City of Austin

After a nearly 16-year hiatus from public office, environmentalist and former Council Member Brigid Shea is challenging incumbent Mayor Lee Leffingwell for the city’s top spot on election day May 12.

Known largely for her public feuds with high-power developers in the early ’90s, Shea said she hopes to bring a fresh leadership approach to City Hall.

“There’s nothing personal in this,” Shea said. “I’ve known Lee Leffingwell a long time. We’ve worked on projects together. But City Hall needs a new direction.”

Campaign season is in full swing for candidates vying for a seat on the Austin City Council, and Council Member Bill Spelman faces more opposition than any of his fellow incumbents.

Six citizens—all first-time City Council candidates—have signed up to challenge Spelman for Place 5, a seat the University of Texas at Austin professor has held since June 2009.

As the May 12 election approaches, The Austin Bulldog went to work researching Spelman’s personal and political background in an effort to educate Austin residents about their City Council candidates. We used an organized plan to find, copy, and publish every public record we found, and compiled news articles from The Austin Bulldog and other publications.

We invite readers to study the documents and let us know if there are any important details we overlooked, or areas that warrant further investigation.

Campaign donations exceed $31,000

Former City Council member and current mayoral candidate Brigid Shea says she wants more limits on—and more disclosure of—contributions made to City Council incumbents and challengers.

At a press conference at City Hall this morning she announced proposals that are far tougher than reforms the Charter Revision Committee has recommended for the City Council to put on the November ballot, including restrictions on bundled campaign contributions.

Bundlers are individuals who solicit and obtain contributions of $200 or more from five or more individuals. The reporting of bundlers’ names in contribution reports is already required by City Code Section 2-2-22.

A chart thatserved as a backdrop for the press conference was titled “Bundling Influence at City Hall.” The chart displayed the names of 13 individuals who bundleda total of $103,900 incontributions detailed in the incumbents’ January 2012 campaign finance reports. Not all of the bundlers listed are currently registered city lobbyists.

The Arizona Republic, that state’s largest newspaper, yesterday reported that Phoenix was never in the running to attract the Apple Inc. facility for which Texas has committed tax incentives, and both Austin and Travis County are considering doing likewise.

Governor Rick Perry is offering Apple $21 million in incentives over 10 years and the City of Austin is considering sweetening the deal with $8.6 million, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Travis County is also considering incentives.

Those incentives were based on the premise that Apple was considering Phoenix and Austin.

However, The Arizona Republic’s story published yesterday reported Phoenix “never had a chance” because the proposed site was on state land and “state trust land did not excite them” (Apple), so there was no Phoenix site reasonably in contention.”

More than two-dozen backers of the proposal to change how council members are elected packed a room at City Hall today for an early morning press conference headed by former State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos (D-Austin).

Barrientos chaired the 2012 Charter Revision Committee appointed by the Austin City Council to recommend changes to the Austin  City Charter. The Committee met in locations all over Austin starting last September and finished February 16. The Committee made a total of 19 recommendations for charter changes that the Austin City Council could put on the November ballot.

Most prominent among the 19 recommendations is a call for a proposition that would ask voters to approve a plan calling for 10 geographic council districts to be drawn by an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Under this plan, only the mayor would be elected at-large by all Austin voters.

The Austin City Council could delay until August to decide what propositions to put before voters in the November general election. But the Charter Revision Committee’s majority faction, as well as the grass-roots coalition Austinites for Geographic Representation, are going to apply heavy political pressure for the Council to commit to putting the 10-1 plan and Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission on the ballot in November—and publicly do so before the May 12 mayoral and council elections.