps, and creating a Citywide Junk Fee Task Force to target predatory companies.

Hotels in New York City are also required to comply with other key consumer and worker protections, including the Hotel Service Disruption Act, which requires that consumers be notified of changes to service during their stay, and the Safe Hotels Act, which prohibits illegal subcontracting at hotels. Together these laws ensure that the city’s hotel industry is transparent with its consumers and compliant with nation-leading workers’ rights requirements.

“Whether you’re visiting the five boroughs for the World Cup or leaving our city for a well-deserved vacation, you deserve to know how much a hotel costs up front. This new rule will ensure that New Yorkers and visitors alike are not stuck paying hidden hotel fees, and will instead save millions of dollars each year,” said Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. “In just three weeks, our administration has made it clear that deceptive business practices do not have a home here—and that City Hall will always fight for New Yorkers to know exactly what they’re paying for.”

“This final rule delivers on affordability—for New Yorkers traveling across the country to see the World Cup, and visitors who want to experience our incredible city,” said DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine. “DCWP will use its full enforcement authority to ensure hotels comply with the laws and rules of our city and we will be vigilant to ensure consumers have transparency in their transactions and that workers’ rights are respected.”

###

Media Contact

pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov

(212) 788-2958

(emphasis original)

Yeah, Security Concerns.

It's worth noting that the St. Paul Doubletree and Intercontinental are both owned by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe's hospitality group. ICE has been harassing Native people in the region and tribal governments have taken notice.

[image or embed]

— taber (@kvetch.gay) January 18, 2026 at 8:53 PM

Yeah, right, "Safety Concerns"

It seems that 2 hotels in St. Paul are shutting down, and hence evicting the ICE agents staying there, citing safety concerns.

I believe the statements of the hotel.

Given the cordial relations between ICE officers and aboriginal Americans, I am sure that the owners of these businesses spared no effort to stay open in order to accommodate their guests.

Or not. 

Having Booked Conventions, I Will Let You in on a Secret

Different convention groups behave differently, and in terms of pure mayhem and vandalism, the police are widely known to be the worst offenders.

They trash rooms and public spaces, and there is a plethora of alcohol induced misbehavior, including drunk officers yeeting 100+ pound planters into the atrium of a New Orleans hotel from 3+ floors up. (Not a personal experience, a recollection from a discussion circa 1993 in the context of hotel bookings for a science fiction convention).

Of course, hotels cannot afford refuse their business, because they would certainly experience retaliation from the local constabulary, but when the police show up, everyone in the business knows that they are in for an unpleasant event. 

That being the case, it appears that Minnesota Hilton hotels, the meth head steroid abusing thugs that are ice ICE was a bridge too far.

Whatever potential retaliation that might occur, particularly in Minneapolis, where the police are especially awful, these goons are simply too bad for business. 

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday said a Hilton hotel canceled reservations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota, where the Trump administration has deployed officers after allegations of fraud against Somali immigrants.

After ICE officers booked rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton canceled their reservations, the department said in a post on X.

The department also posted screenshots of emails, in which the hotel’s operators said they had “noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS”, and that they were not allowing any ICE agents to stay at the property.

In a statement, a Hilton spokesperson said the brand’s hotels “serve as welcoming places for all” and that the hotel that canceled the reservations was independently owned and operated. The cancellations “are not reflective of Hilton values”, the spokesperson said.

Hilton HQ is full of morons.  You are going to get tarred for this by MAGAt snowflakes anyway, so either stay silent or lean in.

Your statement only managed to piss off non-fascist potential customers.

And then they backtracked.

………

Everpeak Hospitality, the owner of the hotel, said it had “moved swiftly to address this matter” and that it was “inconsistent” with hotel policy.

“We are in touch with the impacted guests to ensure they are accommodated. We do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted,” Everpeak said in a statement.

This is literally the worst course of action that they would take.  No one will be happy, and I expect petty vandalism from the ICE yobs than would have happened before this all blew up.

Abolish the Tipped Sub-Minimum Wage

It looks like tipping has made its way to self-service checkout terminals.

This is f%$#ing nuts, said this old man shouting at clouds:

Zero interaction with employees during a transaction no longer guarantees freedom from the moral quandary of how much to tip.

Prompts to leave 20% at self-checkout machines at airports, stadiums, cookie shops and cafes across the country are rankling consumers already inundated by the proliferation of tip screens. Business owners say the automated cues can significantly increase gratuities and boost staff pay. But the unmanned prompts are leading more customers to question what, exactly, the tips are for.

Silly rabbit, tips are for politicians who want campaign donations from restaurant and hospitality lobbyists?

It's not bribery, it's an extortion racket.

Hopefully, It Will Stick This Time

After having having an earlier plebiscite overturned by the DC City Council, the lower tipped wage has been repealed in yesterday's elections.

Good.

This time, the DC council has promised to resist the push-back from from the restaurant lobby.

The sub minimum wage for tipped workers is an abomination:

D.C. voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative Tuesday to raise the minimum wage for District workers who receive tips, after months of debate about its effects on the city’s restaurants and their employees.

Initiative 82 is a repeat of a 2018 referendum to eliminate the city’s “tipped minimum” wage. The measure will increase minimum pay for servers and other tipped workers from $5.35 per hour to $16.10 per hour by 2027, giving them the same pay floor as non-tipped workers. Voters approved the measure in 2018, but it was repealed by the D.C. Council.

On Tuesday, voters reiterated their support for the change. With most votes counted, the “yes” vote on the initiative had a commanding lead, according to tallies from the D.C. Board of Elections, and the Associated Press called the contest in favor of the measure.

The measure roiled the District this election season as restaurateurs who favor the current system squared off with initiative proponents who claim food businesses do not pay their workers fairly. Servers and bartenders were divided on the question, with some arguing for the security of a higher wage and others fearing less take-home pay in an environment where tipping might cease to be the norm.

The sub-minimum wage is why tipped workers are among routinely cheated by their employers through wage theft.

Putting an end to this is a good thing.

Correlation Is Not Causation, But………

JP Morgan has commissioned a study showing that increased spending on restaurants correlates to increased Coronavirus cases.

This indicates that the hospitality industry may need to be shut down once again:

A surge in restaurant spending appears to predict a surge in coronavirus cases weeks later, a new JPMorgan study found.

The firm analyzed spending by 30 million Chase credit and debit cardholders and coronavirus case data from Johns Hopkins University, and found that spending patterns from a few weeks ago "have some power in predicting where the virus has spread since then," analyst Jesse Edgerton wrote Thursday. The study found that the "level of spending in restaurants three weeks ago was the strongest predictor of the rise in new virus cases over the subsequent three weeks," in line with the firm's recent studies using OpenTable data.

Notably, JPMorgan found that 'card-present' transactions in restaurants (meaning the person was dining in, not ordering online) were "particularly predictive" to a later spread of the virus.

And interestingly, the JPMorgan study also found that increased spending in supermarkets correlated to a slower spread of the virus. Analyst Edgerton wrote that the correlation hints that "high levels of supermarket spending are indicative of more careful social distancing in a state." The firm pointed out that as of three weeks ago, supermarket spending in states like New York and New Jersey, which are now seeing a decrease in cases, was up 20% or more from a year ago, whereas states now seeing a surge like Texas and Arizona saw supermarket spending up less than 10%.

………

Indeed, states that reopened restaurants and bars earlier on are seeing surges in cases. On Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that, "At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars," as the state announced it would be closing bars and reducing capacity at restaurants. New cases in Texas have risen over 5,400 as of Thursday. Florida, which has been criticized for reopening quickly, saw new cases spike to nearly 9,000 on Friday, also announcing it will reinstate some restrictions, Halsey Beshears, the secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, said in a tweet.

I think that a lot of  "rebound" in the May unemployment report was a recovery in the hospitality industry, and it looks like that is going to reverse.