In many ways, 2024 was a year of upheaval and realignment for city government in Austin. The police department and city broke through a long stalemate to secure a police contract, and a new police chief has taken the helm at APD. Austin’s interim city manager, Jesús Garza, fell under scrutiny over shady payments from the city to a couple of his friends, but now the city is under the leadership of a new permanent city manager, T.C. Broadnax. At the state level this year, some of the most impactful stories we published focused on criminal justice – that included stories about attempted executions, Greg Abbott’s pardoning of the man who killed a Black Lives Matter protester, and the state’s history of forced labor in prisons. Working chronologically, here are some of the biggest stories we covered this year.
José Garza Beats Republican Opponent
November election results in Travis County and around the country may have shown a rightward shift among voters, but that trend was not a factor in March when Travis County’s incumbent District Attorney José Garza easily prevailed over a well-funded, more conservative challenger in the Democratic primary.
Garza campaigned in 2020, when he was first elected as the county’s top prosecutor, on a progressive approach to the office that de-emphasized incarceration as a crime-prevention tool. He stuck to that approach while in office and his primary opponent attempted to make the campaign a referendum on Garza’s policies. Right-wing donors were a major factor in the race, with The Wall Street Journal revealing in September that Elon Musk had funded a shadowy effort to unseat Garza.
But, amid data showing that violent crime in Austin has fallen since Garza took office, Travis County voters were not swayed. Garza ended up winning the primary by more than 30 points and he secured a second term, Nov. 5, by winning 68% of the vote.
Students Protest Bombing in Gaza
As protests against Israel’s occupation and increasingly destructive military campaign in Palestine swept the nation in April, Austin had its time in the spotlight. We characterized the response from the University of Texas to the student-led campus protests that occurred here as “UT’s war on students.” The view from the ground fully supported that description. University police officers and state troopers, summoned at the request of UT President Jay Hartzell, violently disrupted peaceful demonstrations and arrested dozens of people, most of whom were students.
Though individuals throughout the justice system acted quickly to dismiss many of the charges filed during the first day of mass arrests on April 24, UT changed their arrest strategy during the second round, April 29. As a result, many of those criminal cases remain pending. Some of the students who were arrested are still fighting in court and against UT administration to win a legal settlement and to fight suspensions.
Greg Abbott Pardons Murderer of Protester
One of District Attorney José Garza’s biggest successes in his first term – probably the biggest – was the successful prosecution of Daniel Perry, the Army sergeant convicted of murdering Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster. But Gov. Greg Abbott wiped that victory away in May by pardoning Perry, who wound up serving just one year in prison.
“The [Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles] and the Governor have put their politics over justice and made a mockery of our legal system,” Garza said after the pardon. “Their actions are contrary to the law.” Garrett Foster’s fiancée, Whitney Mitchell, who was at his side when Perry gunned him down, also condemned Abbott’s action, saying, “Governor Abbott has shown that, to him, only certain lives matter.”
Development Reform Takes Off
May was perhaps the most significant month of the year for City Council, because it was when they took the most substantial steps toward changing Austin’s rules around housing development in decades. That month, Council adopted a suite of ordinances that would reduce the amount of land needed to build one home, allow apartments to be built closer to single-family homes, and created new zoning districts intended to attract construction of tall residential towers near planned light-rail stations.
The changes were met with criticism from people and groups who fear they will exacerbate gentrification and displacement in the city’s Eastside neighborhoods that have historically been home to much of Austin’s Black and Latino populations. It’s still too early to say if those fears will come to pass or if, like proponents of the changes have argued, the changes will have modest impacts on housing prices and will allow for new types of housing to be built throughout the city. But one thing is clear following the Nov. 5 election, which cemented Council’s pro-housing majority: The next Council is not likely to backpedal on any of the changes they made in May.
Plantations to Prison Farms
This year, the roughly two-thirds of Texas prisoners who live in housing units without AC endured another extremely hot summer. Some of those incarcerated people worked in fields for no pay and returned home to cells that could exceed 110 degrees. In June, the Chronicle took a close look at the history of unpaid, forced labor in Texas prisons, and the connection between that labor and unbearable living conditions today. Every Texas prison established before the 1980s is built on a former slave plantation. Today, Texas is one of a handful of states, all in the South, that pay no wages to incarcerated workers. Though prisoners don’t pick cotton by hand anymore, using machinery, they continue to work the same cotton fields that slaves labored in 160 years ago.
Formerly incarcerated Texans told the Chronicle about their experiences in the early 2000s doing farmwork under the watchful eye of “high-riders,” armed guards on horseback. Robert Hockley, who was 17 the first time he saw a cotton field and was expected to pick from it, described the ache in his chest at the sight of the white acres. “You felt the agony. You felt the suffering. It’s no different from seeing a gas chamber,” he said. “At 17, I’m under the assumption that I have rights. And my right is to say ‘hell no.’ And I was sadly mistaken. They had designed the system for people like me, who would say ‘hell no.’ And that system was as brutal as I could ever be.”
Austin ISD’s Budget Woes Worsen
By August, Austin ISD was realizing that the district’s budget crisis was so bad that it would have to cut a large part of its operating expenses, and even if voters approved more funding through a property tax increase, the district would still be $78 million in the red. Since that tax increase passed in November, that is the situation we find ourselves in.
So what’s on the chopping block, budget-wise? AISD’s Jacob Reach presented 23 possible approaches to the budget cutting, including eliminating planning breaks for teachers in elementary schools (projected savings: $8 million); closing and consolidating schools ($1 million to $1.5 million per school); reducing bus service ($6 million); eliminating staff positions ($4 million); and laying off nurses ($2.5 million). But Superintendent Matias Segura hinted that a more fundamental realignment was necessary, spurring concerns that the district could, as it did in 2019, close and consolidate schools on the Eastside.
Austin Gets a New Police Chief
The year saw the resolution of several notable stories related to the Austin Police Department – first of which being City Council’s confirmation of Lisa Davis as APD’s next chief in August. Davis, who spent her entire 32-year law enforcement career working her way up the chain of command in the Cincinnati PD, is just the second woman to serve as the department’s permanent chief.
Davis assumes leadership of the department at a time when City Council members are eager to move beyond the tension that colored the relationship between APD and Council for the past five years. Many feel Davis is well-equipped to take on that mission. To get started, she launched a 100-day plan in November to hear from a range of community leaders and stakeholders – both those who champion APD and those who have been critical – to figure out what the department is doing well and where improvements can be made.
Davis is well-liked so far, but the rubber has yet to really meet the road at this early point in her tenure. Her leadership will be tested in how she handles the department’s next political crisis, which could be an egregious police shooting, a bitter budget fight, or how she works with President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Justice over the next four years.
Secret Police Personnel File, Open Sesame
At the end of August, Travis County District Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel affirmed an argument made by some of Austin’s police oversight advocates for over two decades. Advocates long argued that the portion of state law that says police departments “may” use a secret personnel file (known as the “G file”) to store records relating to some misconduct investigations meant that the G file was discretionary. The city’s Law Department has disagreed for just as long.
Cantú Hexsel’s ruling, which declared that the city and APD were “unlawfully” maintaining a G file, made the answer clear: The G file is, and always has been, optional. As a result of that ruling, the city has begun to slowly – and at significant cost to the public – release some records that had been stored within the G file. The city has also ended their longstanding practice of fighting subpoenas from prosecutors seeking G file records. Advocates have maintained that making these records more accessible will help hold officers accountable for wrongdoing and help improve policing overall. It’s too early to say if that will hold true, but it is the case that opening up the G file will result in more transparency, which we argue is a vital feature of government.
Police Secure a Labor Contract
In October, Austin Police officers won a new long-term labor contract after going more than a year without one. The new agreement will provide officers with raises for every year of the five-year contract, as well as provide a range of other stipends and incentives intended to boost recruitment of new officers and retention of existing personnel.
The agreement will not be cheap – it is projected to cost $218 million over the course of the contract and will require City Council to raise taxes, cut spending elsewhere, or borrow money from Austin Energy at higher rates. Those fiscal impacts are certain, but how much the new contract will impact officer recruitment and retention – the primary ways the Austin Police Association has said a new contract will benefit APD – remain less certain.
And even if the department is able to fill its ranks (currently, APD has about 300 officer vacancies), will that even translate to less crime? Over the past two years, violent crime rates in Austin have been falling – even as APD and the APA have argued that low officer staffing has impacted their ability to keep the city safe. Hiring more police officers may impact that trend, but given how the cost of the contract will affect other city priorities and services, will it have been worth it?
Shady Contracts Confirmed as Quite Shady
Jesús Garza may have stepped down as Austin’s interim city manager in May, but he’s not completely done with city government just yet. He’s got an appointment with the city’s Ethics Review Commission in his future, following the conclusion of an outside investigation this fall that found contracts he authorized with two consultants violated city ethics rules.
The investigation confirmed Chronicle reporting from more than a year ago that revealed Garza circumvented City Council authority to contract Laura Huffman and Joe Canales where they worked as de facto assistant city managers. Over the course of 2023, the two consultants were paid more than $500,000, which far exceeds the contract amount city managers are allowed to approve without Council approval.
After the Chronicle published its story, an Austinite filed an anonymous ethics complaint at Garza which triggered the outside investigation. Now, the ERC will hold a hearing to determine if they agree that the former manager violated ethics rules. He won’t face any serious sanctions if he is found liable, but the public record will show that the contracts ran afoul of city rules.
This article appears in December 13 • 2024.