Endorsements

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Austin City Council

Mayor: Will Wynn

Though it would have been much more difficult, we wish we were choosing here among Wynn, Robin Rather, and Jackie Goodman. That would have been a mayoral race befitting both Austin's virtues and its needs. As it stands, we think Wynn is the clear choice among the field, even though we know quite well that we already have significant disagreements with him, on matters of both style and substance, that will surely continue in the upcoming three years. He's been a competent and thoughtful council member -- very necessary virtues in difficult times. He is also refreshingly frank about the hard choices facing the next council in its upcoming budget deliberations. He recognizes that "gut-wrenching" decisions will have to be made this summer, and that neither painful taxes nor more painful layoffs can be ruled off the table in advance.

But in the mayor's chair, Wynn is also likely to become the first recourse of the business-as-usual lobby that will expect him to act as a ready ally for the always well-tailored suspects who believe the only problem with Austin democracy is that there's too much of it. When that happens -- whether the issue is real estate or reproductive rights -- we hope our readers will join us yanking negotiations out of the back room.

But that's as it should be; not only The Austin Chronicle, but every citizen, should enjoy the opportunity to disagree with our elected leaders. Too much of what we don't like about Austin's recent history, particularly where the City Council is concerned, was born of a false and wrong-headed quest for "consensus" in an Era of Good Feelings -- during which asking common-sense questions or even agreeing to disagree were seen as impolite or rowing against the current. That's why we didn't endorse Kirk Watson for a second term, and that's why we endorsed Beverly Griffith last year, knowing full well she had been and would continue to be an obstacle to that consensus. This year, we'd rather have Wynn, who we know can do the job, even more than other candidates whose stances and attitudes (or at least poses) might more closely mirror our own.

In this race, that mostly means Max Nofziger, whose assessment of the troubles of Austin's recent past is much the same as ours. But we do not exactly recall Nofziger's nine years in office -- the Lee Cooke and Bruce Todd councils from 1987 to 1996 -- as a golden age to which we are aching to return. If Nofziger were indeed as effective then as he now imagines, and says he will be again, he would be the unquestioned leader of Austin's progressive majority, would have had an easy shot at the mayor's chair in 1997, and might now be retiring instead of running. The fact that after 25 years in the public eye Nofziger is still something of a fringe candidate doesn't give us much confidence. (Despite their differences in image, Nofziger and Leslie Cochran really aren't that far apart, either on their platforms or, we fear, their likely performance.)

It mostly goes downhill from there. We believed Marc Katz could have been a more formidable and admirable candidate than he has so far proven to be. His undeniable Austinite passions and personality are diminished by his less-than-firm grasp of how the levers of power actually work at City Hall and his presumption that he can just pick that stuff up on the wing. The same is even more apparent with Brad Meltzer, who like Katz proposes to run Austin "like a business," which frankly impresses us not at all. Government is not and should not be a business -- but even if it were, Katz and Meltzer's grandstanding proposals to cut taxes and heartily scrub the fringes of the budget (while leaving the meat untouched) sound more like dot-communism than the sound insights of proven leaders.

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Place 2: Raul Alvarez

Place 6: Danny Thomas

Both incumbents are facing challenges from Anglo-Libertarians, Steven Adams in Place 2 and Wes Benedict in Place 6; Alvarez also faces longtime El Concilio leader Gavino Fernandez in Place 2. Though Benedict (especially) and Adams are not undeserving of consideration, we generally don't find ourselves endorsing Libertarians for the self-evident reason that being anti-government is usually not a good qualification for public office. And as problematic as the minority-candidate "gentleman's agreement" covering these seats has been over the years, we certainly don't relish the thought of an all-Anglo council. As for Fernandez, while we're a little puzzled by some of his contradictory stands, more importantly we think he's already done plenty to shape community dialogue on the issues he actually cares about, from his neighborhood vantage point, and that he wouldn't be any more effective a public citizen were he on the council. Disturbingly, where the huge budget deficit and how to cut spending were inevitable and central topics of discussion in our mayoral and Place 5 endorsement discussions, the conversation over Place 2 included a lot of generalized talk of increasing spending -- which in the current circumstances seems simply unrealistic. But both Danny Thomas and Raul Alvarez have done good jobs, on balance, and have done a lot to make clear that East Austin's issues, and the issues of Austinites of color, are everybody's issues. (And vice versa.) They deserve your vote for re-election.

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Place 5: Margot Clarke

It's rare that we meet with this impressive a field of candidates in one race, and rarer still when it takes us more than a day to discuss, deliberate, and decide on our choice for endorsement. Indeed, voters should consider themselves fortunate to have some tough choices in this group of interestingly diverse contenders. We believe Margot Clarke is the best candidate for this particular council in these particular times. We like her strong record of public service and we expect her to apply that same sense of dedication to community values when making difficult decisions as a council member. A former software developer, Clarke has spent the last six years working in the nonprofit arena, first as public affairs manager for Planned Parenthood and then as state director of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund. She has lived in Austin for most of her life, and as a candidate she is persuasive that her personal history directly informs her activism. Not surprisingly, women's reproductive rights, public health, and environmental protection are high on her personal agenda, and despite the budget crisis -- indeed, because of it -- these are values the council must maintain. Crucial to this council will be informed discussion rather than too-polite consensus. Clarke will be a strong, informed, independent voice.

We would be remiss if we didn't name the other standouts in this race. Brewster McCracken is making his second run for City Council and is considered a front-runner; indeed, his candidacy was a close question for us, and if we thought his views would not be fully represented already on the council, we might have endorsed him. More than any of the other candidates in our endorsement interviews, McCracken dealt with the city's need to think regionally rather than just locally, and he had the best answer on Smart Growth (the three disastrous projects -- Intel, CSC, and Vignette -- were the ones for which the city didn't follow its own guidelines, as laid out in the Smart Growth matrix). But McCracken also seemed more a politician than any of the others. His eyes already seemed set beyond City Council, as though City Hall would just be a stop en route to a greater career (which is simply not what Austin needs in a decision-maker). And we felt like he had gone an extra spin or two with his consultants, making some of his comments fluffier and not more specific. On a Wynn council, we fear McCracken will too often echo the mayor. (Indeed, we've already heard him echo Wynn, word for word, on the campaign trail.)

Carl Tepper, a member of the city's Urban Transportation Commission, is also formidable, and, if elected, would continue to make his mark as an independent thinker -- he remains in any case one of Austin's most important public citizens. The most pleasant surprise was someone we had never heard of -- Scott Marks, an affordable-housing advocate with strong progressive appeal -- and we fully expect that Marks' debut race will not be his last, and that we'll be happily revisiting his candidacy in another election. We've known Robert Singleton for so long as the informed, engaging grassroots activist that he is, we kind of wish he'd lose the tie and go back to doing what he does best. Jason Pate and Steve Swanson, both likeable and sincere, seem to lack the grounding in City Hall operations, which would allow them to hit the ground running.

Which brings us back to Clarke. Of the seven, she is clearly the best current "fit" for Austin, and for the next council.

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Austin Community College

Prop. 1 (Raising the Maintenance Tax Cap): Yes

Prop. 2 (Bond Issue/Tax Levy): Yes

Just as we supported the last attempt in 1999 to raise ACC's tax cap, we urge your support for this year's measures, even in hard times. The current five-cent rate is the lowest among Texas community colleges, and the cap has not been raised since 1986. ACC is a vitally important part of Austin's community infrastructure and has been wholly handicapped in its efforts to help solve problems that -- especially in bust times -- cannot be solved with an unrealistically low revenue stream. Moreover, extremely shortsighted state budget proposals call for further cuts in state support -- like yanking funding for faculty health insurance. ACC's capacity and services are already badly overstrained, and the community must step in when the state fails in its rightful responsibilities. The ACC measure actually has two provisions: 1) To raise the tax cap gradually by four cents (over the next three years), and 2) To undertake a $99 million construction bond issue, underwritten by an additional one-cent tax increase. We're aware these propositions are a tough sell right now, but we believe Austin citizens understand the vital importance of broad community access to higher education, a hard-fought citizen right now under furious political and economic attack. Like many in the ACC community, we have had our share of complaints about the administration of retiring President Richard Fonté -- but one would need to be both a genius and a saint to make ACC work as it needs to with the funding it currently has. We hope the community will realize this and be willing to pay for the ACC services it desires and deserves.