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City of Austin

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Coming soon a petition drive for council districts

Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2011 4:15pm
Coalition Nearing Petition Launch
for Grass-roots Council District Plan

Council-Appointed Charter Revision
Committee’s Plan Due January 31

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

A petition drive to trigger a City Charter election for council districts will soon be launched by a growing coalition of individuals and organizations that want to promote their own grass-roots plan instead of backing whatever the City Council may put on the ballot.

Austinites for Geographic Representation voted unanimously Monday night to support a plan that would allow election of 10 council members from geographic districts. Only the mayor would continue to be elected at-large if the plan this group advocates gains voter approval.

Meanwhile the city council has initiated a process to formulate its own plan for some form of geographic representation in council elections.

The City Council passed a resolution August 4 that established a 2012 Charter Revision Committee of 15 members to be appointed by August 25. The mayor will appoint three members and each council member will appoint two members.

The resolution directs the Committee to consider the proposed maps that were presented to the council June 9 and meet at least once to consider maps submitted by the public and at least once to discuss its recommendations to the council. The Committee is also directed to seek public input.

Lee LeffingwellMayor Lee Leffingwell has long advocated a new system in which six council members would be elected from districts, and two council members and the mayor would be elected at-large. The council resolution, however, gives the Committee leeway to recommend a map that includes any combination of at-large and geographic representation. The Committee will dissolve after submitting its recommendations due by January 31.

If the petition drive for a City Charter amendment succeeds in garnering the signatures from at least 20,000 of the city’s qualified voters, as required by Local Government Code Section 9.004(a), the plan backed by Austinites for Geographic Representation and the city council’s plan may wind up on the same ballot for voters to decide.

Any election is not likely to occur before November 2012, due to the changes mandated by Senate Bill 100 that preclude holding a city council election in May.

SB 100 authorizes the City of Austin to move its next election to November 6, 2012, and adjust the terms of office to conform to the new election date. Further, SB 100 allows the City of Austin to opt for election of all council members at the same election, superseding City Charter requirements for council elections to be conducted in May and terms to be staggered.

Citizen plan minimizes politics

City council members file mid-year financials

Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2011 10:15am
Council Member Martinez Reports
Big Gains in Financial Assets

May Have Failed to Report Major
Investments in Last Annual Report

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

Mike MartinezThe most significant changes reflected in the latest mid-year Statements of Financial Information submitted by Austin City Council members appeared in the statement submitted by Council Member Mike Martinez. He listed the names of 49 entities in which he and his wife, Lara Wendler, held, owned, acquired, or sold stock, or any other equity ownership having a value of $5,000 or more.

These holdings appear to represent an investment of at least $245,000, if each of the 49 stocks were valued at the minimum $5,000. These stocks cover a wide range of investment funds. None involve local companies. 

Martinez did not report these investments in his last annual report.

Seeking clarification, The Austin Bulldog e-mailed Martinez August 8 to ask if he owned these stocks during 2010—and failed to report them in his last annual report—or acquired them since January 1.

Martinez replied August 10: “After consulting with counsel, my wife and I have expanded the mid-year PFS (personal financial statement) to provide more information. The mid-year PFS accurately reflects our current situation.”

Martinez did not respond to a follow-up query to again ask if he had owned those investments last year and failed to report them.

Council Member Mike Martinez’ house at 2314 E. 11th St.Martinez currently has a new home under construction at 2314 E. 11th St., in Central East Austin near Boggy Creek Park. The 11,641-square-foot lot was purchased October 29, according to the Warranty Deed, and the building permit was issued May 31. The three-story, single-family residence being built by Olson Defendorf Custom Homes has 5,289 square feet, with 4.5 bathrooms and two garages, according to building permits downloaded from the city’s website.

Martinez’ financial statement indicates that he paid off three loans and took out three new loans. He also joined the board of directors of three organizations that benefit youth and social justice: Police Activity League, Community Shares of Texas, and Christopher Guild.

Other financial changes

E-communication policy established for city employees

Posted Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:04pm
City Manager Establishes Policy for
Employees’ Electronic Communications

Open Government Legal Experts Say Policy
Is Seriously Flawed, But It’s an Important Start

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog

Marc OttCity Manager Marc Ott approved a policy August 4 that establishes city accounts as the primary means for the city’s 12,000 employees to electronically communicate about city business. The policy was transmitted to employees through an Administrative Bulletin drafted by the Human Resources Department.

The City Council ordered the city manager to devise a policy for employees’ electronic communications in a resolution unanimously adopted April 7. (See The Austin Bulldog’s April 15 report.) The resolution also directed the City Clerk to devise a policy for board and commission members’ electronic communications. (More about that later.)

If circumstances require communicating about city business on a personal communication device or account, that correspondence should be forwarded to a city account, the policy states.

However, the policy grants employees permission not to forward communications if they personally determine that “there is no administrative value in retaining the communication.” This determination is supposed to be made by employees after consulting the “applicable records retention schedule.”

The “Administrative Value retention period” is defined in the Bulletin as “generally associated with routine or administrative business documents. The retention period is tied to the usefulness of the records for the conduct of current or future administrative business.”

The employee communication policy applies to, but is not limited to, e-mail messages, text messages, images, and attachments.

Joe LarsenJoe Larsen, a volunteer hotline attorney with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and last year’s recipient of the foundation’s prestigious James Madison Award, is an expert in the state’s open government laws. Larsen praised the city manager’s policy and pointed out some improvements that could be made.

“I’ve never seen any other city in Texas with a policy that would require a city employee to forward electronic communication from a personal account,” said Larsen, special counsel to the Houston-based international law firm of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran and Arnold LLP. “I would have to go on the record in saying I think it’s a good-faith effort to address a complicated problem.”

Is the City of Austin unique in adopting such a policy? The Austin Bulldog sought a comment from Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League. The TML website states the organization has more than 1,100 member municipalities, including 34 with a population of 100,000 or more.

Sandlin replied via e-mail, stating, “I’m not going to comment on a specific member city issue.”

Sandlin has, however, previously commented for publication concerning the issue at hand. An e-mail attributed to Sandlin was quoted in a January 12 Texas Watchdog article. Sandlin’s e-mail acknowledged that “...public business e-mails on private accounts are indeed public information.”

Larsen and three other attorneys who are experts in the state’s open government laws say the city manager’s policy for employee communication is flawed and raises serious issues about whether the policy will bring the City of Austin into compliance with the Texas Public Information Act.

Flaws in Ott’s policy

At-Large Elections Favor Anglo Choices

Posted Thursday, August 4, 2011 2:00pm
Maps Prove a Select Few Govern Austin

Forty Years of Election History
Expose Extent of Disparities

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

It should come as no surprise that the greatest political power is exercised by those whose wealth, influence, and avid participation enable them to move the levers of democracy in their favor.

Electee Residences Map 1971-2011 (Click to see live maps)The extent to which this is true in Austin is laid bare by maps constructed by The Austin Bulldog that pinpoint the residential location of every mayor and council member elected over the last four decades.

The unalterable fact that emerges is that large parts of Austin are not represented—or are grossly underrepresented—because of the at-large system of elections established by the Austin City Charter.

This is not a new revelation. Attempts to gain voter approval for some form of council districts that would provide for equitable geographic representation have been put on the ballot six times, beginning in 1973, and six times failed to win majority support.

The ship of democracy continues to sail in the direction ordered by the majority. Which is how democracy is supposed to work.

But at what cost to those who feel disenfranchised by Austin’s at-large election system? The at-large system effectively means that all citizens—all 800,000 of us—are represented by every member of the city council. This system fails to make any one council member responsible for our concerns, or those of our neighbors. When every council member is responsible to every citizen, by definition, no one council member is responsible to a particular citizen.

The Austin City Council and a growing coalition of citizens are separately working on two different plans to give voters another opportunity in 2012 to approve a City Charter change to require the majority of city council members to be elected from geographic districts.

Based on what’s been discussed so far, these two initiatives differ significantly regarding how many council districts would be proposed, what procedure would be used for drawing district lines, the length of council terms, and whether terms would be staggered.

Both initiatives are still in the formative stages.

The City Council is scheduled to approve a resolution today (Item 28 on the agenda) to establish a 2012 Charter Revision Committee composed of 15 members who shall be appointed no later than August 25. The committee’s recommendations for charter amendments, and a map that includes any combination of at-large and geographic representation, are due by January 31.

The city’s plan or the grass-roots plan, or both, could wind up on the ballot next year.

But it should be noted that this appears to be the first time that a broad coalition of community organizations have launched a serious effort to formulate a plan that is independent of whatever proposal the city council puts forward, according to those involved in previous election campaigns for council districts.

None of the six failed propositions got on the ballot through a grass-roots petition drive. In the past, voters have only been able to react to whatever plan the city proposed—and the reaction has always been unfavorable.

Why geographic representation?

City Council’s Stealth Pay Raises

Posted Friday, July 22, 2011 10:00am
Austin City Council’s Pay Raises
Fly Under the Public Radar

County Commissioners Court Raises
Require Published Notice, Signed Approval

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog

The Austin City Council of 2006The Austin City Charter (Article 1, Section 2) establishes the city council as the city’s policy making body. But when it comes to giving themselves a pay raise, the mayor and city council members are just part of the rank and file.

When city employees get a raise, so do council members—automatically, without any public disclosure required.

The mayor and council members have obtained three such raises in the last four years. While the cumulative amount of these recent raises has been relatively small, the process is far from transparent.

From 2000 to 2010, the mayor’s salary has increased 124 percent, council members’ 109 percent.

Adding to the lack of transparency, salaries for the mayor and council members are not posted anywhere on the city’s website, a fact confirmed by the city’s public information office. Council payroll documents for the past five years were obtained by The Austin Bulldog through submission of an open records request and payment of $127 in fees to retrieve and search boxes of older records. Because of the city’s inadequate initial response to the request, incomplete records, and the city’s changing methodology for documenting council pay changes, clarity was achieved only after submitting numerous follow-up e-mails to city officials to obtain answers.

The city’s current system of pay raises for the mayor and council members was established November 16, 2006, when the council led by Mayor Will Wynn voted unanimously to pass Ordinance 20061116-081. This ordinance grants future raises to the mayor and council members “...equal to the base percentage amount established for ‘meets expectations’ compensation adjustments for non-Civil Service employees.” (Only police and firefighters are civil service employees and their pay is determined by contracts. The rest of the city’s 12,000 workers are not civil service employees.)

Tom SmithTom “Smitty” Smith is director of Public Citizen Texas, a nonprofit group that addresses a broad range of public policy issues, including what it calls "clean government” by working to hold public officials accountable.

“I think Austin City Council members should be well paid, comparable to the other 20 large metropolitan cities in the United States,” Smith says, “because it’s more than a full-time job.

“But council members pay raises should not be done through subterfuge,” Smith says.

Smith says the Texas Legislature is an example of more extreme subterfuge. When our low-paid lawmakers vote to raise judicial salaries they are actually voting to raise their own retirement pay, because their retirement pay is pegged to judicial salaries.

The preferred way to address salaries for council members, Smith says, is for the city auditor or some other disinterested official to establish a citizens committee removed from council influence that would study compensation issues and make recommendations for the council to adopt.

While the City of Austin’s methodology is opaque, this below-the-radar procedure is permitted by Local Government Code Section 141.004, which states, “The governing body of a home-rule municipality may set the amount of compensation for each officer of the municipality.”

County commissioners are much more closely regulated. In fact, Local Government Code Section 152.013 requires newspaper publication of a notice of any salaries, expenses, or allowances that are proposed to be increased for all elected county or precinct officers—including the amount of proposed increases—more than 10 days before the commissioners court meets for a budget hearing and adopts the budget. To view the ad published for the current fiscal year click here.

County commissioners must publicly vote on these proposed pay increases. Then, each member of the commissioners court must personally sign the order setting salaries for elected officials, including their own. To see the order for the current fiscal year click here.

Council raises 2000 to 2010