Two-Term Incumbent Draws Strong Support for Campaign Kickoff Event
In front of an enthusiastic crowd Wednesday evening, City Council Member Mike Martinez described the side of Austin residents love to show outsiders: a lively music scene, quirky businesses, a booming high-tech industry, and beautiful parks and trails.
However, there is another side to Austin Martinez says people rarely talk about. The side where children go to sleep hungry, teenagers drop out of high school, and parents struggle to make ends meet on multiple minimum-wage jobs.
It’s this aspect of Austin that Martinez wants to focus on if elected to a third term to the Austin City Council, he said.
“We’re defined by our failures as much as our successes,” Martinez said. “It’s government’s job to do for those who cannot do for themselves.”
Martinez, 42, kicked off his re-election campaign at Nuevo Leon Restaurant on East Sixth Street Wednesday, saying more needs to be done to improve Austin’s east side.
Hundreds of Austin citizens—including fellow Council Members Bill Spelman, Kathie Tovo, Laura Morrison and Chris Riley—gathered to show their support as Martinez launched his re-election campaign.
Martinez did not mention his opponent, Laura Pressley, a business owner and member of Fluoride Free Austin, who announced Friday that she would challenge Martinez, the council’s only Latino, for the Place 2 spot.
Martinez said he moved to Austin in 1988 with $50 and a trumpet, hoping to make it as a musician. He eventually joined the Austin Fire Department, and worked at an East Austin fire station for 13 years. Martinez was elected president of the Austin Firefighters Association in 2003. In that position, he successfully fought to secure collective bargaining rights for firefighters, and a pay raise that made Austin firefighters among the highest paid in Texas.
Martinez was first elected to the City Council in 2006 on a platform of understanding the concerns of working-class minorities in East Austin. Martinez noted his efforts to ensure workers are paid on time and have rest breaks during the workday.
“This community has been historically underserved,” Martinez said of East Austin. “I am that champion.”
Martinez said, if elected to a third term, he would continue focusing on economic, transportation and equality issues. As chairman of the Capital Metro board, Martinez said he helped transform the agency over the past two years, noting the launch of the Red Line, a the Metrorail service that connects downtown Austin with the suburban areas including Wells Branch, Lakeline, and Leander.
He also plans to continue his support for Austin’s music community and work with musicians and neighborhood groups so that they coexist harmoniously.
Martinez alluded to his reputation as the council’s most outspoken member saying, “I don’t shy away from challenges. I take them head on. That’s my style.”
Gloria Aleman, an Austin resident and retired Travis County employee who was raised on the eastside, and Linda Ramirez, director of accounting at Rz Communications, were among those who came out to show their support for Martinez. (Andy Ramirez, CEO of Rz Communications, bundled campaign contributions for Martinez’s 2009 re-election campaign.)
“East Austin still has a lot to be done,” Aleman said. “His heart is in the right place, and I think he’s the only candidate who can make that happen. He cares about people.”
Ramirez said Martinez helped the nonprofit Bellas Artes Alliance raise money for the Pan Americana Festival—a free music festival scheduled for March 17 at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center. This is just one example of how Martinez has supported Austin’s Latino community, said Ramirez. Both she and Andy Ramirez are Bellas Artes Alliance board members.
Opponent has Latino support, too
As reported by The Austin Bulldog January 21, some people have argued that Martinez has not done enough to represent East Austin and the Hispanic community.
Although their numbers pale in comparison to the size of the crowd at Nuevo Leon Wednesday, several Latino activists expressed their support for Pressley last Friday, and their frustration for, what they see as, Martinez’s inability to address important issues.
“It doesn’t matter,” long-time East Austin activist Jose Quintero said of the idea a white woman replacing Martinez. “He’s not helping us.”
Marcelo Tafoya, a former District 12 director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, agreed, saying, “We decided a while back to get rid of ‘Evil Knievel.’ We decided that the gentlemen’s agreement is BS. It hasn’t served the minority community at all.”
Tafoya said the minority members of the council were “never elected by us, they never represented us, and never even considered us. They make token gestures, and the council votes against us. We’re sick and tired of it.”
Pressley criticized Martinez for being part of a council that has granted economic incentives to large companies and developers, saying that, “Growth should pay for itself.”
She also criticized his support for the construction of Water Treatment Plant 4, which was approved by a narrow 4-3 council majority despite protests from environmental activists.
Martinez has strong financial support
So far, Martinez has garnered significantly more financial support than Pressley. He has raised $70,460 for his re-election bid and had $64,654 in the bank as of December 31, according to campaign finance reports released January 17.
Pressley raised $3,100 and had $2,332 in the bank through December 31. She has not yet hired a consultant or campaign manager. However, Pressley is confident she will raise more money in the coming months. She had been advised she needed to raise $200,000 to $250,000 for the campaign. “That’s what we’re going to do,” she said.
“I [had] a lot of donors waiting for us to declare against Martinez,” she said. “We could not do this without Hispanic support.”
Martinez concluded his speech at Nuevo Leon by singing to his wife, Lara Wendler, chief of staff for State Senator John Whitmire (D-Houston).
“We still have a lot more work to do,” Martinez said. “The day I show up at City Hall and think I know all the answers is the day I should stop showing up at City Hall.”
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help sustain this kind of reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
County Attorney Says Investigation of Whether City Council Violated Open Meetings Act Is Still Ongoing
A year ago today, The Austin Bulldog published an investigative report (“Open Meetings, Closed Minds”) about the years-long practice in which the mayor and council members held regularly scheduled, private, round-robin meetings preceding each scheduled council meeting.
That same day, The Austin Bulldog reported that County Attorney David Escamilla announced that he was conducting an inquiry into a possible violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, based on a complaint filed with his office by a citizen (later identified as civic activist Brian Rodgers, a key source in The Austin Bulldog’s investigation).
Now, one year later, the county attorney has not made a public statement about whether he thinks it was legal for the Austin City Council to regularly meet one-on-one and two-on-one in secret to discuss items on the city council’s upcoming agendas.
What has become of that investigation?
The Austin Bulldog asked County Attorney Escamilla.
“The investigation is still ongoing and we hope to complete it in the near future,” Escamilla said Tuesday. He declined to elaborate further.
That’s cold comfort for the seven members who were on the City Council when the story broke. With a statute of limitations of two years on the misdemeanor offenses they may have committed, they remain in legal limbo until Escamilla wraps up his investigation and determines how he will proceed.
Randi Shade
Former Council Member Randi Shade was on the City Council from June 2008 to June 2011. She regularly participated in those private meetings with the mayor and other council members. Shade is now a homemaker and she would like to find closure.
When informed of the county attorney’s statement, Shade told The Austin Bulldog, “He’s been saying the same thing for a year.”
Shade said she has been cooperating fully with the investigation and has submitted everything requested.
“They’ve gathered a ton of information. I haven’t heard anything (about the outcome of the investigation),” she said. “After a year, I don’t know how you define this as ‘speedy,’” as in speedy justice.
Mayor Lee Leffingwell and the other five council members who are also being investigated—Sheryl Cole, Mike Martinez, Laura Morrison, Chris Riley, and Bill Spelman—did not respond to an e-mail inviting comments for this story.
Bill Aleshire
Bill Aleshire of Austin-based Riggs Aleshire & Ray PC, is a longtime volunteer attorney for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas media hotline. In addition, he is The Austin Bulldog’s attorney in two lawsuits against the city and council members concerning lack of responsiveness to requests filed under the Texas Public Information Act. He emphasized the importance of the issues involved in the county attorney’s investigation.
“The City Council’s actions, exposed by The Austin Bulldog, threaten the foundation of open government. If an entire city council can have secret face-to-face, round-robin discussions about the upcoming meeting agenda, then the Open Meetings Act is useless, and public council meetings are nothing but rehearsed Kabuki theatre giving the pretense of government operating in the sunshine.”
Joseph Larsen
One of the most respected attorneys in Texas on the subject of the Open Meetings Act is Joe Larsen, special counsel in the Houston office of the international law firm Sedgwick LLP. The nonprofit Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas in 2010 awarded Larsen its prestigious James Madison Award, named for the fourth president of the United States and author of the Bill of Rights.
“I think it’s important that the investigation be completed as soon as reasonably possible so as to make a public record of the findings,” Larsen said, adding, “Far be it from me to say what resources are available” for the investigation.
“If a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act is found and publicized, it will act as a deterrent for all governmental bodies that might consider doing something similar,” he said.
Larsen noted that the city council has stopped holding the private meetings and said, “However bad this practice was, one should really commend the governmental body for doing the right thing.”
Council members still at risk of prosecution
The county attorney’s investigation focuses on whether the members of the Austin City Council have violated Section 551.143 of the Texas Open Meetings Act, which delineates the nature of an offense that would constitute a conspiracy to circumvent the Act and establishes a penalty, as follows:
(a) A member or group of members of a governmental body commits an offense if the member or group of members knowingly conspires to circumvent this chapter by meeting in numbers less than a quorum for the purpose of secret deliberations in violation of this chapter.
(b) An offense under Subsection (a) is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than $100 or more than $500; confinement in the county jail for not less than one month or more than six months; or both the fine and confinement.
In the introduction to the Open Meetings 2012 Handbook, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote, “Texas courts have upheld the statutory duty of public officials to conduct open meetings, except in certain limited circumstances, and have affirmed that ignorance of the law does not shield anyone from compliance with the law.”
Attorney Larsen underlined the fact that ignorance of the law is never a defense if a crime has been committed. And he said ignorance of the law is highly unlikely in the circumstances described in The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report.
“The Texas Attorney General set up a system for public officials to learn how the open meetings law works, so it’s inconceivable they didn’t know what the law requires,” Larsen said, referring to the online course that newly elected public officials are required to complete.
Opinions issued by the Texas Attorney General also addressed the kind of situation described in The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report.
Attorney General Opinion DM-95, issued by Dan Morales March 4, 1992, states, “Presumably, when a group of people act in concert, some meeting of the minds has occurred to make that action possible. With respect to actions taken by governmental bodies, it is the process by which this meeting of the minds occurs that the act is intended to open to public scrutiny.”
More recently, Attorney General Greg Abbott issued Opinion No. GA-0326 on May 18, 2005, which specifically addresses the kinds of meetings that were being held among the mayor and council members.
“[W]e construe Section 551.143 to apply to members of a governmental body who gather in numbers that do not physically constitute a quorum at any one time but who, through successive gatherings, secretly discuss a public matter with a quorum of that body. In essence, it means a ‘daisy chain of members the sum of whom constitute a quorum’ that meets for secret deliberations.”
GA-0326 further states, “As a general matter, Texas civil courts, in construing the OMA (Open Meetings Act), rely on the OMA’s core purpose, which is to guarantee access to the actual decision-making process of governmental bodies. … As such, the civil courts construe the OMA’s provisions liberally in favor of open government. …
“[w]hen a majority of a public decision-making body is considering a pending issue, there can be no ‘informal’ discussion. There is either formal consideration of a matter in compliance with the Open Meetings Act or an illegal meeting.”
Law written in response to abuses
Randall Buck Wood
The attorney who nearly four decades ago wrote Section 551.143 of the Open Meetings Act, which lies at the heart of the county attorney’s investigation, is Randall Buck Wood of the Austin law firm Ray & Wood.
The year was 1973 and he was a lobbyist for Common Cause, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen’s lobbying organization promoting open, honest and accountable government.
“I actually wrote that section addressing the conspiracy to circumvent the Act,” Wood told The Austin Bulldog Tuesday. “There was an epidemic of this in 1971, 1972 and 1973. The Open Meetings Act passed in 1967, but everyone was getting around it.
“The Dallas mayor was meeting with council members two at a time, two-on-one,” he said, describing, though not referring to, a situation identical to the practice followed by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell until The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report was published.
“They never met in a quorum, so I wrote the section and stuck it in there… and is has survived for nearly 40 years,” Wood said.
Wood read The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report when it was published a year ago and said he concluded the meetings among the mayor and city council were “extremely organized. … It was as organized as it can get,” he said.
“The whole purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to have deliberations in the open. These private meetings defeat the whole process. … “What was being done was exactly like in the old days.”
“It’s a classic violation of that section,” Wood said. “I practice criminal law and I don’t know how to defend it.”
Wood went on to note that the county attorney is not conducting one investigation, but seven. Each council member must be investigated individually.
If the county attorney finds an offense has been committed, and decides to bring charges, he must charge specific individuals, not the city council as a whole. And if indeed sufficient evidence of wrongdoing is found, the county attorney may find that some council members are more culpable than others.
As long as the statute of limitations is running—two years for misdemeanor offenses—then the investigation can continue. For example, charges could be brought next month for any illegal actions that occurred as far back as February 2010. The privateround-robinmeetings were not discontinued until February 2011.
Referring back to the public statements made by Mayor Leffingwell and Council Member Riley that claimed the city attorney had said the private meetings were legal, Wood said, “It makes no difference at all if they got a letter from the city attorney saying it was okay. The individual members cannot use as a defense that someone said it was legal. That won’t get you anywhere.”
The bottom line
So, here we are, 365 days later.
The Austin Bulldog has published 34 stories about the city’s open government problems (see links below).
The Austin Bulldog has filed two lawsuits—both still pending—against the City of Austin for noncompliance with the Texas Public Information Act.
The Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle both rated the issues addressed by The Austin Bulldog’s coverage among the top stories of 2011.
But the City of Austin has still not emerged into the sunshine and established a fully open and transparent government. One only needs to read the headlines of the related stories, below, to get a sense of the city’s ongoing resistance to needed changes.
Our goal will remain what it has been for the last year, as expressed in our settlement offer (which the city declined to accept) for the first of the two lawsuits: “The Austin Bulldog seeks to help the City of Austin become the shining beacon of open government in Texas.”
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help sustain this kind of reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Lobbyists Can Only Give Candidates $25 But Can Collect Unlimited Contributions for Them
Updated Friday, January 27, 2012 3:20pm
Why would city regulations prohibit a registered city lobbyist from contributing more than $25 to an officeholder or candidate for mayor or city council, but allow a lobbyist to solicit and bundle unlimited contributions on behalf of officeholders and candidates?
That was a question the 2012 Charter Revision Committee dealt with in its meeting last Thursday.
Based on the case presented by its five-member working group, the Committee voted 12-1 (with David Butts and Kathleen Vale absent) to approve a recommended change that would limit the amount of bundled contributions by registered city lobbyists to a maximum of $1,750 per candidate per election cycle for individual bundlers and $3,500 per candidate per election cycle for firms that bundle. This restriction would not apply to anyone who is not a registered city lobbyist.
This restriction would put a severe crimp in the kind of fundraising that some registered city lobbyists are doing for current officeholders.
The Austin Bulldog’s analysis of the most recent contribution reports filed by the four members of the City Council running for re-election—Mayor Lee Leffingwell, Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, and Council Members Mike Martinez and Sheryl Cole—indicates that two registered city lobbyists bundled a total of $33,500 $44,470 in single reporting period for Leffingwell, Martinez, and Spelman. (Added Spelman’s bundled contributions to previous total January 27, 2012.)
In reality they bundled even more than that, but the contribution reports report filed by Cole and Spelman list lists only the names of bundlers and do does not identify the specific contributions these lobbyists solicited on their her behalf.
David Armbrust
Lawyer-lobbyist David Armbrust of Armbrust & Brown PLLC bundled 24 contributions totaling $8,400 for Leffingwell, and 29 contributions totaling $10,150 for Martinez, and 36 contributions totaling $11,200 for Spelman. According to the lobbyist registration information posted on the city’s website, Armbrust has 17 clients involved in building, real estate and real estate development, financial services, hotels, property management, energy, and waste disposal.
Michael Whellan
Lawyer-lobbyist Michael Whellan of Graves Dougherty Hearon and Moody bundled 26 contributions totaling $8,050 for Leffingwell and 20 contributions totaling $6,900 for Martinez. City lobbyist registration records indicate Whellan has 13 clients, including property owners, real estate developers, taxi cabs, healthcare provider, and music.
The ambiguity of the current City Code regarding how to report bundled contributions was also addressed by the Charter Revision Committee. Members present voted unanimously to recommend more stringent and accessible disclosure of all bundled contributions.
With no discussion, the Charter Revision Committee also voted unanimously to recommend that Article X, Section 2 of the City Charter be clarified to indicate that ex-officio members of the Planning Commission are non-voting members whose attendance does not affect quorum requirements. Both the City Council and the Planning Commission had referred this matter to the Committee for consideration.
These recommendations will be forwarded to the Austin City Council, along with all the recommendations previously approved by the committee, for possible action.
What City Code requires
In 2008 the Austin City Council altered the Austin City Code to address the “appearance of impropriety and special influence” by prohibiting registered city lobbyists and their spouses from contributing more than $25 in a campaign period to an officeholder or candidate for mayor or city council, or to a specific purpose political committee involved in an election for mayor or city council.
City Code Section 2-2-53 states the purpose of the restriction is “to minimize the role of political contributions in the legislative and regulatory processes and awarding of public contracts….”
The solicitation of contributions on behalf of a candidate or officeholder is regulated by City Code Section 2-2-22, which requires disclosure. 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 required, although this requirement does not apply to an individual who raises $5,000 or less for a candidate through a fundraising event held at the individual’s home.
Although the names of bundlers must be reported, the code is silent with respect to whether individual contributions solicited by bundlers must be linked to the bundlers’ names.
In practice, some officeholders are linking contributions to bundlers’ names by using footnotes (Leffingwell, and Martinez and Spelman) while others are one is just listing the bundlers’ names (Cole and Spelman). It should be noted that Spelman’s system for linking bunders’ names is to put an asterisk in the “principal occupation” field for each bundled contributor, while Leffingwell and Martinez’ put an asterisk next to the names of bundled contributors.
The Committee’s working group summarized the situation with respect to unlimited bundling currently permitted by writing, “Through this practice, registered lobbyists may effectively gain the same favor, influence or access—or the appearance thereof—that our City Code specifically seeks to prevent. In fact, some might argue that the current system offers lobbyists the best of both worlds: they can’t be tapped for large contributions themselves, yet they gain whatever benefits may flow from such generosity by soliciting and proffering the money of others.”
The working group further stated, “Likely most candidates and officeholders would strenuously deny that large bundled contributions influence their decision-making, and this may well be true. However, as our City Code correctly notes, the appearance of special influence may be just as damaging as actual corruption, feeding a growing cynicism and detachment among voters that Austin can ill afford.”
The Committee’s recommended change to the system for reporting bundled contributions would require the bundler to report the following information in writing to the candidate or officeholder who must, in turn, cause this information to be filed as part of the contribution and expenditure reports:
• Identity of bundler and address (already required)
• Bundler’s employer and occupation
• Names of all registered lobbyists, if any, employed by the bundler and his/her firm or employer
• Name, address, occupation and employer of each individual contributor
• Total amount delivered to each candidate or officeholder for that reporting period
• Cumulative amount delivered to each candidate or officeholder for the current election cycle
To see the Charter Revision Working Group’s written recommendations, click here.
Next meeting February 2
The Charter Revision Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for 6:30pm Thursday February 2 at City Hall, in the Boards and Commissions Meeting Room. The agenda proposed for that meeting calls for voting on whether committee members want to recommend changing the current at-large system of elections.
If the committee members vote in favor of changing the election system, then there would be two more votes, as follows:
(1) Should the committee recommend that council districts be drawn by an independent commission?
(2) What form of representation should be recommended (e.g., the 10-1 plan being petitioned for by Austinites for Geographic Representation—in which only the mayor would be elected at-large—or a hybrid plan in which some at-large council members would be recommended, in addition to a certain number of geographic districts.
Comments made during the January 9 committee meeting indicated roughly half of the members favor the 10-1 plan while the other half wants to have some council members elected at-large.
Committee Chairman Gonzalo Barrientos, a retired state senator, said he would invite a district judge to act as parliamentarian at that meeting.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help sustain this kind of reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
First-time Council Candidate to Oppose City Council’s Only Hispanic Incumbent
Clarification posted January 22, 2012 1:30pm
Laura Pressley kicked off her campaign December 10 vowing not to let the so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that resulted in having one African American and one Latino on the council stop her from opposing a minority member of the City Council.
At Friday’s press conference she proved it. She announced she is targeting incumbent Mike Martinez, who was first elected in 2006 and is now seeking a third term.
Martinez did not return a request for comment left on his council office recorder. His campaign website provides no telephone number.
Martinez has raised $70,460 for his re-election bid and had $64,654 in the bank as of December 31. He has campaign kickoff fundraiser scheduled for Wednesday at Nuevo Leon Mexican Restaurant, 1501 E. Sixth St., starting at 5:30pm.
Pressley raised $3,100 and had $2,332 in the bank through December 31. She has not yet hired a consultant or campaign manager.
Pressley told The Austin Bulldog she had been advised she needed to raise $200,000 to $250,000 for the campaign. “That’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “We will easily have $40,000 to $50,000 by March.”
Unlike many of the winning candidates in recent council elections, she does not plan to loan her campaign money. “If people don’t support us we will not win,” Pressley said, adding, “I have a lot of donors waiting for us to declare against Martinez.”
In her press conference Pressley said there were concerns about her going against the gentlemen’s agreement from the 1970s but, “We’re not in the seventies anymore. Designating one seat (for a Latino) is a serious limitation.
“There should be two or three Latino seats if we get real geographic representation in this city. We really support the 10-1 plan.” She was referring to the proposal initiated by Austinites for Geographic Representation, a grass-roots citizens initiative to get on the ballot a proposition 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. The group’s plan calls for only the mayor to continue being elected at-large.
“Over the years Mike Martinez has done very little to help the Hispanic community,” Pressley said. “We need a change at City Hall—regardless of skin color—and directly do what’s important for East Austin and all of Austin.”
About a dozen attended the press conference, many of which were Latinos. All said they’re fed up with Martinez, including long-time East Austin activists Marcelo Tafoya, Gavino Fernandez, Jose Quintero, Fidel Acevedo, and a younger Danny Perez. All professed strong support for Pressley and no concern about the fact that her victory would displace the council’s only Latino.
Interviews with some of them, before the press conference at the YMCA Learning Center at 2121 E. Sixth Street, revealed a deep resentment over what they perceive as Martinez’ lack of attention to problems.
“It doesn’t matter,” Quintero said of the idea a white woman might beat Martinez. “He’s not helping us.”
Tafoya agreed, saying, “We decided a while back to get rid of ‘Evil Knievel.’ We decided that the gentlemen’s agreement is BS. It hasn’t served the minority community at all.”
Tafoya, a former district director for District 12 of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), said the minority members of the council were “never elected by us, they never represented us, and never even considered us. They make token gestures and the council votes against us. We’re sick and tired of it.”
Pressley said she met with Latino community members in December and kept it quiet. “We would not do this without Hispanic support.”
Critical of council decisions, offers ideas
Pressley criticized Martinez for being part of a council that has subsidized large companies and developers. “Growth should pay for itself,” she said. “Subsidies are absolutely wrong.”
She also criticized his support for the construction of Water Treatment Plant 4, which was approved by a narrow 4-3 council majority.
Pressley said “police misconduct” is going on and “no one on the council is talking about holding police accountable.”
She advocates giving a $25,000 homestead exemption that would reduce the taxable value of owner-occupied homes, a significant benefit of particular value to those who own lower-priced homes. (The Travis Central Appraisal District verified that the City of Austin does not currently grant a homestead exemption.) She did not address what impact a $25,000 homestead exemption would have on the city budget.
Like many candidates before her, Pressley said she would work to reduce the cost of government and make it more efficient.
Unlike most candidates, she claims to have had significant experience doing that, which she gained during her 17 year career in the semiconductor industry. “I was a gross-margin manager for a billion-dollar company,” she said. In a follow-up interview she said the she worked for Motorola spinoff Freescale Semiconductor in its computer networking division. “My job was to define cost reductions and efficiency projects with engineering teams in Austin and Malaysia to improve productivity.” She held that job from 2006 until she left in early 2011, she said.“I worked for Freescale from 2006 to 2011 as an engineer and engineering manager, and was the gross-margin manager from 2010 till early 2011,” she said in a follow-up e-mail. (Clarification posted January 22, 2012 1:30pm.)
She said that city departments—particularly its revenue-generating utilities—should be striving for year-over-year cost reductions of 10 percent, just like Austin’s high-tech companies that compete with Asian companies.
Pressley wants to boost jobs for those without a college education by working with semiconductor companies, where employees can “make an excellent salary without a college degree.”
She said she would “oppose and say no to waste in Central Health,” the agency responsible for providing healthcare to low-income residents of Travis County. “It takes three to four weeks to get an appointment,” she said of the agency’s clinics. She vowed to replace Central Health board members (four of which are appointed by the city council) who don’t work to provide better services.
“I will vote ‘no’ on contracts awarded to companies outside of Austin,” Pressley said.
Picking up on one of her long-running issues, she said she would stop spending $500,000 to $1 million a year to add fluoride to the city’s drinking water. “LULAC told them no and they’re not listening,” she said, the group’s resolution to stop fluoridating tap water.
When responding to a question from a critic of the city’s Planning Commission, Pressley said, “We need to be strategic about appointments. Council members are keeping the same people. We need people who will speak up and do the right thing.”
The candidate’s background
Pressley, who said she had lived in Austin 23 years, is a survivor of domestic and sexual violence, and came to Austin to work her way through graduate school as a single mother. The University of Texas registrar’s website indicates her first semester was the fall of 1988 and she earned a doctorate majoring in chemistry in 1994.
In 2007 she co-founded Pure Rain LLC, an Austin-based company that sells bottled rain water. She travels extensively to market the water, which is sold locally at Whole Foods and Central Market, according to the Pure Rain website.
Pressley is a current steering committee member for Texans for Accountable Government, an Austin-based nonpartisan political action committee that focuses on safeguarding individual liberty, protecting personal privacy and property rights, election integrity, safe water, and electing representatives to office, according to its website.
She is also on the steering committee for Fluoride Free Austin and has served on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including SafePlace, which operates a 24-hour hotline and an emergency shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence; Women’s Advocacy Project, which gives legal advice to victims of domestic violence; and served as volunteer Development and Fundraising Chair of the DiscoverHope Fund, which creates opportunities for women in poverty through microcredit, entrepreneurship and training.
Pressley is married to Leif D. Allred, an engineering manager at Applied Materials. The couple owns a home at 2210 White Horse Trail, just a few doors down from Lamar Middle School in the Allandale neighborhood. Pressley said she has one daughter, 26, who lives in Seattle.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help sustain this kind of reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
University of Texas Professor, Council Member Wants to Keep Austin Weird, and Explains Why
Bill Spelman
Council Member Bill Spelman launched his campaign for a third term on the Austin City Council at Scholz Garten Tuesday evening to boost his campaign war chest beyond the $31,600 he had raised through December 31, according to the contribution report filed Tuesday.
Jim Wick, Spelman’s campaign manager, said in an e-mail the campaign would prefer not to give a figure of how much was raised at the event, “…but we were happy with the depth and breadth of the contributions (and contributors) we received last night and in the days since December 31.” He said 125 people attended. The audience was much smaller when Spelman spoke, as some supporters came by for brief visits and left to meet other commitments.
Spelman said he recently noted the camaraderie of Travis County Democrats at a recent annual dinner and attributed that spirit of cohesiveness to having a common enemy, like Governor Rick Perry.
Although elections to fill seats on the Austin City Council are nonpartisan, Spelman said the citizens of Austin need a common enemy too. He reeled off a list of the things that make Austin unique, and said, “I’m going to argue that our real enemy, our common enemy, is all the things that threaten that.”
“Every time someone tells me, ‘Austin is the only city in the country that doesn’t have this or doesn’t do that,’ a small part of me is just a little bit giddy. So long as we’re smart enough about it, keeping Austin weird is not just a semi-cool slogan, it’s a real means of survival in a brutal, difficult, and changing world.”
In listing some of the things accomplished in his current term, Spelman mentioned:
• Launching, with Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, the Neighborhood Match Program that “gives neighborhoods a chance to decide for themselves what public works they need.”
• Pushing the Austin Water Utility to move forward as fast as possible on its water reclamation program. “In an unprecedented drought—one that climatologists tell us is going to last in some form or fashion for the rest of our lifetimes—it only makes sense to use water twice, not just once.”
• Enacting payday lending restrictions. “Congress has not yet dealt with the dramatic increase in payday lending, but 400 percent interest-rate charges pose an imminent threat to the well-being of thousands of Austinites, almost all of them of modest means. The Lege did not act. We did.”
• Regulating pregnancy counseling centers. Women “need to know there are significant limitations to the kind of help offered in the crisis pregnancy center. The State Legislature doesn’t want to tell you. We did.”
• Helping Foundation Communities to open volunteer tax preparation centers that “over the past few years has put $29 million of tax refunds into the hands of poor and moderate-income Austinites.”
“All of this is really weird,” Spelman said. “Cities pick up trash, they sell potable water, and they answer 911 calls. They do not typically give neighborhoods choices, use water twice, regulate lenders and pregnancy centers, or help people save money. Some of them do. But that’s what our changing world is calling for and that’s what we need to do.
“Our continued ability to adapt, working within our Austin DNA, is critical to our surviving and thriving as a city in coming years. Weird isn’t just a slogan. It’s a way of life.”
Running unopposed at the moment
So far Spelman has drawn no opponent. In 2009 he made history by running for an open council seat unopposed, something no one else accomplished in the 40-year history of elections tracked by The Austin Bulldog from 1971 through 2011. His was first elected to the City Council in 1997 and served until 2000.
Laura Pressley has appointed a campaign treasurer indicating she will run for City Council but she has not designated which incumbent she will oppose.The Austin Bulldog reported on her campaign December 12.
Pressley raised $3,100 through December 31, according to her contribution report filed Tuesday.
Candidates must designate which place on the council they will seek when filing for a place on the ballot. That may be done as early as February 6 and as late as March 5.
Election day is May 12. Early voting will be conducted from April 20 to May 8.
Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, who is also running for re-election, and Council Members Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo attended Spelman’s event. So did Andy Brown, chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party, former State Representative Ann Kitchen, former Mayor Frank Cooksey, and former City Council Member Brigid Shea.
As The Austin Bulldogreported December 6, Shea has appointed a treasurer and is exploring a run to oppose the re-election of Mayor Lee Leffingwell.
Shea gathered $4,200 in contributions through December 31, according to her report filed Tuesday, and had $2,340 in pledges for additional contributions. Her only reported political expenditure was $1,000 for a poll conducted by Opinion Analysts Inc.
Mayor Leffingwell reported having raised $87,624. He still has a debt of $60,911 from his 2009 mayoral campaign.
Council Member Mike Martinez is also running for re-election and reported contributions of $70,460.
Cole raised $54,425 through December 31.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help sustain this kind of reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution
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