As voters peer at Proposition I on the ballot this November, they may wonder, “Doesn’t the city already conduct efficiency audits?”
And the answer is yes, Austin has two audit frameworks. The first is the city auditor’s office, a department churning out regular analyses on waste, fraud, and abuse by city employees and contractors. The second is the Comprehensive Efficiency Assessment Program, spearheaded by Mayor Kirk Watson and approved last February. The auditor for this program has been chosen and is already at work.
But those audit programs don’t go far enough for Save Austin Now, the political action committee co-founded by former Travis County Republican Party Chair Matt Mackowiak. Save Austin Now and like-minded citizens are pushing a proposal to create a separate audit framework – Proposition I – which will appear on this November’s ballot.
The audits envisioned in Prop I are quite similar to those in the Comprehensive Efficiency Assessment Program. Both programs are meant to provide ongoing assessments of city departments conducted by independent companies. Save Austin Now’s attorney Bill Aleshire told us the Prop I audit plan is better though, because, if it’s approved it would become part of the City Charter, which is akin to the city’s Constitution and can only be amended by voters. The Comprehensive Efficiency audit, on the other hand, was created by Council and can be amended by it at any time.
Prop I also differs from the existing audit framework by requiring the city to conduct an audit within one year of a proposal to increase property taxes, like the Proposition Q tax rate proposal that failed last year. And it requires the city to conduct a detailed analysis of the costs of city taxes and fees on residents and businesses of various income levels, and to make that information public. “All it does is put the information out there,” Aleshire said.
“Right-wing billionaires have brought Prop I to you not because they want a more efficient City Hall or because they want better public services; they don’t want a City Hall or public services in Austin at all.”
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar
Local labor groups, community advocates, and six of the city’s 10 Council members attended the anti-Prop I, Don’t DOGE Our Austin, rally on Oct. 7 outside City Hall. Their main argument is that Prop I is unnecessary. But they also believe Prop I provides a perverse incentive for the company chosen to perform the audits to make inappropriate cuts, because the company will only make a profit if the cuts it proposes are higher than its fee.
“It’s just another giveaway to corporate consultants,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes said. “There are only a few corporate firms that have the staff and the expertise to perform all of what Prop I demands. The time constraints demanded by Prop I mean that each audit will be very expensive. The corporate consultants know this. They know that this service will be locked in via the City Charter, so that the city will have no choice but to hire them, and then they get to set the price, not the city. Each audit could cost as much as $10 million or more, and we know that at the very least, it’ll be $5 million.”
Fuentes added that she feared the auditing company, after a round or two of audits, would begin proposing cuts that Austinites don’t want. “They can propose for us to shorten hours at Barton Springs,” she said. “They can propose for us to close libraries on certain days. They can make proposals that are not feasible, that don’t work, and that are not aligned with our Austin values.”
Aleshire disputed the idea that the Prop I audits would cost $5 million. He said the audit that Ernst and Young conducted for Houston in 2024, which he studied in drafting Prop I, cost $580,000 but identified over $100 million in potential savings. And he said the idea that auditors would propose inappropriate cuts is incorrect.
“These would be real professionals, not some kind of DOGE political hacks, but somebody who is in the business of doing performance audits,” Aleshire said. “They are going to know that one of the things they have to do if they want the contract is they’ve got to commit to identifying more savings than what their fee is. So if they don’t think they can find savings, they can lower their fee.”
Speakers at the Don’t DOGE Our Austin rally expressed deep skepticism about Save Austin Now’s motives, pointing out that the organization supported the 2024 police contract that is widely regarded to have contributed to the city’s budget deficits. They reminded the audience that local billionaires like Joe Liemandt and Joe Lonsdale support the group and said Prop I is part of their efforts to change the city.
“The people behind it hate Austin, and I don’t say this lightly,” U.S. Rep. Greg Casar said at the rally. “People like Joe Lonsdale have supported Save Austin Now, and have gone on national television and said that they think that City Hall should completely disappear and that Austin should be run by Governor Greg Abbott. Those are his words on national television. These right-wing billionaires have brought Prop I to you not because they want a more efficient City Hall or because they want better public services; they don’t want a City Hall or public services in Austin at all.”
Aleshire called Casar’s comment part of a “boogeyman media strategy.” He recalled that 63% of voters rejected Prop Q last November and said Save Austin Now’s polling showed that 40% of Democrats voted against the measure.
Brydan Summers of AFSCME Local 1642 said his union supports greater efficiency in city government but remembered Save Austin Now’s 2021 proposal that would have required the city to hire two police officers for every 1,000 residents, something he and others believe would have severely hurt the city budget, had it been adopted. He said the group has a knack for identifying wedge issues that he believes it uses to enact policy changes opposed by most voters.
“Proposition I is the worst example of that,” Summers said. “They picked something that they knew everybody would agree on, including our union, which is to say the city should be more efficient. But then they packed in all of this additional stuff which makes it super worrisome.”
This article appears in October 16 • 2026.
