City Council could approve a new contract between the city and the Austin Police Association one week from today, but pressure against it is mounting.
For days, justice advocates have sounded the alarm over how the contract could roll back reforms laid out by the voter-approved Austin Police Oversight Act. Now, AFSCME Local 1624 – the union that represents 4,500 city workers – is also raising concern over how it could balloon the city budget.
Police oversight advocates have focused on one piece of the contract that they fear would allow the city to preserve the “G file,” where records relating to officer misconduct investigations are kept confidential. They interpret the contract language as preserving confidentiality for certain misconduct records created before the contract, even though a Travis County judge recently ruled that the city maintaining a G file was unlawful due to the Oversight Act.
A memo from interim City Attorney Deborah Thomas published Tuesday, Oct. 1, makes clear the city doesn’t think that’s the case. “All documentation related to police officer misconduct – whether the conduct occurred before or after the effective date of the [contract], is not confidential,” Thomas wrote in the memo.
“I don’t see how we move forward.” – Council Member Chito Vela
But APA President Michael Bullock disagrees, telling the Statesman on Sept. 27 he felt the contract language was “pretty straightforward” in that it does apply G file protections to pre-contract misconduct records. Bullock has not responded to our requests for comment.
If the contract is signed, it could open a lane for the APA to weaken the Oversight Act through contract arbitration. APA could file grievances alleging the city is violating the terms of the contract by disclosing misconduct records that were previously confidential due to the G file. A third-party arbitration judge would then settle the dispute.
Justice advocates warn that this is the APA’s real goal, to dismantle the Oversight Act through contract grievances – a tactic they used to gut the oversight system established in the 2018 police contract. “The City cannot approve the current agreement because it’s clear that no agreement exists,” board members of Equity Action, the justice advocacy organization that authored the Oversight Act, wrote in a letter to City Manager T.C. Broadnax, Oct. 1.
Council Member Chito Vela shares Equity Action’s concern. After calling on the city to clarify their stance on the G file question, he’s asking that Bullock do the same. “I am quite conscious of what happened with the prior contract,” Vela said. “I want the APA to make a public statement acknowledging that they agree with the Law Department’s understanding of the contract.”
If not, Vela added, “I don’t see how we move forward.”
The city’s budget office estimates that the five-year contract will cost $218 million, but they have not yet provided a more thorough financial analysis of how the contract would impact the city budget. For example, the APA argues that increasing officer pay will help APD hire more officers, which should reduce the amount of money the department spends on overtime. But by how much?
Because state law prevents cities from reducing police spending, the contract would require Council to continually invest at least $40 million into APD’s budget every year, indefinitely. But there are also costs outside of the contract that drive up APD’s budget annually. Add the $40 million-per-year wage commitment on top, and it’s possible that the 10-year cost of the contract could exceed $500 million.
How will the city pay for that? Cutting services? Reducing the city’s emergency reserve funds? Raising taxes? Budget staff may be modeling answers to all of these questions, but a city spokesperson said they do not intend to publish a fiscal study until the contract is added to the Council agenda, which could happen on Friday, Oct. 4 – less than a week before the vote would take place.
The potential the contract has to blow a hole in the budget prompted AFSCME to take the rare step of publicly criticizing another union’s labor agreement. In a news release, AFSCME officials described “serious concerns” about the contract’s impact on the city to “adequately fund other essential city services.” Union officials said their members feel “on the menu, with department budgets and personnel facing cuts.”
This article appears in October 4 • 2024.