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Charter Changes to Enhance Accountability
Charter Revision Committee’s Next Job:
by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011
The council-appointed 2012 Charter Revision Committee has now formulated a baker’s dozen recommendations that will be forwarded to the Austin City Council for the planned November 2012 charter amendment election.
The most important task assigned to the committee—recommendingwer whether council members should be elected from geographic districts and if so under what plan—will be taken up at a meeting scheduled for January 5.
That’s when the committee will discuss the pros and cons of the current all-at-large system vis-à-vis hybrid (some geographic districts plus some council members at-large) and single-member systems (in which all but the mayor would represent geographic districts).
At that same meeting the committee will discuss the pros and cons of several different plans under consideration (a 6-2-1 plan proposed by Mayor Lee Leffingwell, an 8-4-1 plan advocated by two citizens, and a 10-1 plan advocated by Austinites for Geographic Representation, a broad coalition of organizations and individuals that is petitioning to get this plan on the ballot).
The committee will not vote on these matters until a later meeting, scheduled for January 19.
In its September 29 meeting the committee approved seven recommendations for charter changes (more about that later).
At the December 8 meeting the committee considered nine proposals and voted to recommend that the City Council put six of these on the ballot for voters to decide, as follows:
• To permit fundraising by election winners to retire campaign debt.
• To raise the maximum funds that may be held in an officeholder’s account to $40,000.
• To give the city’s Ethics Review Commission more power to address campaign finance and campaign disclosure violations.
• To require reporting of last-minute campaign contributions.
• To require electronic filing of campaign finance and lobbying reports.
• To require voter approval before issuing revenue bonds of more than $50 million.
These decisions were based on the recommendations formulated by the committee’s five-member working group. The committee discussions and recommendations are detailed below.
Responses to City Council resolutions
