City of Austin
Profile: Doug Greco for mayor
Court halts $354 million development subsidy
Austin City Manager: Dallas discard vs Austin retread
Committee Debates How to Elect Council
Over Pure Districts vs. Hybrid System
©The Austin Bulldog 2012
Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell was the first of many people to address the 15-member Charter Revision Committee last Thursday, calling for unity in getting behind whatever recommendation is made concerning some form of geographic representation in the election of City Council members.
“What is important is that all of us who support geographic representation be on the same page,” Leffingwell said. “Otherwise whatever we propose will not pass.”
Leffingwell urged the committee to strike a compromise for a unified proposal that everyone who supports geographic representation could get behind and support with great enthusiasm.
“We may not get a chance to do this again for a very long time if what we put on the table fails,” he said.
It’s been a decade since the May 2002 election in which voters last rejected a proposal. Proposition 3 on that ballot was the sixth attempt to gain voter approval for some form of electing council members from districts. Like many previous attempts, the plan offered would have created eight geographic districts. But this time the measure added two council member slots to be elected at-large, along with the mayor at-large. The proposition failed 42 percent to 58 percent.
Although nearly every member of the current Charter Revision Committee favors some form of geographic representation in council elections, the mayor’s lofty goal of achieving unity in the committee’s recommendation appears difficult if not impossible to achieve.
At a three-plus-hour meeting January 5, individual committee members became more vocal than ever in taking a strong public stance about whether they favored the 10-1 proposal being petitioned for by Austinites for Geographic Representation or some hybrid plan that would allow citizens to cast ballots for some of the council members to be elected citywide in addition to establishing geographic districts.
The 10-1 plan petition includes a requirement to establish a nonpartisan Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission that would draw 10 council districts that the Austin City Council would have no choice but to adopt. Under this plan only the mayor would continue to be elected at-large.
Any other plan put on the ballot by the City Council may not have an independent districting commission. Committee Chair Gonzalo Barrientos, a former state senator, said the normal procedure is to appoint a commission that draws the lines with expert assistance from attorneys. Critics of that method say it allows the incumbents to draw boundaries that favor their reelection.
Ultimately the U.S. Department of Justice must approve any change in the election system for compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Advocates for the 10-1 plan
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
Laura Pressley’s Campaign Kicks Off
Candidate Drew Big and Loud Crowd
in Announcing Run for Austin City Council
by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011
A newcomer to Austin politics got off to a noisy start at the venerable Scholz Garten on Saturday, drawing about 125 people to hear her announce her candidacy.
Laura Pressley previously gained local media exposure by crusading against the addition of fluoride in Austin’s drinking water and talking about the health dangers she says are posed by the airport security scanners. She said she is qualified to address the scientific issues involved, based on her PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin. Her pleas to the Austin City Council regarding these issues went unheeded, triggering her decision to run.
Pressley won’t say which council seat she will seek. Three incumbents, in addition to Mayor Lee Leffingwell, are running for reelection: Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole and Council Members Mike Martinez and Bill Spelman.
“I’m leaving open which seat I will run for,” she told the crowd. But she vowed not to let the so-called “gentlemen’s agreement,” which sets aside seats for an African American and Latino, stand in her way. “I don’t have any trouble going into that sandbox,” she said. “I have no fear of going against that—no fear at all.”
She said she is taking feedback and will probably decide which seat to run for in late January. Candidates cannot file for a place on the ballot before February 6. The deadline to file is March 6.
Pressley said she wants to run ads on TV and do radio interviews and is a “big fan of alternative media.”
“I've spent hour after hour watching the council ignore people, not only us but their own commissioners,” Pressley said, referring to a recommendation by the Airport Advisory Commission not to install the scanners now in use at the airport.
Focusing on health
Brigid Shea Exploring Run for Mayor
Cites Differences in Vision and Leadership
But No Specifics While Mulling Her Candidacy
by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011
Brigid Shea served a tumultuous three years on the Austin City Council ending in June 1996, a period marked by Mayor Bruce Todd’s push to sell the city’s electric utility amid the nascent legislative restructuring of the electric industry in Texas and the birth of her first son, Eamon Brennan Umphress, on December 18, 1995, when Shea was 41.
Now Shea is considering challenging Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who announced his reelection bid November 16.
“I’m telling people this is a discussion worth having,” Shea told The Austin Bulldog. “The community is capable of having competing visions and that’s what I’m exploring.”
Leffingwell campaign spokesman Mark Littlefield said, “I think Brigid Shea’s been a stellar advocate and stakeholder and we look forward to hearing from her on the campaign trail.”
Shea declined to get into specifics about her differences with Mayor Leffingwell, saying, “I don’t want to get into the campaign until I've made a decision, but there’s a very sharp contrast in our leadership and vision.”
Shea filed a statement with the city clerk’s office late yesterday to appoint Danette Chimenti as her treasurer. Chimenti supported Kathie Tovo’s campaign that unseated Council Member Randi Shade this year, as well as the re-election campaign of Council Member Laura Morrison.
The Austin Chronicle posted a report online this afternoon about a poll conducted last night that included questions asking respondents to compare Shea, Leffingwell, and Council Members Bill Spelman and Sheryl Cole. The latter two were at one time considered possible mayoral candidates but they have since declined to run for mayor and are running for reelection.
Shea told The Austin Bulldog that she was “not confirming or denying” that she commissioned the poll.
Pollster Jeff Smith, owner of Opinion Analysts, said his company conducted the poll but he was not at liberty to disclose who paid for without permission, and he had not obtained it yet.
Shea’s treasurer, Chimenti, cofounded Logical Information Machines Inc., a company that grew out of the Austin Technology Incubator initiative of the University of Texas. The company was to be sold to Morningstar Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, for a reported $51.5 million, according to a PRNewswire report of December 11, 2009. At the time of the sale the company’s largest office was in Austin and employed about 80 people, the article stated, with locations in Austin, Houston, Chicago, New York and London.
Chimenti is past president of the Austin Neighborhoods Council and has served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Board. She is currently a member of the city’s Planning Commission, to which she was appointed by Council Member Bill Spelman in July 2009.
Shea, who turns 57 on January 9, won her political spurs as founding director of the Save Our Springs Coalition formed in 1991. The Coalition successfully petitioned to get the SOS Ordinance on the ballot and won voter approval in 1992 by a two-to-one margin.
During the run-up to the SOS Ordinance election in 1992 Shea often traded barbs with Freeport-McMoRan Inc. CEO Jim Bob Moffett, who was threatening to bankrupt the city with litigation of the SOS Ordinance passed.
She also crossed swords with Circle C developer Gary Bradley during the SOS Ordinance campaign. One memorable videotape of Shea and Bradley in a cramped radio studio showed an obviously angry Bradley trying to debate the proposed ordinance. The Austin American-Statesman published a lengthy feature article October 23 noting that Shea and Bradley had quit fighting, something emblematic of the maturing of both these individuals and the environmental movement.
Shea won her council seat in 1993 in a runoff election against incumbent Bob Larson, who had been part of the narrow 4-3 council majority that opposed the SOS Ordinance.
Mayor Leffingwell has environmental credentials, too, having served on the city’s environmental board for five years before being elected to the city council in 2005. He served as a council member till he was elected mayor in 2009.
But the mayor has angered many in the environmental community for pushing construction of half-billion-dollar Water Treatment Plant 4 that the SOS Alliance and others said was unnecessary, and for supporting the Formula One race track.
To see The Austin Bulldog’s background investigation on Leffingwell published December 2, click here.
Shea’s council term and later work
Background Investigation: Mayor Lee Leffingwell
Here’s What the Public Records Say
About the City’s Highest Elected Official
by Rebecca LaFlure
© The Austin Bulldog 2011
On the morning of September 19, 2009, an Austin police officer pulled over Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell on a state highway and issued him a speeding ticket. Leffingwell later pled no contest, paid a $110 fee, and completed a driving safety course.
The traffic citation, listed on the city’s municipal court database, is indicative of Leffingwell’s otherwise squeaky-clean background—just one of many areas The Austin Bulldog researched as a part of a series of background investigations on the mayor and city council members.
In an effort to educate Austin residents about their elected officials in the months leading to the May 2012 election, The Austin Bulldog searched public databases, filed open records requests, and scanned news archives to uncover business, real estate and court documents, voting records and criminal history.
The results will be published individually for each officeholder with the goal of making these documents easily accessible to the public.
The Austin Bulldog’s investigation into Mayor Leffingwell, who announced his bid for re-election November 16, confirmed much of what has already been reported about the retired pilot and long-time Austin resident. Not surprisingly, Travis County voting records show he is a loyal Democrat, having voted in Democratic primaries dating back to 1992.
Leffingwell has no searchable criminal or bankruptcy history in Texas and does not owe overdue property taxes in Travis County. Based on searches of Travis County and district court records, he has only been sued in his capacity as a city official.
Our research found a complaint was filed with the Texas Ethics Commission alleging that Leffingwell violated the Texas election code by accepting corporate contributions and failing to properly report political contributions and expenditures in multiple campaign finance reports.
A July 4 article in the Austin American-Statesman said six Houston-area Tea Party members filed the complaints against Leffingwell and each council member after the Austin council decided to end city business with Arizona, in protest of the state’s controversial immigration law.
The commission cleared the mayor of many of the allegations August 11, but determined Leffingwell did not sufficiently disclose the names of two contributors donating a total of $700 to his May 2009 campaign. He also failed to disclose in other documents the full names of 11 supporters who donated $1,570 as well as the payee for $16,000 worth of campaign expenses. The commission ordered Leffingwell, who has filed corrected reports, to pay a $500 civil penalty.
Strong financials bode ill for challengers