This time of year, much of the legislation considered by the Council is mandatory. The budget is a prime example-the Home Rule Act mandates that the Council must vote on the budget-twice-within seventy days of the mayor introducing it. Also, with the Council's summer work period looming, there are other categories of bills (like contracts or nominations) that, if the Council does not address in a timely manner, we will miss our ability to opine on.

Not to be lost amid these must-pass measures are the bills that come about in a much more traditional, Schoolhouse Rock, how-a-bill-becomes-a-law kind of way. As Bill in that vintage educational cartoon short outlines the process, "When I started, I wasn't even a bill, I was just an idea. Some folks back home decided they wanted a law passed, so they called their local Congressman and he said, "You're right, there oughta be a law." Then he sat down and wrote me out and introduced me to Congress. And I became a bill, and I'll remain a bill until they decide to make me a law." (As is often the case here in DC, things work a little differently. Councilmembers are the ones we want introducing laws, and ideally members of Congress come nowhere near them.)

The Restricting Egregious Scalping Against Live Entertainment (RESALE) Act falls squarely in the "there oughta be a law" category of Council legislation. During a moment nationally when affordability is on everyone's lips, and the prices of both necessities and luxuries are making it harder for both people and businesses to make ends meet, the Council is facing increased demands to step in.

Passed in the first of two necessary votes at the Council's most recent Legislative Meeting, as its cheeky moniker indicates, the RESALE Act primarily intends to address what are seen as excesses in the secondary ticket market. To properly address the lexicon, when a venue directly sells an event ticket to a consumer (even if they use a subcontractor/vendor site to transact the sale), this is considered the primary market for ticket sales. When a middleman operation purchases tickets in bulk from a venue, then resells these same tickets to consumers at a markup, this is known as the secondary market. (It is important to note that the tickets affected by the RESALE Act are exclusively tickets for live entertainment, such as music and theater. Tickets to sporting events and movies are not affected by the bill.)

The keystone of the RESALE Act, as amended and passed unanimously at the most recent Legislative Meeting, is a firm price cap on secondary ticket sales. The price cap is ten percent above the ticket price, with a maximum fee allowance of ten percent, meaning that the most a consumer can pay for a ticket, with fees, is 120 percent of its face value. Interestingly, the bill makes no distinction between tickets sold by for-profit corporations or private citizens-if a ticket is resold by one purchaser to a second purchaser, the price cap will be in effect.

Realizing that private industry and its legal counsel can often react more adroitly and speedily to legislation than the legislature itself can react and make its own iterative legislative changes, the bill as amended during the Legislative Meeting allows the mayor to modify the secondary market price cap one year following its implementation. These potential future modifications could result in price caps zero to twenty percent above the ticket's face value, and fee caps five to twenty percent above the ticket's face value. The mayor would also be able to regulate fees in the primary ticket market, though only platform-and not venue-fees could be so regulated. The Council will maintain a 45-day passive review period for any such regulations.

Other provisions of the bill seek to address key ticket purchaser pet peeves. The bill bans the practice of "speculative pricing," whereby tickets that a reseller anticipates possessing in the future, but does not yet own in the present moment, are sold in advance to unsuspecting customers. Additionally, the bill requires that ticket prices be cited "all in," meaning that published prices should include all fees and other add-ons, so that no one is surprised between when they commit to buy a ticket and when they formally conclude the sale. The bill also bans the emerging practice of "surveillance pricing," whereby an individual consumer's physical location, browsing history, or other identifiable online profile data is used against them to augment pricing.

From a regulatory and enforcement standpoint, the bill requires that any individual or corporation that resells more than fifty tickets a year must register and be licensed with the District's Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (DLCP). Registered resellers will have to maintain a $25,000 surety bond with DLCP, to ensure the reseller meets their obligations to consumers, and that consumers are protected in the case the reseller does not do so.

Critically, in its recent budget deliberations, the Council provided, even in advance of the RESALE Act's passage, the funds to implement it. (Often, Council bills passed in the course of an ongoing budget year are approved "subject to appropriations," meaning that while they are officially the law of the land, they cannot be implemented or enforced until funds are identified and set aside to do so.) In the case of the RESALE Act, in anticipation of its eventual passage, full funding was set aside in advance, which will allow the bill's measures to go into effect as intended, on January 1, 2027.

In other action at the most recent Legislative Meeting, the Council passed:

• on the first of two necessary votes, a bill establishing professional standards and licensing requirements for glaziers, providing a window into this critical industry
• on an emergency basis, expanded the list of businesses not required to accept cash payments to include liquor licensed businesses that are open 24 hours a day, or open until 3AM at least twice a week
• on an emergency basis (via an amendment to "an act making appropriations to provide for the expenses of the government of the District of Columbia for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and fourteen"!) extended the term of two currently serving members of the Public Service Commission by ninety additional days, in order to ensure a smooth transition to nominees in a future administration

Prior to commencing its summer work period on July 15, the Council will be holding two further Legislative Meetings-on July 7 and July 14. The agenda for the July 7 meeting will consist solely of the second of two necessary votes on the Budget Support Act (BSA), the more lengthy legislative document that takes the dollars-and-cents aspects of the already twice-approved Local Budget Act and puts them into appropriate legislative language. The second vote on the BSA will bring to a close the series of votes on the complex multi-bill legislative package that comprises the District's annual budget.

Like all permanent Council legislation, the RESALE Act must be approved twice by the Council, in votes two weeks apart. Only one intervening week will have passed as of the July 7 Legislative Meeting, so the required second vote on the RESALE Act will not be timely until the aforementioned July 14 meeting.