by Alex de Marban; photographs by Michelle Dapra
The news was not without irony. Departing Councilmember Max Nofziger wouldn't allow a simultaneous interview with also-departing colleague Brigid Shea. This, despite the fact that the two councilmembers are philosophically aligned, and are often considered the council's most dependable votes on matters environmental and progressive.Initially, during the second week in March, Nofziger wouldn't respond to requests for an interview, period, apparently still sore over a "Council Watch" by this reporter regarding his lack of initiatives over the last year and a half. With persistence, he finally consented, but there were no open slots on his already slim schedule. He doesn't come in the office on Fridays. He doesn't come in on Mondays until 1pm. On other days, he doesn't come in until 11am, sometimes later. Finally, March 27 was agreed upon.
Shea, working at home to care for her newborn baby, had readily consented to a joint interview with Nofziger via speaker phone. But when the day arrived, Nofziger protested. "You see, the problem is, she's a talker," complained Nofziger, his face reddening. "I'm a listener. If you want me to call her, that's fine. I'll just sit here and listen."
Needless to say, the hope for an enlightening exchange died, and finally, the interviews were done separately, with much complaining from both sides about each other and their colleagues on the council. But the inability to bring the two together, and the interviews themselves, provide insight into what some say was the failure of the progressive coalition on the council dais to accomplish anything substantial. Indeed, the great hope for a Brave New Progressive World that abounded in 1993, when Shea and Jackie Goodman took office and teamed up with Nofziger and Gus Garcia, has mostly fizzled. While a sewage system to the Barton Creek PUD was denied, and the SOS water-quality ordinance was appealed, Shea and Nofziger accomplished little else of the progressive sort.
Indeed, in the past six weeks, almost as an admission, Nofziger has proposed a magician's handkerchief of environmental initiatives. They may not be passed by June 15 -- the date the two will step down -- but he and Shea will likely continue to fight for change as private citizens. After nine years on the dais for Nofziger, and three for Shea, they say they won't quit that easily, but -- another irony -- both will be returning to their familiar roots: Shea back to the grassroots organizing that hoisted her to the dais, Nofziger back to the streets, this time as a musician, and perhaps back to running for mayor.
Was the past three years a failed venture based on false hopes? Or was it simply a manifestation of the usual complaint about liberals -- put them in the center ring, and they don't know how to fight under the lights? Perhaps all causes need something to push against -- from 1990-92, it was the pro-developer RULE council (Ronney Reynolds, Charles Urdy, Bob Larson, and Louise Epstein), and their capitulation to the unpopular status quo which sparked the 1992 SOS vote, and the ensuing victories in 1993 of both Shea and Goodman. Nofziger and Garcia lent them a glad hand up to the new liberal-ruled ship, but all the promise and potential of the coming adventure dissipated in the foul weather of Gary Bradley and Freeport lawsuits, and the 1995 legislative session.
It's the end of an unrealized era -- paradise lost before it was ever found -- with two of the city's most progressive and faithful watchdogs of the dais stepping down. So long; we hardly knew ye.
The interviews with Nofziger and Shea were held separately, but we've spliced them together here -- answering the same questions with a few individual follow-ups. Enjoy the togetherness.
Austin Chronicle: What's the greatest change that Austin has undergone since you came into office?
Max Nofziger: The biggest difference is the economic situation. I came into office right at the start of the bust, and I'm now leaving Austin when it's booming again. And I can tell you it's a lot easier to govern during a boom economy. You just have a lot more options. In 1987 there were no good choices with some of the cuts we had to make. None of us thought it could be as bad as it was. I campaigned in 1987 that we should be cutting back and saving dollars, but my expertise wasn't budgetary. I wasn't an accountant, I'd never done a billion-dollar budget before. I was basically an environmentalist and a person off the streets, off Congress and Oltorf, and I was called upon to make decisions in a situation that was a critical time in Austin's history. I think I handled that well. I was involved in a lot of big decisions, like the convention center, tax abatements to build a high-tech nucleus, building the music industry. There were a lot of particular things and steps we took to build the economy back. Of course, maybe we've done too good a job at that.
Brigid Shea: There's a different public mood. One that has been successfully promoted as being miserly toward environmental protection and generous towards anything that promotes growth. It's the result of a concerted campaign by the people who lost the SOS election to try and change the public dialogue.
AC: Have your views changed?
MN: I came into office an environmentalist. I still am. I'm a bit more pragmatic for having gone through the bust and for having dealt with a lot of heavy financial issues. But I'm still pretty idealistic. I'm still trying to save the world.
"I came into office an environmentalist. I still am. I'm a bit more pragmatic for having gone through the bust and for having dealt with a lot of heavy financial issues. But I'm still pretty idealistic. I'm still trying to save the world." - Max NofzigerBS: Not really; I continue to think environmental protection is the cheapest way for us to preserve our community. We know right now it'll cost $250 million to try and clean up Town Lake through retrofitting. It'll cost $18 million to build a flood channel for the Waller Creek Watershed. That's because the watershed was built out too heavily. That happened a long time ago, but the reality is future generations will have to pay through the nose for whatever precautions we don't take now.
AC: Did you find things more difficult as a councilmember than on the outside?
MN: I don't think I had a lot of pre-conceived notions that things would happen overnight. And in fact, my way of operation was not to expect immediate results. I sat and listened a lot, and learned a lot. I was the lone newcomer on a very experienced council. I knew I'd be in this for the long haul. I didn't run for office five times to be an overnight sensation. I campaigned that we should replace the city manager [Jorge Carrasco], and a few months after I took office the city manager was gone. So that was a rather immediate impact -- that I was able to convince my colleagues to make that change.
BS: Absolutely yes. I feel like once I got elected I stepped into boots of cement. It goes back to what I was talking about when you have very large financial interests in the community waging war against you, and then you have to deal with staff.
"After the passage of that historic ordinance [SOS], there was a lot of fall-out in terms of people attacking it in the courts and in the Legislature and I think it's real natural that after you make a huge gain, then you have to defend that. And that's the posture we've been in for the last couple of years, is defending the huge gains that we've made." - Max NofzigerAC: The creation of the liberal coalition three years ago brought a lot of promise. Have the four of y'all lived up to that billing?
MN: I think so. I think some people may have had some unrealistic expectations about this council, but on the whole I think we've served the environment quite well. One of the main things we did was to defend, as best we could, all these attacks on SOS. I think we hired good legal advice and people to carry on the struggle there. And is it the environmental majority's fault that the Legislature is beating up on us and limiting our authority? No, it's not my fault. It's the legislators who make those calls. I can't be held responsible for their votes, even if it's my votes that precipitated them taking an interest in our local issues and voting to limit what I can do. I'm only an Austin City Councilmember, and I'm responsible for my constituents. I can only hope that other elected officials will realize what is their sphere of influence.
BS: I regret not being able to put stronger water-quality protections in place after SOS was set aside by the courts. That's a major regret. And I have certainly been disappointed by the slowness with which we were able to get things done. To me that tells the tale of the vested interests that have always run this city, that have always profited from public resources and who, when they lose an election, have other ways of trying to accomplish their goals.
The work at the Legislature is classic. When the Friedman council was elected [1975], the exact same thing happened. And where they have overlooked some barricades they could erect for the council at the Legislature, they've thrown them up through the access they've had to the popular media, particularly the radio talk shows.
The fact that you had major entities in the community pouring a lot of money... the Real Estate Council placed a huge emphasis on documenting how slowly permits for new development moved through the city. I was repeatedly told by developers that staff said they were just carrying out the wishes of the environmental majority. But there was no way in your wildest dreams that you could construe our desires to protect water quality to mean that an absolutely impossible maze for people to get through should be erected. So why was this happening?
There's a very strong sense on many people's part that staff, probably high-level staff, were cooperating to make circumstances difficult so it would further create the conditions for trying to unseat the councilmembers. Frankly, I fault [Assistant City Manager] Jim Smith and I fault other high-level staff for at best not correcting the problem and at worst probably colluding to help create it. So you create the conditions to give people the proof with which to say, "The council can't manage a two-car funeral. We need to get rid of them. They're bad for business. They're driving people away from the city." So it's been frustrating to me to see that while you can elect a majority, you still have to contend with the bureaucrats and with the larger business interests in the community who can either go over you or under you, or both.
AC: Max, you're introducing a string of environmental initiatives at the end of your tenure. Why didn't you do it earlier? You're taking a big risk by doing it with only two months left.
MN: After the passage of that historic ordinance [SOS], there was a lot of fall-out in terms of people attacking it in the courts and in the Legislature, and I think it's real natural that after you make a huge gain, then you have to defend that. And that's the posture we've been in for the last couple of years, is defending the huge gains that we've made.
And then there was the personal matter of my mother, in her terminal illness that she had for three years, was really getting weak the latter part of last year and I traveled to Ohio frequently to be with her, and of course that was on my mind a lot, and then I had a new assistant and by the time he got his feet firmly on the ground, he suffered the loss of his father and his mom was real sick, so we've had some personal issues to deal with in this office. And after the holidays my mom passed away and we finally got to work on some of the things that we had been talking about.
AC: What have your relationships with the councilmembers been like?
MN: It's good to see that as Brigid and I close out our term that the environmental majority is teaming up to do a lot of things. It's kind of good to see that dynamic back in effect when we've kind of splintered before, or when it was difficult to keep all of us together. I was unable to convince my colleagues, especially Brigid, to raise taxes and provide for the needs of the community.
I mean Gus, Jackie, and I, who've been here a long time and who see the history of the place and who lived here through the bust, we recognized the need to catch up. And you're never going to catch up in a bust economy. The best chance you're ever going to have to catch up is in a boom economy... That was one of my disappointments with Brigid was that she was unwilling to do that. As a consequence she leaves office with the response time of the fire department going up, with our parks in rather dire circumstances, the libraries way behind in terms of technology. We have not provided adequate funding to maintain those services to the neighborhoods and both of those things will weaken the neighborhoods.
BS: Max has been adamant about the need for higher taxes. I've been adamant about the need for holding the line on taxes and living within our budget and that disagreement has been a deep one, probably more deeply felt on Max's side. I don't begrudge him his position. I think he begrudges mine. And that has caused some difficulty. Not anything where the votes really counted. Max was almost always there. But it's created a strain in the relationship.
And I was also a little disappointed with Jackie. I think people with real conflicts have her ear. Peck Young, for example -- I mean the guy has been on all sides of the nuke issue. First he worked for it, then against it. Now he works for Texas Utilities. He's the guy who urged the city to get into just about every major boondoggle that the city has been associated with. Well, he's also Jackie's political consultant. And I think that that's had an unfortunate effect. I think where your main focus is re-election, you're going to be concerned about how your actions will play.
"Frankly, I fault [Assistant City Manager] Jim Smith, and I fault other high-level staff for at best not correcting the problem and at worst probably colluding to help create it. So you create the conditions to give people the proof with which to say, 'The council can't manage a two-car funeral.'" - Brigid SheaAC: Brigid, during the interview with Max, he con-stantly takes jabs at your unwillingness to support tax increases for emergency services. How do you respond?
BS: Max and I have a real, philosophical difference on this. I think we have enough money to do these things if the city makes it a priority. Max disagrees. And I think it's an honest disagreement. I don't think there's malice or posturing on either side. He gave me a hard time.
The first budget he called me up and said, "You need to support these tax increases," and I said, "I made a commitment throughout my campaign that I would not support an increase in the property taxes." And he said, "Well, that was when you were a candidate, now you're an elected official," and I said, "That's all the more reason in my mind for me to keep my word."
And he said, "But now you have more information." And I said, "Well, I still think we can do this without a tax increase." The last two times we've had increases, we've had money freed up during the budget cycle that would have been sufficient to supplant the tax increase, and I made numerous efforts to pursue what I thought were legitimate cost-cutting measures to avoid a tax increase. But I was disturbed that Max didn't think it was important for politicians to keep their word. And he and I have had a real disagreement over that.
AC: Has the criticism you've received for opposing Councilmember Eric Mitchell's development proposals been warranted?
MN: My whole approach to politics is how can the government better serve the needs of most of the people. My interest has not been to serve small segments of the community. I've dealt with big issues. The air that we all breathe, the water that we all need. I've dealt with the big issues of the economy. How can we strengthen the economy so that everybody has a chance to make it? I've never been interested in awarding contracts to my friends, or getting jobs for my friends. That's not my interest; my interest is more global. I've really tried to practice color-blind politics, and I think that's what politicians ought to do.
BS: I've been selectively criticized. When you look at who's criticizing me, I can't think of one person of that small chorus of critics except for maybe Dorothy Turner who lives over there; the rest are business associates of Mitchell's who are trying to make money off of the cheap real estate they want to get their hands on over there. You talk to the residents who live there -- black, Hispanic, and white -- and they are uniformly in support of me.
In fact, what I'm doing is attempting to represent them. I haven't tried to mortgage the city's future with expensive projects that are going to put money in the pockets of my supporters. And that's how I see these big development projects that Mitchell's been pushing. When the bills come due, nobody is going to be able to understand how the hell the city was able to go forward with some of this stuff.
AC: What do you consider some of your better accomplishments?
MN: Building the convention center to help build clean industry. And of course that bolstered the music industry, one of my real loves, and something I'm trying to get a little more directly involved in right now. Same with the airport. I'm really pleased that we were able to realize a peace dividend. Another thing, on the environmental front, I was the first local official, county or city, to put an endangered species item on the agenda, and to bring up that whole issue which the local folks got involved with -- the BCCP [Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plant] -- and culminated with citizens spending $22 million to buy land to help to preserve endangered species. I got that ball rolling.
The other thing that I'm really pleased with on the environmental front is that the water-quality issues I've been involved with for a long time peaked during my tenure, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Another of my successes is when I came on board the plan was to build a trash burner. That would have made recycling impossible because the scale of that facility was such that we would have had to shovel in all our trash. We canceled that project.
BS: I will have put more affordable housing on the ground than any of Eric Mitchell's boondoggle projects because I fought so hard to save the houses at Bergstrom. The campaign finance reform is an important one. I think the ordinance inspired the citizen's initiative that's out there now to do a flat-out ban on contributions over $100. My first months in office were completely consumed with the development agreement because it started early on. The staff and the entire machinery of the community was churning forward to try and push this thing through. My office and [SOS Legal Defense Fund attorney] Bill Bunch and a few others were doing the critical analysis of this thing to try and figure out what the hell was in it. That took months. I was almost single-handedly responsible for [the] city removing the garbage truck site from East Austin. I was also absolutely insistent that the city respond more quickly to the concerns of the residents at Springdale Park. I fought for a majority of the drainage and flood control projects to be carried out on the Eastside.
AC: What specific Drainage Utility measures did you support for the Eastside?
BS: The first two budget cycles we approved $9 million to $13 million for flood and erosion control projects for Tannehill, Fort Branch, Boggy, most of the major creeks in East Austin. We made it clear to the city manager that the city needed to address these problems.
AC: But who took the initiative?
BS: I took the initiative. Jackie took the lead as well. Actually, the neighborhoods took the initiative. They organized a bus tour of all these places -- EAST [East Austin Strategy Team] organized it, but PODER [People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources] was involved. I went along, and Jackie did and other city officials went and it was made painfully clear that there was a need. On the council, I certainly made clear that it had to be a priority. And I did the most work on the Hargrave [dump truck] site [in East Austin]. The neighborhoods had a role in that, as did the staff on my campaign. They did a lot of the research. It was a combination of neighborhood efforts and my campaign staff. We researched it, got more information to bolster the case, and then we pushed hard for the city to correct the problem.
AC: How do you think your exit will affect environmental issues?
MN: In Travis County and in Austin there's a shift to the right in fiscal conservatism and that's good, but you have to spend money to protect the environment. That's a situation that some of these candidates are in and that's a situation that Brigid is in. Brigid was willing to spend money on the defense of SOS and willing to spend money on water-quality issues, but not willing to spend money on other environmental issues like air-quality initiatives and the urban forest, and providing adequate money for parks. That's a real dilemma that the new council is going to face. Yeah, everybody is for environmental protection, but everybody is posing as a fiscal conservative, so the conflict there is, "Okay, are you willing to spend money to protect the environment?"
BS: There will continue to be more battles. I know for a fact that the mayor's assistant has been telling people that they're going to bring the Barton Creek PUD back after the new council is sworn in. I think everybody needs to do some soul-searching on what's the best course of action to protect the environment. The courts are always a mixed bag; they're often expensive and I don't think anyone can rely on a strategy that just focuses on appeals with nothing else proposed.
AC: Regionalism and conciliation are two of the bigger issues being discussed in the campaign. How can we maintain good relationships with our neighbors without jeopardizing our own needs?
MN: We need to take care of our business and we need to provide for the needs of our citizens. And I don't think we should be looking over our shoulder every time the Legislature comes to town. They'll do what they think they need to do and I think the Austin City Council should do what it thinks it should do. A lot of legislators don't understand Austin and the issues we deal with just from the sheer fact that we're located over an aquifer, that we're right here on the edge of the Hill Country, that the terrain on the west side of town is so different from the terrain on the east side of town, and I think those real physical differences are often unappreciated by legislatures and by others who come from areas where there's a lot more homogeneity in the culture, in the population, and in the geology.
"To me, that's the classic example of how big, private interests can kidnap the elected officials in the same way that Patty Hearst came to sympathize with her captors. People start to see the reasonableness of the point of view of the people who have captured the process." - Brigid SheaBS: How we get along with our surrounding communities will be important in the future, but you don't develop a good relationship if there's no respect. I don't think the suburban communities respect Austin. I feel like they've taken advantage of us. The city for years has been a chump. We've committed $9 million to this regional water/wastewater plant up in Brushy Creek, with apparently insufficient information about how we'd recoup that investment. We did the same thing with all the MUDs. The people in the suburban periphery might say the same is true, that Austin hasn't been fair to them, but in most cases they're coming to us and asking for money and resources and infrastructure, and it's not clear what we're getting from them.
AC: What are some of the future problems Austin is going to face?
MN: One of them is going to be adapting to change in the Electric Utility industry. I'd certainly urge my successors not to be panicked and sell the utility. It is best that the people who run our utility be as close to the people of Austin as possible. If we cut the transfer, that'll impact all the other services, which are already underfunded, and that'll be difficult to deal with. And providing services and catching up on maintenance and the parks and keeping the libraries and decreasing the response times in the fire department and reversing that trend -- that's one thing I've discovered. It's a lot easier to deal with the problem, before you get a trend line of three or four years. Because then you have to reverse a trend, and that's more expensive than if you just keep the line level.
And that's what this new council is going to be faced with, is the reversal of some trend lines where we haven't done an adequate job of providing and keeping up. You see the response time of our EMS and fire department is climbing. We've not provided adequate equipment and personnel there. We've begun to address personnel and equipment needs in EMS, but we're still not where we need to be. We're pretty well caught up in our police department because we've followed through with our five-year plan, and also we got some help from the feds in the last couple of years. But when those grants go away in a year or two, we're going to have to deal with those issues. So we are still in a catch-up mode. We have approximately the same budget in the parks as we did 10 years ago, but we have a whole lot more acreage, swimming pools, and facilities that are obviously more expensive, and we've not really done what we should have done in terms of maintaining those.
Likewise with the libraries. Here we are, one of the top high-tech centers of the world, and we have not provided those high-tech facilities in our libraries, so I think the council as a whole could have done a better job. I tried to exert some leadership -- because I have the longest tenure on the council -- in reminding them that we're in a catch-up mode, and that is a perspective that is going to be missed on the council. I'm the last councilmember that has lived and governed through the bust. When I'm gone, there will be no one to remind these new councilmembers of that perspective and what it's like to do that. It's a loss of valuable perspective.
BS: When the bill comes due on these East Austin boondoggle projects, you're going to see a nightmare. And if the federal government succeeds in bundling together a lot of the programs into one big block grant that inner cities have to fight over, you're going to see a bloodbath, with the argument that you're seeing from Bruce Todd that we have to reduce the Electric Utility transfer by millions and millions of dollars each year. We have to get more efficient but there are other ways to address the issue instead of hacking off huge portions of the transfer. If Bruce succeeds in pushing that agenda, you'll see tremendous problems in the next couple of budget cycles.
AC: Max, you talk about the critical state the city is in now, and the loss of valuable perspective that your departure will bring. Why leave now?
MN: I'm leaving because I've been doing this for 18 years, and when you've been doing this for 18 years, Alex, you let me know how much longer you're going to do it. But I've served for a long enough time, and I don't have the interest any longer that I did nine years ago. I want to do some other things with my life. I want to be a musician and I've served for nine years. That's a long time on the city council. In modern history, only Dr. Charles Urdy and Mayor Pro Tem Johnny Treviño have served that long, so that's a long time to have served, and I'm starting to burn out, and I'm ready to call it a tenure. I'm really looking forward to June 15 and just being able to spend a couple of hours a day with my guitar.
AC: Do you have any advice for your replacements?
MN: I'd say be a strong environmentalist, protect the water. Don't go the high-dollar route in revitalizing downtown so it can be turned into Dallas. Revitalize Austin in the way that it'll keep it Austin. Emphasize those elements of our economy that are of Austin -- music, entertainment, the environment.
BS: Just be really persistent. That's the only thing that's paid any dividends is when I just absolutely kept battering and battering. And also, stay in close contact with the grass-roots community. The baseball bonds are the classic example. The Chamber of Commerce and business circles had members of this council believing that the baseball bonds were the next best thing to mom and apple pie and everyone would love this. I think you get in a kind of hot-house environment when that happens and you start thinking that these people really do represent the broader will of the community.
The vote on the baseball stadium tells the greatest story. They went down by 70% and here the other side had tons of money to spend on it. To me, that's the classic example of how big, private interests can kidnap the elected officials in the same way that Patty Hearst came to sympathize with her captors. People start to see the reasonableness of the point of view of the people who have captured the process.
AC: Will you run again for public office?
MN: I need to take a break from public service, but I noticed there's a mayor's race coming up in the year 2000 and I have thought about running in that, and maybe I'll be refreshed enough then to get back into politics, or maybe I'll have enjoyed the private sector so much that I'll just stay there.
BS: I have real questions about how much can be done as one vote in an elected position. I really think it's more important to organize people and educate them so you can create a larger impact and get more people involved in the process. I got more done on the outside before I got on the council.
