Austinites likely to face 13 votes on government and election rules in November

In addition to the race for mayor and five City Council seats, Austin residents will likely consider more than a dozen recall measures aimed at changing the city’s electoral and governmental processes in November.

What happened

City officials gave preliminary approval to a set of proposals that would change the city charter, Austin’s governing rulebook, on July 18. Some of the proposals stem from an expanded process to revise some civic rules that was launched last year.

Councilmember Ryan Alter originally sponsored the effort and said he supports the final list of city feature updates and how Austin residents can directly influence local government.

“A lot of it is technical changes that just need to happen so we can do things right,” Alter said. “But I think fundamentally we’ve made some changes that will help improve the public petition process. It will allow us to have more participants, more transparency, and ultimately that’s what we wanted.”

Officials finalized a list of proposed charter changes, starting with Proposition C, in July. Elections will be called in mid-August on the following issues:

• Proposal C: Clarify that the Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission — a volunteer board established to oversee the city’s redistricting process every decade — is independent of council influence, can review district boundaries and can recruit more applicants once it is established
• Proposal D: Removing the statute requirement that the City Council meet weekly instead of biweekly
• Proposition E: Eliminate the charter requirement that the City Council adopt its meeting rules and procedures by ordinance. The ordinance requirement was one of the issues raised in a successful lawsuit over the council’s meeting rules this year
• Proposition F: Move the calculation of political donation limits to January rather than during the city’s summer budget process, to keep them consistent throughout the calendar year. Limits are adjusted annually based on the federal Consumer Price Index.
• Proposition G: Move all petition elections to the general election – November in even-numbered years – rather than as soon as possible after petition certification
• Proposition H: Increase the signature limit for recall petitions — campaigns to remove City Council members from office — from 10% to 15% of the voters in a member’s council district. The citywide recall limit for a mayor would remain at 10%.
• Proposal I: Giving the City Council the authority to approve and remove the city attorney. This position is currently filled by the city manager without council involvement.
• Proposition J: Match Austin’s “resign-to-run” policy for municipal judges with state law. Municipal court judges who run for public office would have to automatically resign if they have more than a year and a month left on their terms.
• Proposal K: Update the city’s financial policy in line with “industry best practices,” according to city staff.
• Proposition L: Remove city auditor employees and appointees from Austin’s classified civil service. Employees said the change would help maintain the integrity and independence of the office.
• Proposal M: Adjusting the City’s Policy Regarding the Schedule of Legal Claims Notifications
• Proposition N: Adjusting several provisions of the statute in what staff called a “clean-up” of the language to bring them into line with state law and court decisions.
• Proposition O: Update city campaign rules to allow candidates to accept donations for unpaid campaign expenses before leaving office

Details

Some of the changes were the result of many months of work by the Charter Review Commission.

The board was created by the council to publicly weigh in on topics such as raising the signature threshold for resident petitions and adopting new election transparency measures. The commission’s work was inspired in part by Austin’s numerous petition contests, as well as the controversy surrounding last year’s election between rival campaigns over police oversight.

While voters must sign off on all charter amendments, some of the commission’s final proposals won’t have to be decided in an election. For example, council members have already made one recommended change: moving the city’s proposition spelling system to the entire alphabet, rather than starting each election with “Proposal A,” to avoid confusion.

Other changes, such as new disclosure requirements for petition campaigns, will be worked out in the future by city officials and legal staff “as needed,” a city spokesman said.

What else?

The council failed to address one important item on the table: raising the signature threshold required to enact direct policy changes proposed by residents.

The change would tie the requirements for initiative petitions to Austin’s population, replacing the minimum of 20,000 signatures with a new requirement that a petition be supported by 3.5 percent of eligible registered voters.

The 3.5% support requirement would mean the petitions would need to gather around 24,000 signatures to be approved, based on the number of people who voted in January.

The 3.5% proposal passed the Charter Review Commission by a 6-5 vote, after initially failing by a 5-5 vote. Alter stated that its divisiveness and general lack of support led to its withdrawal from the final plan.

Alter and the commissioners also noted that raising the signature limit on initiative petitions could inadvertently force a more important election over the charter.

While Austin could change its own petition rules, the benchmark for charter elections remains at 20,000 signatures under state law. Making initiative petition campaigns harder could encourage the use of more charter amendments.

“Looking at the potential impact of moving that threshold, the groups were saying, ‘Well, now we’ll just do some amendments to the statute.’ Which is the same problem, but potentially worse, because now that it’s in the statute, you can’t move it, maybe never,” Alter said. “It just seemed more appropriate to focus on some of the other amendments that might help address those challenges and see if that’s enough, and if not, maybe in the future we’ll come back and talk again.”

More information about the petition process and Austin’s requirements can be found online.