(upbeat music) - Good evening, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Samantha Guzman, executive editor of Decibel at Austin PBS.

This May, there are eight propositions up for vote during a special election.

Some of these propositions have been getting more attention than others.

I'm joined by KUT News reporters Audrey McGlinchy and Andrew Weber for an in-depth discussion on some of the more controversial items.

Andrew, Audrey, thanks for joining me today.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thanks for having us.

Okay, let's start with Prop E. It's a little hard to explain or maybe for our voters to understand, but it's an amendment to create ranked choice voting for city elections.

Audrey, how would this prop change how we elect council members and the mayor in Austin?

- Yeah.

So if folks can remember from the last time they voted in a local election, you just get to pick one council member, or in the case of a mayor, one mayor.

And oftentimes we have a ton of people running for the seats, you know, half a dozen, a dozen.

And so this Prop E if approved by voters, would change it so that we could actually rank our choices.

So for example, if there's five people running for a certain city council district you could rank those candidates one through five, rather than there's having to choose one candidate.

And what's interesting about this prop is that folks who go and vote and look at the ballot, it actually says, you know, we'll approve this as state law allows.

And so there is a question regarding property about whether or not we can actually have ranked choice voting, but that is something that folks who brought this forward are certainly interested in.

- Andrew, Prop F is an amendment to change the city from having a council manager to a strong mayor council.

What does that mean?

- So there's a lot of power enshrined to the city manager's office.

And this is just sort of how it's been for a minute now in Austin.

A lot of people have sort of taken umbrage with that because it does that, because it gives the city manager a lot of power, and this is an unelected position, this person is appointed.

So a lot of folks want to switch to a strong mayor system like Houston has and other cities have done, because of, and I think Audrey could sort of speak to this as well, there have been a lot of complaints about how that position doesn't have that accountability for instance, in the city councils decisions over, you know, decisions to reallocate money to policing or from policing to, you know, other parts of the city, but then also on decisions like, you know, whether to fire Brian Manley, which was a huge discussion over the last summer.

- Yeah, just to add onto that.

I think the interest in moving to a strong mayor system, where the mayor would no longer be a voting member of the council and would essentially be in charge of the executive branch of the city staff of the city.

Is that as Andrew mentioned, oftentimes I think we see the politics of Austin.

The politicians and the things they want to see, sometimes don't align with the policies that actually get enacted.

And Andrew had the great example of last summer, when we saw all these protests against racial injustice, and folks including council members, asking that then chief Brian Manley be fired, or that he leave, that the city manager was not willing to make that decision, whereas someone like the mayor might have been willing to make that decision.

And so there has been this question of, or I think the interest in this change is to have the the politics or the policies that the politicians want to see those who are elected actually be enacted.

- So you've explained why there has been this push to change to this new structure.

What about people that are against this?

What do they have to say?

- The folks who are against the move to a strong mayor government, they're concerned about consolidating so much power within the mayor.

And when I talked to them, they explained it this way, is that the mayor is elected at large, right?

So everyone who's registered voter in the city of Austin can vote for the mayor.

And so the mayor represents the entirety of the city.

But I think the concern with the mayor having the power to veto council actions, for example, is that someone who does not represent low income communities, communities of color, is having to listen to so many voices.

And so policies that would come from council members who represent those districts might sort of get lost in the noise of the mayor having to, you know, quote unquote, listened to everyone.

And so the concern is that those voices would not rise to the top in the way that they do when currently where everyone has the same voting power and their vote all counts the same.

And so that's really the concern is do we want the mayor again, who, you know is representing all of Austin, to have that power when there may be some policies that would aid more vulnerable communities that we really want council members representing those districts to be able to push through.

- Okay, so Prop G seeks to add an additional geographic council district, which would result in the city having 11 council members.

If passed what impact would this have?

- So this is where it gets a little tricky.

And so currently we have 10 city council members and one mayor.

So if Prop F passes, what we're calling, sort of the strong mayor proposition, right?

The mayor becomes a non-voting member.

So his vote is taken off the council, so now we have 10 votes.

Well, with 10 votes you can have a tie and that's not great for functioning of government.

And so the thought was that, well, we need to add an 11th council district and 11th voting council member.

And so that's the idea behind it.

Now the issue becomes, well, what if Prop F fails?

So the mayor stays on the council as a voting member and Prop G passes and we get another council district, well, then we're at 12.

And then the issue with ties happens again, you know, and vice versa if Prop G fails, but Prop F passes.

And the council attempted to solve this issue and the majority wasn't really interested in it.

So honestly, if that happens, it'll be interesting.

And I'm sure there might have to be some sort of fixed proposed.

But so, yeah, so Prop G was essentially brought forward to solve the issue of Prop F, but it also depends on Prop F either passing or failing.

And so, yeah, it could get a little sticky with that one.

- Right.

And that was part of the sort of discussion when they were making like sort of certifying all of this ballot language was, they were sort of realizing this as they were doing it.

And a couple of council members had complained that it could lead to that alternative, that it could lead to stalemates, and it could just completely kind of grind things to a halt at city hall, if it's a super contentious issue.

- So all of these props would have some impact on our local government, how it's run.

So how might these props change the balance of power that we currently have?

- That's a good question.

I mean, I think, we mentioned this in terms of the mayor having more power, right?

I mean, currently Mayor Adler, of course, yes, he's elected by the entire city, but when it comes to the dais, when it comes to voting, he doesn't have more power.

His vote counts just as much as council member Mackenzie Kelly from Northwest Austin, or council member Natasha Harper-Madison from East Austin.

And so this would really, I think, change what a mayor does, and how much power a mayor has in the city of Austin, and his relationship to the council, right?

I mean, suddenly he becomes sort of this gateway if he decides he wants to veto something that the council has passed.

And they would still have the option to undo his veto, they'd need, I think it's eight votes out of 11.

But it really becomes a very different position.

- I think it is, you're right.

It's eight votes to override a veto, that is not something that's necessarily reflected in the current council makeup.

There are certain voting blocks within council that, you know, if an issue comes up and progressive leaning council members lean this way and sort of moderate council members lean another way, that's a lot of consensus to build for a single vote.

- So you guys kind of touched on this a little bit, but I wanna, you know, play a little experiment here, right?

What happens if one of these passes, but another doesn't, it seems like one was put in to help solve another.

But what if, for example, the amendment to change to a strong mayor council passes but we don't vote to add another council district then how will things work?

- That's a great question.

(laughs) I'm not sure I can answer that other than, you know, as as Andrew mentioned it, we could have a lot more (mumbles) like tie votes.

Which obviously, well, you know, at one point, if I'm not mistaken, we were a six member council.

So I guess we did function with an even number of representatives.

But just knowing this council, there are often a lot of pretty split votes at times, it depends what the issue is.

But, you know, we'll have six - five votes, seven - four votes.

And so I think with a council like this, which I think, you know, often has healthy discussions about things and healthy disagreements about things, that that could get pretty dicey and just frustrating, frankly, for the public - And a council that is famously known for having long meetings that would probably lead to longer meetings.

- Yeah, exactly.

If one side is trying to convince like, you know, one person from the other side to come over, that's only gonna lead to longer and longer discussions when we already have council meetings that we'll go till two in the morning.

And no one, you know, in terms of functional government, I'm not sure extending meetings beyond that is very functional - Great explanations, I guess we'll see what happens on election day.

(upbeat music) Okay, let's take a minute to explain how this process works.

How do these measures end up on the ballot?

- So with a lot of these, they come from petitions.

So obviously folks petition other citizens to try and get something on the ballot, but you have to have a valid number of signatures.

And I believe that's 20,000 in Austin.

And those signatures are then within a certain time period, after everything's collected, they are submitted to the city clerk, and then they are verified through a process of which they run it through permutations to see how many signatures are valid within the city of Austin, and then essentially spit out a number that is like X amount of, you know, these signatures are valid, so it can go on a city ballot.

- We've had a lot of petitions in Austin and some people have currently wondered if that 20,000 signature mark is a little too low as Austin continues to grow, because it's been that number for at least as long as I can remember.

So at least five years.

And so there has been a question or sort of a discussion floating around over time of like, is this bar too low?

You know, elections are expensive, do we wanna keep holding elections for, you know, petition initiated propositions?

- Let's move on to talk about Prop B, which is an amendment to the city code that would essentially ban public camping.

Andrew, what specifically would this ballot measure do?

- So this would revert the city ordinances back to what they used to be.

So back in June of 2019, city council voted to change ordinances that banned camping within the downtown West campus, a little bit of East Austin area, but also resting in that area as well.

And they lifted prohibitions on when folks can panhandle.

So it used to be banned from 7:00 am, or 7:00 pm to 7:00 am.

So this would reinstate those rules, and it's sort of stems from a lot of backlash surrounding the the current policies as it relates to homelessness.

- Audrey, why did this get on the ballot at this moment?

- An organization called Save Austin Now, brought this, as we mentioned, it's a petition originated proposition.

And they had attempted to do this, Andrew remind me, a couple of months early?

- Yeah, it was, I believe in August, it was ultimately passed, but they had tried before that.

Or rather, they tried in August passed or failed and then tried again.

- Right.

And, you know, as Andrew mentioned in this process, in that case, the signatures were just not verified, they didn't have enough legitimate signatures.

And so this time around the petition effort worked, they had sort of enough verified signatures.

But I think also in terms of timing, I mean, there's been a lot of attention from the state about homelessness in Austin from governor Greg Abbott, he's mentioned potential legislation regarding homelessness.

And so I think in terms of timing it could be some of the attention from the state that has really ramped up these efforts.

- So what has the response been to this measure so far?

- This is kind of an issue that is like very black and white but also there's a lot of gray in between.

I think a lot of the folks who support this petition argue that the city doesn't know what it's doing, and then it's led to this huge public health and safety crisis.

On the other end of that, there are folks who help homeless folks for a living.

And they argue that, you know, yes these encampments are way more visible, but it also allows people to feel safe.

Like before this, there were a lot of folks camping in wooded areas, or with like under Shoal Creek, I believe there was a couple of deaths in 2018, because folks were camped along Shoal Creek.

So they would argue, allowed folks sort of come out, and it makes it easier for them to get services.

Most of the people who help homeless folks are within the downtown area, a lot of the encampments are in the downtown area, but they argue, yeah, that's because folks need to go get an ID or get their map card, or get a prescription or something like that.

And statewide, like Audrey mentioned, Governor Abbott has been very very against Austin's current policies.

He's threatened state intervention and actually intervened at one point, getting TxDOT to clean up encampments under state highways.

And this legislative session, this is also an issue, there's a bill up in a House committee currently that would ban camping statewide.

And Abbott has said very much so that he would support it.

And it's been again, very, very very vocal against the Austin's policies.

- So Andrew, if this measure were to pass, what happens next?

- These old ordinances would go back into place.

It would be when the election results are canvassed, which is just a fancy way of saying certified.

And so that would mean that people would get tickets, class C tickets for this behavior which can result into up to a $500 fine.

And for context, when these ordinances were very heavily enforced by APD, I think 2015, there were lik 6,000 tickets issued in a given year.

And those largely weren't paid because they're folks who don't necessarily have the money to pay those tickets.

And that makes it really difficult when these folks are trying to transition out of homelessness, when they're trying to get into an apartment or something, and a landlord doesn't accept applications from folks who have warrants for arrest on their record.

So it's a huge hurdle for those folks.

- Okay, so let's talk about the opposite scenario.

What happens next if the measure fails?

- So if the measure fails, I mean, nothing changes.

And I will say that throughout all of this, the city has sort of tried to go back and sort of change the current policy to respond to backlash to folks who say that these encampments are public safety and public health hazards.

And so recently the city council has gone forward with this plan called the HEAL Initiative that is targeting for, some of the folks would argue, highly visible encampments near roadways.

And the plan is to get city staff to connect with these folks, get these folks connected to housing, get them in housing, and then ultimately band camping in these areas.

And it's not really clear how they'll do that.

The city manager has said that they would not like for that to be a punitive measure, meaning folks wouldn't get tickets, but it's not entirely clear how they would prohibit folks from camping without that as a sort of alternative.

And that they hope to do this by the end of the summer.

So that actually would go forth either way, if it goes back to the old ordinances or if it just stays the same, that's happening either way.

- There are four more propositions on the ballot.

So let's do like a quick lightning round and just give people a good overview of what those are.

Prop A is a charter amendment regarding binding arbitration.

Andrew, what does that mean?

- Binding arbitration is something that comes up in everyone's everyday life.

(laughs) It's essentially, the Austin fire department is asking, because they have to amend the city charter, can we have this tool that when we negotiate our contracts we can go into these sorts of negotiations?

It's something that is afforded to EMS, and to police as well, so this would sort of correct that and make it more equitable for firefighters.

- Prop C is a charter amendment regarding the director of police oversight.

Audrey, can you explain that?

- So currently, um, the office of police oversight is under the city manager structure.

So essentially, you know, we've talked about the city manager here before, but the idea is that the city manager is kind of the boss of all these city departments.

And so this measure though wouldn't immediately do so, is interested in raising the question of, okay, well what if we move the office of police oversight out from another the city manager and kind of gave that department its own head.

So this is basically how the city auditor's office works.

And the idea is that therefore this department would be more independent, and therefore have more ability to do what it does, which is investigate police conduct.

- Prop D is a charter amendment to change the date of mayoral elections.

Andrew.

- Yes, I mean, it's pretty straight forward.

But the reasoning behind it is that city elections, the voter turnout is kind of anemic compared to presidential years.

I mean, the election that we're talking about is being held on a Saturday.

Like you don't expect a lot of at least, I think we don't expect a lot of turnout as journalists from city elections.

And this is sort of a measure to make them more marquee elections and increase voter turnout.

- All right.

So the final one is Prop H, and it's a charter amendment to adopt a voluntary public campaign finance program.

Audrey, explain it.

- Yeah, that's a lot of words together, that were not really clear.

So this has also been referred to as as the democracy dollars proposition.

And so what that means is that...

Some cities have programs like this, where essentially the city will hand out vouchers.

and you can put that money towards a candidate that you're interested in supporting.

So you can put that towards their campaign.

And this is obviously to get around the obvious boundaries of folks who don't have money to spend on campaigns or to support candidates that they think represent their ideas.

And so this is a measure to make that possible.

And it is important to point out that this would have a pretty significant cost to the city, right?

The city would be the one handing out these vouchers.

And so the city has estimated that this would cost annually about $2.3 million.

- Well, great discussion.

Thanks, Andrew and Audrey.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

And for a full explanation of all eight propositions visit KUT.org.

And a reminder, early voting for this may special election begins on Monday, April 19th and runs through Tuesday, April 27th.

The official election day is May 1st.

Thanks for joining us and have a good night.

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