For many candidates, making even the $500 filing fee was a financial hardship. Perennial candidate Jennifer Gale got caught in a bind by a changing of the guard at the city clerk’s office. Gale, who had planned to file her candidacy by petition, said that in a previous election she was allowed to turn in the $500 fee to signal her intention to run, and the clerk would hold the check until the petition was turned in. The new city clerk, Shirley Brown, who took office this January, deposited the check instead of holding it. “I was counting on that [money] for food,” says Gale, who is homeless. But rules are rules, Brown insists. “I really tried not to focus on the past. I don’t know what was done in the past and I don’t really care. The law is very clear that you don’t have an option: You don’t get to hedge your bet. We’re not in banking. We’re not in the business of holding funds,” says Brown, who previously served as the city clerk and administrative services director in Sioux City, Iowa.
Several challengers focused on collecting the required 312 signatures from registered voters to avoid sinking five of their precious $100 contributions into a filing fee. But there were casualties on this front, as well. Bike advocate Amy Babich says that of the 367 valid signatures she collected, the city clerk rejected 100 on grounds of incomplete addresses. Though the signers had listed their ZIP codes, they had neglected to include “Austin, Texas” in their addresses. Undaunted, Babich says she will continue to campaign as a write-in candidate for Place 3, the seat for which Councilmember Jackie Goodman is seeking another term. While Babich opted out of paying her filing fee, others, such as Griffith and Slusher, coughed up the money once their petitions were invalidated. Again, Brown defends her rejection of the petitions. She says there were three main problems with the disqualified petitions: They were not signed within 180 days of the election, they lacked birthdates of signers, and they did not fill in “Austin, Texas.”
“I sought out numerous legal opinions to make sure,” Brown says. “We had the secretary of state’s office on the phone many times. They said this is the law and you need to follow it. We did it to protect the candidates.” Had someone sued over the incomplete petitions, Brown adds, “candidates could have been taken off the ballot. I didn’t want to risk that. I would much rather somebody take us to court now and have a judge rewrite the law.”
No one seems inclined to sue over this rash of invalidated petitions, but ironically, the last time the city’s petition validation process was challenged was during the drive to place campaign finance reform on the ballot. ALLC, the petition organizers, took the city to court — and won. Former city clerk Elden Aldridge ultimately lost his job over the matter.
Keeping the Status Quo
Now, with the reform amendment on the books, we’ll see how the measure shakes out in its first City Council election test. While contribution limits could make the field vulnerable to wealthy interlopers, says Blizzard, the ordinance includes a provision prohibiting fundraising until six months before the next election. “Because of the charter amendment, there’s no ability to repay your debt for two and a half years,” he says. “That’s a disincentive. Wealthy people don’t like to lose money.”
Curtis, for her part, concedes that the skimpy council lineup is not due solely to campaign finance reform. “I like a lot of what [these councilmembers] do,” she says. “You see how really popular they are, because of how few people are participating.” She does, however, blame the popular council for not being too keen on reform, and warns against complacency among the Austin electorate: “It’s not healthy to have no opposition,” she says. “Gus Garcia, the mayor … the ‘good liberals’ on the council have done zilch — nothing to defend the law. Most of those folks were on the council [when the ALLC charter amendment was proposed] and had ample opportunity to put something else on the ballot. Still, they have the duty to do something. On this issue, they are status quo to the core.”
What does Curtis, a veteran organizer and state officer in the national Reform Party, see as the future of campaign finance reform? Public financing of campaigns, she says — the process whereby campaign funding is matched by state funding. “We’re working on that actually, people in environmental and reform communities, who helped on the last initiative.” She said public funding advocates are in the process of outlining the specifics of such a proposal.
She cites as an example Minnesota’s public funding policy, which she says has withstood constitutional challenge, and also helped facilitate the election of Gov. Jesse Ventura. Curtis notes that Ventura is currently enjoying 75% approval ratings, higher even than our own proto-president, Governor George W. Bush. “If anybody’s got a mandate,” she says, Ventura does. “Voters are going to see what a good investment that $250,000 [of public money] was.”
Curtis said she’s also interested in cumulative, or preference voting, which some Austinites, including Councilmember Bill Spelman, have suggested we explore. Preference voting involves casting more than one vote in a given race; for example, with three open seats on the Austin City Council, a voter would choose three candidates, rather than vote for a particular candidate in a particular race. The top three overall vote-getters in the election would take the three open seats. “It’s a fairly complex issue; I don’t have a model in mind, [but] it’s very attractive. God knows, single-member districts aren’t going to cut it,” she says, citing their repeated rejection by Austin voters as proof.
All in all, the local political climate is rather uninspiring for Austin’s council watchers. A full half of the Watson council is standing for election in a matter of weeks, and nobody is talking about it. And while talk of “no serious challengers” might seem unfair to the current field — several of whom have public policy and public service experience that could make them valuable contributors to city government — the truth is, most of them are relative unknowns who may remain relatively unknown due to the limitations presented by the contribution limits which may, after the May 1 turnout, be more widely known as “the incumbent protection clause.”
This Week in Council: After its SXSW-inspired breather, the council will be back in action with two biggies this Thursday, March 25: The second public hearing on the Computer Sciences Corp./City Hall proposal is set for 6:45pm, preceded by a 6pm hearing of equally significant consequence on the draft mitigation policy that would amend the S.O.S. ordinance to allow clustering of impervious cover, while earmarking other, separate, properties for greenspace. The draft policy grew out of the proposed Forum development in southwest Austin.
This article appears in March 26 • 1999 and March 26 • 1999 (Cover).