And
the people spoke. They came in droves — bicyclists, health professionals, environmentalists.
All focused on different issues — the helmet law, privatization of city
clinics, SOS — but all were allies in their discontent.
A false atmosphere of change filled the chambers early on. Dozens of
protestors applied for their three-minute rations of democracy. The
fever spilled outside the Municipal Annex to the helmet-law picketers lining
Second Street, and roared into the meeting hall every time the door opened.
Mayor Bruce Todd issued decrees of silence. And the meeting hadn’t yet begun.
Who says democracy is dead?
Still, democracy had to wait a bit — until after a prolonged executive
session in which councilmembers scrambled behind closed doors to keep the city
manager from jumping ship to the same post with a higher salary in Corpus
Christi (see “Naked City,” p.18). The successful outcome finally brought the
occasion for which bicyclists have been clamoring for months: a public hearing,
or more appropriate, bitch fest, on why “The Helmet Law Sucks!” (as their
t-shirts and signs read).
The anti-helmeters and their bikes have attended meetings en masse since May — when the council mandated that all velocipedists wear a helmet —
in a disorganized but passionate attempt to force a repeal. The council has
expressed scant sympathy for their cause, viewing them as one step below cave
bugs and one step above journalists on Austin’s evolutionary ladder. At a prior
council meeting, anti-helmeters had their speaking slots delayed for hours so
the council could consider Eric Mitchell’s Central City Entertainment Center.
The inconvenienced multitude groaned. Mitchell shot back, “You just lost my
vote!” Mayor Bruce Todd told the cyclists to shut up. And the movement’s
19-year-old leader, political novice Becky Schleinkofer, left in tears.
But these days are better, with official recognition finally arriving last
week in the form of a public hearing called by Jackie Goodman to air both sides
and to consider proposed amendments. Goodman teamed up with Daryl Slusher to
propose some concessions: to lower fines from $100 to $35, and to allow an out
for those who can’t wear helmets for medical reasons.
Yet the victories are minor; council is still as far away as Alaska from a
repeal, but you wouldn’t have known it from the ardor of the discussion. In
turns reverently somber and unforgivingly acrimonious, 80-something speakers
weighed in. Among them were a large number supporting the law, like a bicyclist
with a head injury received while not wearing a helmet, plus doctors and nurses
with figures and horror stories at the ready, and sincere humanity in their
hearts.
“While there are people who don’t like this law, you may just save their
lives,” one nurse told the council.
But too much of anything is not good, even benevolence, and many bicyclists
decried it as an impingement on their personal freedom. After agitating for
years to bring more attention to bicyclists’ needs with regards to traffic,
they are furious that the anti-helmet law is what they ultimately got. They
intend to do everything they can to stop it, foremost obtaining a court
injunction against the order on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional
since the state, not the city, is supposed to enact vehicular traffic laws,
they claim. They also plan a petition to force a referendum repealing the
ordinance; and as part of it, Schleinkofer hopes to include measures calling
for the expansion of bike lanes, the creation of new ones that cars cannot
block, and a north-south thoroughfare solely for bicyclists and mass
transportation. The council put off action on Goodman’s proposal to lower the
fines until the 15th.
Thence arrived the public hearing on the proposed privatization of Austin’s
13 health care clinics. The clinics are federally funded, and patients without
Medicare or Medicaid are guaranteed treatment.
But on the horizon, health care staff portend a bird of ill omen. They offer
dire predictions that federal parsimony and increased competition for
federal monies could cost the clinics $10 million over the next five years.
Health and Human Services Director Sue Milam (who is stepping down September 1
to become director of corporate development at Austin Regional Clinic), doubts
the clinics can survive, and has suggested that a committee of mostly health
care staff study the effect of selling them off. But concern exists that Milam
and other staff automatically favor privatization and created the proposed
committee, devoid of doctors and nurses, to encourage it.
That concern resonated throughout the hearing, as more than 60 speakers
pleaded with the council not to “sell out our clinics” (as their stickers
read). Protestors primarily were clinic employees who, rather than express fear
for the security of their jobs should the clinics go private, focused on the
uncertain fate of the clinics’ poorest patients in a profit-driven system.
Adding to the speculation that Milam has been greasing the privatization pipe
was the allegation that the clinics have been left to flounder in order to
hinder their ability to compete. In fact, the recommendations of a 1993 study
to improve the clinics, called the Primary Care Effectiveness Review, had
apparently been ignored. After questioning from Councilmember Beverly Griffith,
Sharon Itaya, director of the South Austin Clinic, noted that recommendations
for on-site management and more modern equipment and facilities had apparently
not been acted on. Supporting witnesses from the audience testified, “We have
pencils!” and “We’re dinosaurs!”
Also, for the first time this year, city staff are suggesting a budget
maneuver that some councilmembers fear intentionally darkens the outlook of the
clinics’ future. Staff wants to take
$1.5 million in federal funds from the
clinics and put it into the city’s general fund. The general fund would then
reimburse the clinics. Staff say the measure will protect the clinics in case
funds are cut this year. But Griffith’s aide, John Gilvar, called the
powers-that-be in D.C. and was told that federal funds are already certified
for this year, and that the cuts, if they do happen, probably won’t come for a
few years. Gilvar worries that the budget shuffling creates a perception of an
emergency when none actually exists.
With those latest wrinkles, the council isn’t expected to accept, as is, the
health care committee set to study privatization. Slusher, Goodman, Griffith,
Gus Garcia, and Eric Mitchell will likely press to add nurses, doctors, regular
employees, and citizens’ groups to the list of management personnel. No date
has been set for a vote.
The Save Our Springs (SOS) contingent got a chance to rest their vocal chords
last week when Slusher won postponement of the piece de resistance of
the council show — whether to replace the Composite II ordinance with the more
protective SOS water-quality ordinance retroactively for the period between
December, 1994, and July 31 of this year. The SOS saga has already been delayed
for three weeks, and will return September 5 (see “Naked City”) As will the
people.
This week in council: Labor day vacation.
This article appears in August 30 • 1996 and August 30 • 1996 (Cover).