For the past two years, Kirk Watson has shown Austinites what it’s like to ride in the sidecar of his mayoral motorcycle. It’s been an at-times tumultuous ride filled with contentious, seemingly unilateral decision making but undeniable progress on issues that have bedeviled a decade’s worth of the city’s elected leaders.
But the once-and-current mayor’s shortened term (thanks to voter-approved amendments to the city charter that aligned mayoral and presidential elections) is drawing to a close. Now, for the first time ever, Austin’s presidential-year voters – typically, the city’s largest and most diverse electorate – will decide if the ride should end here or if Watson should be given a full four-year term.
Watson’s four opponents – Doug Greco, Kathie Tovo, Carmen Llanes Pulido, and Jeffery Bowen – are all hoping voters are ready to bring the test drive to an end. All four are running campaigns premised on the notion that Austin and its residents will be worse off if they hand Watson a full four-year term because of his governing style.
Primarily, they say, the problem has been Watson’s tendency toward executive decision making that excludes the mayor’s 10 elected City Council colleagues who technically have the same level of policymaking authority as he does.
To support their argument, each candidate points to episodes in the mayor’s first term (since the Nineties, as this is his second go-around as mayor). Examples include when Watson announced in a newsletter that the years-long effort to craft a new vision for Zilker, Austin’s marquee public park, would be scrapped, and the biggest unforced error of Watson’s first time, the contentious partnership between the Austin Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety that began with text messages exchanged between Watson and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and ended with a high-profile, needlessly aggressive traffic stop carried out by a state trooper. Another issue Watson’s opponents point to is what they describe as his efforts to limit public participation in weighty policy decisions, which they say was most prevalent in council’s efforts to enact new housing policies throughout 2023 and the first half of 2024.
While Watson broadly disagrees with how his opponents characterize each of these episodes, he mostly brushes the attacks aside as the cost of effective leadership. “First and foremost, the role of government is to actually get things done,” Watson told the Chronicle’s editorial board on Sept. 23. “If you want to have progressive goals, have progressive goals. But if you want to have progressive goals that turn into something, that’s even better.” (Watson declined a one-on-one interview for this story, but he did participate in the Chronicle’s endorsement panel alongside three of his opponents.)
Here’s a look at each of Watson’s opponents.
Doug Greco
A former community organizer with Central Texas Interfaith, Grego offers pointed criticism of Watson on the APD-DPS partnership. Citing the high number of arrests carried out by state troopers in East Austin, of mostly Black and brown people, Greco asked of Watson: “How could you not have predicted these results?”
On dealing with a hostile Republican state government, Greco has said he would prioritize standing up for Austin values, publicly, over working out deals behind closed doors as Watson did with Patrick on the DPS partnership.
Watson pointed to “two clear mistakes” in the DPS episode: a lack of discussion with his council colleagues on the front end and “the inability to get [DPS] to follow Austin values” while they were here. Still it was an experiment he stands behind. “Part of leadership in the mayor’s office,” Watson said, “is being willing to try things, to take risks, but when they don’t work out, to stop it and say, ‘I’m done with that.’”
“Part of leadership in the mayor’s office is being willing to try things, to take risks, but when they don’t work out, to stop it and say, ‘I’m done with that.’” – Mayor Kirk Watson defending his record
Greco says he would not want to roll back any of council’s recent housing initiatives, including reducing the amount of land needed to build a house, allowing apartments to be built closer to single-family homes, and allowing three units on one lot. But he says he would “fight to give families a stronger hand in competing against institutional investors” in the housing market. Increasing the mortgage assistance the city offers to prospective home buyers and increased rental assistance are both policies Greco said he would pursue.
Carmen Llanes Pulido
As executive director of Go Austin / Vamos Austin, Llanes Pulido has spent much of her professional and political life advocating for Austin’s Eastside neighborhoods. She says the way Watson went about leading council through passage of ambitious housing reforms excluded the people advocating for those neighborhoods.
Those reforms are decidedly market-based. Broadly, they were designed to enable more market-rate housing units – particularly those that are smaller-scale (2-3 unit redevelopments of single-family homes, as opposed to the large apartment complexes that Austin has produced in great numbers in recent years). Llanes Pulido says this is not the problem Austin needs to address.
“We have to ensure, protect, and produce a greater supply of affordable units,” she told us. One way she hopes to do that is by allowing wider use of manufactured homes – which are cheaper to produce than site-built homes – throughout the city.
Llanes Pulido, like the other Watson opponents, is also worried about the high cost of the tentative agreement between the city and the Austin Police Association over a multiyear labor contract, which is estimated to cost about $218 million over five years. She shares the concern voiced by police oversight advocates that the contract could undermine the Austin Police Oversight Act and that it could explode the city’s budget. “It’s pure Kirk Watson,” said Llanes Pulido. “A huge deal made with dollars that will be spent long after he’s gone.”
Watson, however, is more confident in the city’s ability to afford the pricey contract (all candidates in the race agree that Austin police officers should get raises). In an email, Watson noted that in the budget council adopted in August, they included enough money to pay for the first year of the contract and that the “ongoing contract cost can be accounted for and the contract should not have a significant impact overall.”
Kathie Tovo
Through her three terms as a City Council member, Tovo has been directly involved with attempts to reform Austin housing policy longer than anyone else in the race. She thinks council went too far with many of the reforms they passed over the past year and thinks they should revisit rules around compatibility (how close apartments can be to single-family homes) and the elimination of minimum parking requirements (the smallest number of spots a developer can build with a project). She also says she has not found much support in neighborhoods for allowing three units on one lot.
But, Tovo says, she’s a pragmatist and understands, even if she is elected mayor, there is likely not much support for revisiting those policies on council. Instead, she wants to shift the conversation around housing while focusing on less divisive issues. She would prioritize passing new short-term rental regulations to improve the quality of life of people living near STRs and free up housing stock by more strictly regulating what properties can be listed as short-term rentals. She also wants to focus on working with local colleges to improve student housing options, which would make housing more affordable for students and free up more units for other residents.
For Watson, high-priority housing-related initiatives he would focus on in a second term are “implementation and facilitation” of the 2023 reforms to “ensure we’re getting the results we wanted and anticipated” and “ensure we’re addressing unintended consequences in real time.” He also wants to continue improving operations at the city’s Development Services Department to lower the cost of producing housing for big and small builders alike.
Perhaps because Tovo has such extensive council experience, she draws particular focus to some of Watson’s decisions that didn’t feature robust public discussion among council members (in particular: DPS, Zilker, and the decision to forgo a climate/environmental bond in 2024).
“It’s just the kind of operation we’ve gotten used to at City Hall from this administration,” Tovo said. “Rushing to do something with very little information, very little public discussion, vague and sometimes deceptive answers to the public’s questions and sometimes to council questions. It’s got to stop.”
Jeffery Bowen
Bowen, who owns a small construction company in town and serves on the Austin Neighborhoods Council, has the distinct honor of being the only candidate in the race to have successfully sued the city. (Greco has also sued the city, but his case remains pending.) Bowen was one of the plaintiffs in the Acuña vs. City of Austin lawsuit that halted council’s progress on rewriting the city’s Land Development Code in 2020 and later nullified other housing reforms council passed in lieu of pursuing a comprehensive code rewrite.
But Bowen’s frustrations with city government extend beyond how council members have attempted to address the city’s housing problems. “Council has taken up a lot of issues recently that are not even Austin issues,” Bowen said, pointing to budget items that fund a universal basic income program and logistical support for people seeking out-of-state abortions. “How do we deal with these issues, and yet, we’re not even taking care of the basic needs of the city like roads, infrastructure, fire, and EMS?”
To help refocus the city enterprise on what he considers to be core services, Bowen said he wants to initiate a five-year-long audit of city departments, boards, and commissions. Each year would focus on one large department, like Resource Recovery, and several smaller departments. Doing so, Bowen said, would help make living in Austin more affordable because it could uncover wasted spending that could be used to help pay for public safety, code enforcement, and parks maintenance.
This article appears in October 11 • 2024.