Police Association Signals Willingness to Comply With Oversight Act
Second day’s negotiations spark hope of agreement
By Austin Sanders, Fri., March 22, 2024
In the week since negotiations between the city of Austin and the Austin Police Association over a new labor contract resumed, the prospects of the two parties reaching a deal that complies with the Austin Police Oversight Act went from “fat chance” to possibly attainable.
During the first day of bargaining, March 13, the APA’s bargaining team made it explicitly clear that they had no intention of bargaining over key provisions within the Oversight Act, including one that requires the city to eliminate the Austin Police Department’s use of a G file (confidential police misconduct records). Another provision they opposed doubles the amount of time the chief of police has to discipline an officer once a complaint is filed or allegations of misconduct become known. “If you want to try to comply with [the Oversight Act], go ahead,” said Ron DeLord, the longtime lead negotiating attorney for the APA (and other police unions throughout Texas). “We don’t care. We’re not here to bargain over [it].”
That hard line would have posed a major problem for the city. But as of the second bargaining session, held March 20, the APA’s position has shifted. At that brief meeting, DeLord said the APA was willing to “work on what’s in the personnel file” – a reference to records currently made confidential by the G file but that the Oversight Act makes accessible to staff within the Office of Police Oversight and, in some cases, to people requesting records through the Texas Public Information Act. He also said they’re willing to bend on the 365-day rule (how long the chief has to discipline an officer after misconduct is alleged). “I think all of them have a path we can reach for,” DeLord said. “I’m just not prepared today to do that.”
APA changing their tune will come as a relief to the city staff sitting across from DeLord at the bargaining table. Austin voters delivered a clear mandate to the city by approving Proposition A, known as the Oversight Act, with nearly 80% support. The act established the legal framework allowing the city to launch what likely would be the most robust, transparent system of civilian police oversight in any American city. A provision requires the city attorney to certify that any police labor contract complies with the Oversight Act before Council can approve it.
All but one City Council member (Mackenzie Kelly being the lone dissenter) support this mandate. Mayor Kirk Watson has publicly endorsed a provision of the Oversight Act that the APA views as most burdensome. In light of this overwhelming support among the public and elected officials, the city’s negotiating team says they intend to fulfill that mandate. “The contract is not being negotiated Article-by-Article but as a whole with the backdrop of Prop A,” a city spokesperson told the Chronicle. “Mayor [Watson] and City Council have made it clear that any agreement must comply with Prop A.”
But whether or not that mandate is actually fulfilled will come down to the exact contract language agreed to by the city and APA. Thanks to new ground rules for this contract negotiation, it will be difficult for the public to track how hard the city is fighting to hold the negotiating line established by the Oversight Act, because APA insisted on an unprecedented level of secrecy around the process and the city acquiesced. For most of the bargaining sessions that have unfolded during the 20 years that the city and APA have bargained police contracts, the city has made language under negotiation available to anyone interested in reading it. During the actual bargaining sessions, they have also projected contract language on a screen so in-person observers could more closely follow negotiations.
Neither will happen during this negotiation, though the sessions will remain open to the public and streamed on YouTube. The APA made ensuring secrecy around the contract language a condition of their return to the bargaining table – a condition that Council offices did not learn about until one day before negotiations were set to resume. APA President Michael Bullock says the secrecy is required under state law, though the city and APA have not interpreted state law that way for two decades. “I believe it was a statute neither side was really aware of or that was discussed,” Bullock told us. “New leadership, new reviews, and this was found.”
Instead, the specific contract language will be made available to the public after the city and APA agree to a deal, in principle, but before Council votes on it. A city spokesperson said “there are too many unknown factors to definitively say at this time how far in advance” the language will be made public. Several CMs shared their concerns with Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills over the city’s decision to reverse course on transparency around the contract language, but without the secrecy APA has demanded, contract negotiations wouldn’t be happening at all.
The secrecy is a red flag for advocates like Kathy Mitchell, a senior adviser to Equity Action (the justice advocacy organization that wrote the Oversight Act and campaigned in support of it). She responded to the APA’s pivot with cautious optimism, but noted the “words on the pages” of the contract carry even more importance. “What comes next is critically important,” she added. “We don’t need to see a G file under another name created by a contract that preempts local and state law.”
The next bargaining session has not been scheduled but could be held in mid-April.
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