New Policy Will Give Property Owners 45 Days to Qualify for Confidentiality
The Board of Directors of the Travis Central Appraisal District last night picked a new chief appraiser and adopted a new policy to end the longstanding practice of suppressing public records in TCAD’s online searchable appraisal roll for anyone who asked.
Dick Lavine
“The board opted for maximum transparency,” Board Chairman Dick Lavine said today, in a follow-up interview. “It’s the appraisal district’s job to evaluate property and its records should be open to anyone to see how their own property and any other property is valued for tax purposes.”
The Austin Bulldog’s November 18 investigative report included spreadsheets listing nearly 1,400 properties that have been purged from the TCAD website at the request of owners who do not appear to qualify for confidentiality. Some two dozen of these properties are owned by businesses and 34 are commercial properties. The Austin Bulldog obtained the data through a Texas Public Information Act request.
By the end of this month the property owners listed in the spreadsheet should receive a letter inviting them to apply for confidentiality under Tax Code Section 20.025. Property owners will have until mid-January to reply. Those who do not apply or do not qualify will have their property records integrated into the searchable appraisal roll by the end of January.
Tax Code Section 20.025 offers to protect certain home address information for judges, police, victims of family violence and others who apply and qualify for confidentiality. Appraisal records for those who qualify under Section 20.025 are not listed on the TCAD website and will not be provided in response to a request filed under the Texas Public Information Act.
Billionaire Michael Dell, actress Sandra Bullock, U.S. Senator John Cornyn, and Tax Assessor-Collector Nelda Wells Spears are among the property owners whose records have been suppressed on the website but who do not qualify for confidentiality.
Crigler picked as new chief appraiser
Marya Crigler
In other action the TCAD Board of Directors named Marya Crigler to succeed Patrick Brown as TCAD’s chief appraiser. Brown, who became chief appraiser in January 2008, last night told The Austin Bulldog he will be leaving the job in six weeks.
“I’m very pleased the board chose Crigler as our new chief appraiser,” said Lavine, who’s been a board member for a dozen years and chairman since January. “She has a lot of experience in the district and a lot of support on the staff. We’re looking for her to move the district ahead with greater efficiency and more accurate appraisals.”
Crigler said she has been employed by TCAD since she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. She currently holds the position of IT director and deputy chief of operations.
Crigler is a graduate of the Texas Association of Appraisal District’s Chief Appraiser Institute, Class of 2009, and has served on numerous committees for the organization.
Crigler’s salary was $118,100 as of March 2011, according to the Texas Tribune’s database, which lists Brown’s salary as $129,000 on that date. Crigler told The Austin Bulldog she would be negotiating her compensation.
TCAD currently has 130 employees and an annual budget of $12.9 million. Funding to run the district’s operations is provided by the taxing entities for which TCAD provides appraisal services.
The district’s primary responsibility is to develop an annual appraisal roll for use by taxing units in imposing ad valorem taxes on property in the district. The Travis Central Appraisal District appraises property in all of Travis County, an area of 990.2 square miles according to U.S. Census data. TCAD is currently responsible for 395,692 tax accounts, according to a TCAD report dated November 21.
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 to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Agencies Suppressing Online Records the Law Doesn’t Deem Confidential
Billionaire Michael Dell does it. Actress Sandra Bullock does it. U.S. Senator John Cornyn does it. And so do a large number of high-wealth individuals, trust funds, and ordinary homeowners. Even Tax Assessor-Collector Nelda Wells Spears does it.r
These individuals—plus some two-dozen business organizations—have taken advantage of a standing offer available to any Travis County property owner to have their appraisal records removed from the Travis Central Appraisal District’s online searchable appraisal roll. Actually, the standing offer, posted in the agency’s Frequently Asked Questions, offers only to remove the names of property owners. But in actual practice the entire record is removed.
While Texas Law provides confidentiality of the home addresses for specified individuals, none of these suppressed records fit the criteria. These public records are being hidden, without legal justification, from a public online database. (This paragraph added at 4pm November 18.)
Nearly 1,400 records of properties located in Travis County have been purged from the website for owners who do not qualify for confidentiality. While the numbers of records being suppressed now make up only a tiny fraction of the records maintained by the agency, the numbers would no doubt be far higher if more property owners were aware of this option.
Were enough people to opt for the same privilege, it would seriously undermine the usefulness of the appraisal district’s website.
The searchable records on appraisal district websites are critical resources for property owners to use in finding comparable properties when protesting the valuations set by appraisal districts. The work of fee appraisers, mortgage companies, real estate companies, and tax agents is also impeded when public records are suppressed.
Dan Birchman, owner and senior appraiser for BAS/Austin Appraiser, said he has been doing appraisals in Austin since 1983. The company provides a variety of appraisal services in seven Central Texas counties.
“Everyone doing appraisals has learned pretty much to use Travis Central Appraisal District or other appraisal district websites to confirm the owner, legal description and address, and determine which lot it is. I do that online. I use it as a preliminary source of data to start the research,” Birchman said.
“I happen to value privacy from a personal standpoint,” he said, “but we would prefer to have easier and more accurate access to information.”
Michael Dell
Dell Inc. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, who clocks in as the 18th richest American on the Forbes 400 list, and wife Susan Dell have 18 properties valued at a total of $29.5 million that do not appear on the TCAD website.
6D Ranch Ltd., a Dell-controlled entity, owns another eight properties valued at a total of $81.5 million, that are not listed on the searchable appraisal roll.
Sandra Bullock
Actress Bullock has starred in dozens of movies including the popular Speed and Miss Congeniality series, The Proposal, and the locally shot Hope Floats. She won a Best-Actress Oscar in 2010 for her performance in The Blind Side. Bullock owns a $1.67 million home located on Spyglass Drive, near the Barton Creek Greenbelt Trail.
John Cornyn
Senator Cornyn, when not attending to the demanding duties of a high official in the nation’s capital, and here enjoying a respite in our own state capital, can stay in a cozy condominium that he owns in the upscale Austonian high-rise at Second and Congress. You won’t find that property listed on the TCAD website.
There is no provision in law for confidentiality of appraisal records based on holding elective office. The appraisal records for most every other public official checked in this project, except for Spears, were available online.
Nelda Spears
Longtime Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector Spears, who also happens to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Travis Central Appraisal District, owns a house on Amaranth Lane in northeast Austin that is not listed on the publicly accessible website.
In fact, the appraisal records for 34 commercial properties have been purged from the website, including apartments, industrial property, offices, and retail properties. Eleven of those properties are owned by businesses, three are held by trustees, the rest are owned by individuals.
Dozens of doctors, lawyers, and investors, as well as many hundreds of other property owners, also have their appraisal records suppressed on the TCAD website.
The Austin Bulldog obtained a spreadsheet listing all appraisal records suppressed by TCAD through an open records request. To access a spreadsheet listing these suppressed properties:
In a phone interview yesterday, TCAD Chief Appraiser Patrick Brown said the policy of suppressing appraisal records was established by his predecessor, Art Cory. Brown, who started as chief appraiser January 1, 2008, and who will be leaving the job in mid-January, said he has not been intimately involved in carrying out the policy of suppressing appraisal records on the TCAD website. He said he has talked to only one property owner who wanted to have this done.
“My only interaction with this in last four years was a gentlemen who came in and asked that his property be withheld from the Internet. I wasn’t aware of our policy. … He said he had served a prison term and he was concerned. That’s been my only interaction. I did not suppress his records.”
Brown said he has not talked with any tax agents or other property owners who wanted to withhold records from the website. The suppression process is normally initiated when property owners submit a request that goes to the agency’s records management officer. An e-mail link and mailing address are provided in the website’s Frequently Asked Questions (See: “How do I remove my name from the TCAD website?)
What happens if TCAD receives hundreds, or even thousands, more requests to suppress records on the website? “I think ultimately in the big scheme of almost 400,000 parcels, we would have to look into it,” Brown said.
Asked why website records are being suppressed for commercial properties and for other properties owned by businesses, Brown said, “I cannot answer that. In my opinion that doesn’t make any sense. It would be my recommendation to the board that we not do that.”
Brown agreed it would be helpful for TCAD to post a disclaimer on the TCAD website’s searchable appraisal roll to state the reasons that the records listed there are not complete.
Brown noted that some rural appraisal districts do not have websites and added, “I would remind you that that a public information request for the appraisal roll, or access to the records of the appraisal district, is still available. To my knowledge, we are not in violation of the Public Information Act but there is a question of what one can expect to get on our website.
“We want to be transparent and provide as much information as we can, so we need to look at our policy on publishing information on our website, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.”
As a result of the interview, Brown said he will post an agenda item for Monday’s TCAD Board of Director’s meeting to discuss whether the policy of suppressing records on the website needs to be changed.
Some appraisal districts suppress records …
Travis Central Appraisal District is not the only agency to offer the little-known service of suppressing appraisal records on their websites. Appraisal districts in Harris and Bexar counties also accommodate property owners who ask that their appraisal records be withheld from public access through the websites.
Both Travis and Bexar counties prevent online access to the entire appraisal records for property owners who request it but permit complete records to be viewed on public-access computers in their offices. These districts also will supply complete records in response to requests filed under the Texas Public Information Act.
Mary Kieke, deputy chief appraiser of the Bexar Appraisal District, said her district has 1,248 suppressed accounts that are do not qualify for confidentiality. The agency maintains 640,000 appraisal records, she said.
Harris County Appraisal District allows anyone who requests it to have their name removed from the searchable HCAD online database but not the entire record. In responding to requests for suppression, HCAD removes the property owner’s name and substitutes the term “Current Owner.” The owner’s name remains accessible in HCAD’s offices and would be provided in response to open records requests.
More than 10,700 property owners’ names have been substituted with “Current Owner” on HCAD’s website, according to an e-mail from Kelly Sherbert, public information coordinator. The agency maintains about 1.5 million appraisal records, according to an appraisal roll recap report she provided.
… and other appraisal districts don’t
The methods of voluntarily suppressing public records practiced by Travis, Bexar and Harris Central Appraisal Districts offer a sharp contrast to procedures followed by appraisal districts in Bastrop, Dallas, Hays, and Williamson Counties.
These districts allow full and complete online public access to all records unless a property owner is legally qualified to have records kept confidential. The records of other property owners are not suppressed.
Chief Appraiser Mark Boehnke of the Bastrop Central Appraisal District said, “If property owners don’t fill out that form or meet the qualifications (for confidentiality) it’s not done.”
Cheryl Jordan, spokesperson for the Dallas Central Appraisal District, said her agency does not remove records from the agency’s website for ordinary property owners.
David Valle, chief appraiser for the Hays Central Appraisal District, said, “We only pull off (the website) those who request confidentiality” and who apply using the form provided for those who qualify.
Appraisal records are public records that qualify for full and complete disclosure under the Texas Public Information Act unless a property owner meets the lawful requirement for confidentiality.
The significant differences in how information contained in appraisal records is displayed on the websites of appraisal districts interviewed for this report illustrates the ongoing tension between public information and personal privacy.
Susan Combs
A spokesman for Texas Comptroller Susan Combs said the comptroller’s office provides guidance to appraisal districts but does not have enforcement authority. With the exception of the mandatory confidentiality provision, each appraisal district decides what to publish on its website—and what not to publish.
In the absence of specific legislation, appraisal districts have been left to determine how to balance these rights.
Bill Aleshire
Bill Aleshire of Riggs, Aleshire and Ray PC, is an attorney who volunteers to provide advice to journalists through the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. He is also The Austin Bulldog’s attorney in two public information lawsuits currently pending against the City of Austin.
“The ownership of property has never been included in the package of constitutional or common-law privacy rights recognized by our courts,” Aleshire says. “The choice by appraisal districts to conceal appraisal records on their websites that they cannot conceal in response to an open records request is of uncertain legality.
“To my knowledge,” Aleshire said, “that issue has not been tested in court. But, at a minimum, this practice of concealing certain records on the website that are otherwise public information is unwise and very misleading to the public, who has no warning when they use these websites that the information is deliberately incomplete.
“This practice also increases the cost of making public information available, requiring staff time to process an open records request for information that otherwise would be easily available through the websites.”
What the law says
Tax Code Section 25.025 provides for confidentiality of appraisal records for individuals in 10 listed categories. These include peace officers, jailers, employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, commissioned security officers, victims of family violence, judges and their spouses, employees of prosecutors of criminal law or child protective services, employees of a community supervision and corrections department, criminal investigators, and police officers or inspectors of the U.S. Federal Protective Service.
Anyone qualifying under this statute who requests confidentiality will be approved by their appraisal district and will have their entire records removed from the appraisal district’s website. These records will not be supplied in response to an open records request under the Texas Public Information Act.
Texas laws do not require appraisal districts to maintain publicly accessible websites, a spokesman for the Texas Comptroller said.
The Legislature has not enacted laws to authorize removal of any other records from appraisal district websites, nor has the practice been prohibited.
Still, the suppression of public records runs counter to existing state policies that favor disclosure in the absence of specific exceptions enumerated in law.
The Texas Public Information Act, Government Code Chapter 552, establishes a preference for openness and sets the tone for how government agencies should think about handling the records they possess.
Section 552.001(a) of the Act states:
“Under the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government that adheres to the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people, it is the policy of this state that each person is entitled, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, at all times to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. The provisions of this chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy.”
Further, Section 552.272(d) states:
“If information is created or kept in an electronic form, a governmental body is encouraged to explore options to separate out confidential information and to make public information available to the public through electronic access through a computer network or other means.”
Government Code Section 2054.001(b)—which applies to Texas state agencies, not central appraisal districts, cities or counties—states:
“It is the policy of this state to coordinate and direct the use of information resources technologies by state agencies and to provide as soon as possible the most cost-effective and useful retrieval and exchange of information within and among the various agencies and branches of state government to the residents of this state and their elected representatives….”
Kirk Watson
State Senator Kirk Watson (D-Austin) wrote Senate Bill 701 that was passed in the 2011 session of the Texas Legislature. Although it applies only to state agencies, it specifically addresses the posting of high-value data sets on the Internet by adding Section 2054.1265 to the Government Code. It defines a high-value data set as:
“Information that can be used to increase state agency accountability and responsiveness, improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations, further the core mission of the agency, create economic opportunity, or respond to need and demand as identified through public consultation. The term does not include information that is confidential or protected from disclosure under state or federal law.”
The Travis Central Appraisal District’s Board of Directors will address its Internet posting policy, including redacting of information, at its meeting Monday evening. The Austin Bulldog will cover that board meeting and will address other problems with accessibility of information on the TCAD website in the next report.
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 to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Resolution Ensures Citizens Initiative Won’t Force May 2012 Charter Election
Laura Morrison
“It’s a kumbaya moment to celebrate,” Council Member Laura Morrison told The Austin Bulldog shortly before a press conference this morning at City Hall. “Usually we just talk about things we disagree on.”
Morrison, Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, and Council Member Mike Martinez sponsored a council resolution on today’s agenda to confirm that the council intends to hold an election to amend the Austin City Charter in November 2012.
That assurance was sought by Austinites for Geographic Representation, which since late February has been building a broad citizens coalition to initiate a petition drive for a charter change that would 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. The petition drive launched with a rally October 22 that drew about a hundred people.
Striking an agreement on the charter election date was essential. If the petition drive were to trigger a May 2012 charter election, the City Council would have been forced to either put its own charter amendments on the May ballot, or be frozen out for two years if the citizens initiative got voter approval. Article XI, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution states that “no city charter shall be altered, amended or repealed oftener than every two years.”
The press conference was attended by Morrison and Cole, as well as NAACP Austin President Nelson Linder and Austinites for Geographic Representation members Roger Borgelt, Charlie Jackson, and Daniel Llanes.
Sheryl Cole
In separately answering The Austin Bulldog’s question, both Morrison and Cole said that sponsoring the resolution for a November 2012 charter election was designed to reassure the citizens group and should not be viewed as an endorsement of the plan being pushed by Austinites for Geographic Representation. “I’m waiting to see what the Charter Revision Committee recommends,” Cole said.
NAACP Austin President Linder, a member of the 2012 Charter Revision Committee that is studying what form of geographic representation to recommend to the City Council, told The Austin Bulldog he favors the citizens initiative. “I think it’s the best plan out there,” he said.
The need for geographic representation was laid bare by maps constructed by The Austin Bulldog and published August 4 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.
Seven charter recommendations, so far
The council-appointed 2012 Charter Revision Committee has been meeting since September 15 and is required to submit its recommendations for charter changes by January 31.
As reported by The Austin Bulldog October 18, the Charter Revision Committee has already approved seven recommendations for charter changes but has not yet dealt with the issue of geographic representation. The most important recommendation so far has been to ask voters to decide whether council elections should continue to be held in May or moved to November.
The City Council hotly debated in three different council meetings whether to hold the next election for mayor and three council members in May or November 2012. A narrow 4-3 majority voted to hold the election May 12. The majority argued that despite the provision in SB 100 giving the option to extend council terms and hold the next council election in November 2012, the City Charter says council elections will be held in May and only voters should decide to do otherwise. Both Morrison and Cole again reinforced this position at today’s press conference.
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 to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
New System for Board and Commission Members Targeted for First Quarter 2012
Maybe you’re a neighborhood resident trying to figure out what developers are telling board and commission members outside open meetings via e-mail. Or perhaps you’re a developer trying to figure out what the neighborhood representatives are saying about your project in e-mails to board and commission members. If so, you would like to think you can get those e-mails by filing an open records request.
Maybe you can, maybe not.
While many of the boards and commissions are only advisory and perform due diligence to assist the City Council’s decision-making, 15 of them are “sovereign” bodies that can take an official government action, such as issuing a permit or granting a variance, even if that action can be appealed
Some sovereign boards have the power to issue subpoenas and compel testimony. Decisions made by many of the sovereign bodies can be appealed to the City Council, while decisions made by some sovereign boards and commissions may only be appealed through the courts, according to City Code Chapter 2-1.
At present, the city’s web pages for boards and commissions lists each appointed member’s personal e-mail address. The city is therefore actively encouraging communication about city business through a system that may not be fully responsive to open records requests filed under the Texas Public Information Act.
Shirley Gentry
The City Council directed the City Clerk to make recommendations about how to correct this situation as part of an April 7 resolution. City Clerk Shirley Gentry responded in a May 16 e-mail with three options and recommended one of them. The council has not acted on that information.
Gentry and the city’s Communications and Technology Management staff have continued to refine the earlier recommendations. On Tuesday, Gentry and Teri Pennington, deputy chief information officer for Communications and Technology Management, briefed the city council’s Audit and Finance Committee members in a meeting at City Hall.
Committee Chair Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole and Council Members Laura Morrison, Bill Spelman and Kathie Tovo were present and participated in the briefing.
If approved by the City Council when final recommendations are made, when implemented in the first quarter of 2012 as projected, the proposed system would assign city e-mail addresses to the 350 citizen volunteers who are appointed by the city council to serve on the city’s 55 boards and commissions.
The new system is designed to ensure that the city could find and provide e-mail messages that are responsive to open records requests, as required by the Texas Public Information Act.
The new system also envisions using technological methods that would prevent board and commission members from inadvertently violating the Texas Open Meetings Act by engaging in a discussion of city business among a quorum of members.
The planned system would enable anyone wishing to communicate with board or commission members about city business to send e-mails via the Internet to all members of a board or commission or to individual members. It would work the same way that e-mails may be sent to the entire City Council or to individual members via the city’s website at http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/site/city_hall_portal.htm.
Board and commission members would be licensed to use Microsoft’s Outlook Web App to access these messages via the Internet by logging in and using their personal communications devices, Pennington said. To see an illustration showing how this system would function, click here.
Gentry said the system would allow replies to be sent only to the sender and would prevent replying in such a manner that other board or commission members are brought into the dialogue.
All e-mails sent or received using this system would be captured on city servers. “If there was a public information request, we could just pull the e-mails out like we normally do,” Pennington told the committee.
Required to stop using personal accounts
Laura Morrison
Council Member Morrison noted that members of the city’s boards and commissions are active in the community and have over the years developed interactions with their personal e-mail accounts as board and commission members. “So the fact of the matter is that in reality we will have to acknowledge that they will be receiving city messages on their personal accounts.
“So I want to recognize that we acknowledge that those things can happen with our staff and city council members, but we’ve got guidelines in place that say if that should happen, you promptly forward that to your city e-mail account,” Morrison said. “I think we should get that integrated into our approach formally and ask folks to sign up to agree to that.”
Gentry replied, “You’re kind of hitting on our next steps. This isn’t going to happen overnight.” Gentry said that training for board and commission members would have to be incorporated into the City Code. Chapter 2-1-23 currently provides training requirements that must be complied with as a condition of serving. “…If you want to serve in the council board structure, these are things you have to agree to and if you refuse to comply with them you could impact your own eligibility,” Gentry told the committee.
Gentry said she would also suggest preparing an online training program and require board and commission members to complete it. The program would remind board and commission members that in their official duties they speak on behalf of the city. The program would specify the appropriate use of e-mails about city business.
Pennington told the committee that the upfront cost of licensing and mailbox space for the 350 board and commission members would cost about $36,000. She estimated it would require about $4,300 for staff time to set up the proposed system and about $2,000 in staff time to support the system long-term. That’s a tiny fraction of what the city already spends to provide e-mail service for thousands of employees.
The City Council passed a resolution April 7 to enact a policy that would bring its own electronic communications into compliance with the Texas Public Information Act. The adopted resolution applies the policy only to the mayor, city council members and the city employees directly appointed by the city council: the city manager, city clerk, city auditor, chief judge of the municipal court, and municipal court clerk.
The same resolution directed City Manager Marc Ott to develop a similar policy for the city’s 12,000 employees, and directed City Clerk Gentry to develop a policy for use of personal communication devices for conducting city business by members of city boards and commissions with sovereign authority—not all boards and commissions.
“You may recall that your original resolution focused on sovereign boards,” Gentry told committee members. “We’re sort of hoping that if it’s a reasonable cost we would make (this system available) for all board members.
“We would have to launch the software and test it,” Gentry said. “We didn’t anticipate that this would be ready until at least the first quarter of 2012 for us to accomplish all that. But we would be coming back to the full council with suggestions for what standards we should set.”
City Manager Ott issued a policy for city employees on August 4 in Administrative Bulletin 08-06. That policy is deeply flawed according to numerous experts in the state’s open government laws, as reported by The Austin Bulldog August 10 and September 13.
Flaws in the policy include not stating that the correspondence should be forwarded promptly and leaving it to the discretion of each employee to decide whether the correspondence needs to be forwarded for retention. The policy lacks any means of preventing unlawful deletion of public records or auditing compliance.
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 to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Related articles
This is the 19th in a series of articles focusing on the City of Austin’s problems in complying with the Texas Public Information Act. Related articles are listed here:
Austinites for Geographic Representation Needs 20,000 Signatures by Mid-January
What we want? Council districts!
When do we want them? Now!
How will we get them? Petition!
When do we start? Now!
Such might be the chants of members of Austinites for Geographic Representation if they were to take to the streets like the protestors of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Austin.
But you won’t be hearing chants from the members of this 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.
Austin is the most populous city in the United States to elect its entire city council at-large, and the only major metropolitan city in Texas to do so, according to a report produced last month by City Demographer Ryan Robinson. Austin voters, however, have voted down propositions for some form of council districts six times between 1973 and 2002.
Austinites for Geographic Representation has scheduled a press conference for noon tomorrow at City Hall and a campaign kickoff rally 3-5pm Saturday at Mexitas Restaurant, 1109 N. I-35. The group has leased an office at 7901 Cameron Road and formed a Specific Purpose Political Action Committee whose treasurer, Stacy Suits, ran two unsuccessful campaigns for geographic representation in 1985 and 1988.
Linda Curtis
The petition drive is being organized by Linda Curtis of ChangeAustin.org. Curtis has previously led four successful petition drives to get measures before Austin voters. This petition campaign is not employing paid signature gatherers but instead has formed a broad coalition of community organizations that will actively circulate petitions. This initiative has been endorsed by a number of organizations including ChangeAustin.org, Del Valle Community Coalition, El Concilio, Gray Panthers of Austin, LULAC District 7, LULAC District 12, NAACP Austin, Texans for Accountable Government, Travis County Green Party, and University of Texas at Austin Student Government.The League of Women Voters Austin Area is meeting tonight to consider endorsing the initiative, said chapter president Stewart Snider. The Austin Neighborhoods Council may consider an endorsement at its October 26 meeting. The petition drive has a Facebook page and will soon publish petition forms online.
The petition drive, if successful, would force the city council to put its own proposed charter amendmentson the May ballot as well.Article XI, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution states that “no city charter shall be altered, amended or repealed oftener than every two years.” To prepare for that possibility, the 2012 Charter Revision Committee has a January 31 deadline to submit its recommendations for council consideration.
Charter committee backs seven changes
The Charter Review Commission held its third meeting last Thursday at Austin Community College’s Highland Business Center and after lengthy discussion voted 14-1 (Delores Lenzy-Jones opposed) to approve subcommittee recommendations for seven charter changes, as follows:
Set election date, terms—Voters would be asked to decide whether council elections should continue to be held in May or moved to November. (This is consistent with what the city council majority decided on several 4-3 votes when setting the next council election for May 12, 2012). The charter committee voted to recommend preserving staggered three-year terms and continuing to limit service to three terms.
Prohibit switching places—Council members would be barred from switching council places to avoid term limits.
Balance petition requirements—Reduce the number of signatures for a citizen-initiated ordinance to be the same as a citizen initiated charter change (five percent of the registered voters or 20,000 signatures, whichever is smaller, per state law). At present, ordinances initiated by petition require the signatures of 10 percent of registered voters to get on the ballot.
Council supervises city attorney—The city attorney would report to the city council and the attorney would be given authority to appoint deputy city attorneys.
Council hires own staff—The elected city council members would directly appoint their staff members (technically, all city employees currently work for the city manager).
Clerk appoints deputies—The city clerk, who already works directly for the city council, would be given authority to appoint deputy clerks.
Auditor appoints deputies—The city auditor, who already works directly for the city council, would be given authority to appoint deputy auditors.
The committee will continue its work and may recommend other items be placed on the ballot. The committee is, for example, charged with making a recommendation about some form of council districts and reviewing a variety of maps that have been drawn for such districts.
Peck Young
Peck Young, a longtime Austin political consultant who is now volunteering with Austinites for Geographic Representation, spoke to the Charter Revision Committee. He said that over a period of 35 years he had personally drawn redistricting plans in three states that passed muster with the Justice Department, but always while working for and being paid by politicians who wanted to make sure they would stay in office. He now advocates a different way of creating council districts.
“Just because you have the right to draw maps (for city council districts) doesn’t mean you are obligated to draw maps. You could recommend that the city council use the citizens commission (which is part of the Austinites for Geographic Representation petition plan). “I’m not sure how many politicians will like it, but I guarantee it’s more democratic than anything we’ve had in this area most of my adult life.”
Ted Siff
Even recommending the seven charter changes listed above was a concern to Ted Siff, who chaired the subcommittee that formulated these recommendations. He noted that the most important issue the committee faces is to decide on a recommendation for some form of council districts.
“Almost anything on the same ballot with geographic representation could affect the vote,” Siff said at the Thursday committee meeting. “So we could argue that we should not put anything on the same ballot, but we felt our charge is to come back with recommendations.”
Ultimately, the city council must decide which of these charter changes, if any, will go on the ballot.
Although a successful petition drive would force the city council to put Austinites for Geographic Representation’s proposition before voters, the council has the final authority on how the ballot language is worded. That has been a contentious issue in past citizen initiatives.
Charter committee member Fred Cantu, chairman of the Austin Tejano Democrats, addressed the problem, saying that in the past, “City councils have been inhospitable to ballot initiatives. The council has almost unlimited discretion on how to describe the ballot language. I think we should put in criteria to (require) a fair and neutral description (on the ballot) to promote faith in government.”
“Their ain’t a lot of faith right now,” quipped former State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos (D-Austin), who chairs the charter committee.
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