It was all about trust at City Hall last week. That started with City Council Member Marc Duchen getting his efficiency audits.
Council approved a new city ordinance on Feb. 26 creating the Comprehensive Efficiency Assessment Program, a series of rolling audits of the city’s 40-plus departments that will be conducted by independent consultants and overseen by the city auditor’s office. The audits will look for duplication of effort and other inefficiencies.
Duchen has been pushing for this kind of auditing program since the fight over Proposition Q, the tax rate election Austinites rejected in November. Leading up to that vote, Duchen urged his fellow Council members to hire a third-party auditor to examine the city’s operations before asking voters for more tax money – despite the fact that Austin already has an entire department, the city auditor’s office, to perform this work. After Prop Q went under, Duchen’s call for outside audits was taken up by Mayor Kirk Watson, CM Ryan Alter, and, ultimately, the entire Council.
The resulting ordinance requires the city auditor to initiate and oversee a program of recurring audits to be performed by outside expert consultants. The consultants will analyze the departments’ management and service delivery, with at least three years between assessment cycles. They will examine the contracts the city enters into and determine whether contractors are meeting common standards. They will compare the city’s provision of services to peer cities. The city auditor will report the results of these investigations twice a year to the Audit and Finance Committee and once a year to the full Council.
After its unanimous adoption, Watson praised the audit ordinance, describing it as “both a back-to-basics and a modernization of local government.” He said he is unaware of any large city with a similar program. Duchen told the Chronicle he also believes the program is unique, insofar as it enshrines a constant, ongoing examination of city government.
“I think it’s pretty innovative, for it to be an ongoing, systemic process,” Duchen said. “The ordinance stipulates that the city will report on the status and results of the audits every six months, but we might request them even sooner than that. We might request them every three months. I sense that Council is going to be heavily involved in this process.”
Austin’s city workers sense that the audits will lead to layoffs, especially after City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s repeated assertion that Austin employs 1,500-2,000 more people than comparably sized cities. With the fear of layoffs in mind, CM Mike Siegel sponsored a resolution in January, directing Broadnax to hold consultation meetings about the audits with representatives of city workers, including members of the workers union AFSCME Local 1624. Council approved Siegel’s consultation agreement proposal last week as well.
Brydan Summers, president of the local AFSCME, said the union backs the new audits because they will rebuild residents’ trust in city government, after it was battered by Prop Q. “As city employees, we rely on the public having faith in us,” Summers said. “We need them to rely on what we do and have our backs every day, like we have theirs. At some point, we’re going to need a new tax rate election to pass, and we’re absolutely not going to allow the negative framing and attacks we’ve seen at the federal and state level to attack our workers here.”
“As city employees, we rely on the public having faith in us.”
Brydan Summers, president of AFSCME Local 1624
City leaders had been expected to ask voters to approve a different kind of tax increase – a bond election – this November. The proposal for a $700 million program to fund a variety of city improvements is still on the table, but the trust issue has dimmed its prospects. So Council adopted a third measure aimed at rebuilding trust last week, approving a framework Mayor Watson calls a “decision tree” for deciding whether to hold a bond election. The decision tree will bring discipline to the deliberations, Watson said. It will require city leaders to evaluate how much money the city has available, how deep its debt is, and how many projects remain uncompleted from previous bond programs before asking voters for more money.
Council also ordered Broadnax to create a separate rubric to help lower spending on social services. In December, the city cut 10% of this year’s social services budget – over $5 million – for services related to homelessness, food scarcity, and violence prevention. But Broadnax warned weeks later that the city will need to make nearly $17 million in additional cuts in next year’s budget.
So Council passed a resolution calling for the creation of a new structure to decide which of the city’s existing social service contracts will be fully funded, partially funded, or eliminated next year. The rubric will examine how the various contracts impact residents’ health, housing, and food needs; whether they save the city money; and whether other providers can deliver the same services at a lower cost, among other things. The resolution also directs Broadnax to find ongoing sources of funding for the social services and to conduct regular feedback with the community about the services’ efficiency.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who led passage of the resolution, said the cuts that have already been made have hurt our local nonprofits and torn open a hole in the social safety net. “Many of these services are lifelines for the most vulnerable Austinites,” Fuentes said. “As additional cuts are projected, I believe it’s essential for us to come together to set forward a plan that centers community needs and priorities. By instituting a community engagement and feedback process, we will collect direct feedback on the comprehensive rubric and social service contract restructuring plan as they are developed.”
This article appears in March 6 • 2026.