The war over when to conduct the next municipal election – which will decide Austin’s mayor and three City Council seats – continues after a controversial proposed vote on the subject at council’s Tuesday work session this week was scrapped.
State Senate Bill 100, passed last spring, reorganized the federal primary calendar for 2012, potentially clustering spring primaries too closely together to effectively conduct a May election. So the bill contained a proviso allowing cities to move their elections to November, a time that also garners dramatically higher voter turnout, especially in a presidential election year.
Following a bruising debate at its last full meeting (see “City Hall Hustle: Rock the Vote! … Not,” Sept. 30), council voted 4-3 to proceed with a May election, undertaking the effort (and the cost) alone or with limited county assistance: Sheryl Cole, Laura Morrison, Bill Spelman, and Kathie Tovo voted aye; Lee Leffingwell, Mike Martinez, and Chris Riley voted no. (Political prognosticators have speculated that most of the aye votes would fare better in a smaller turnout springtime contest, while the nays would do better in November.)
On Friday evening, against this volatile backdrop of policy and politics, Morrison and Spelman posted an item to council’s Tuesday, Oct. 4, work session, scheduling a second vote to codify the May contest. (As the ayes hadn’t mustered a supermajority on the first vote, two additional votes are required to pass the resolution on all three readings.) Coming up against deadlines to place voting equipment orders and set filing requirements – and with Cole out of town for council’s Oct. 20 meeting – the ayes looked ready to vote on Tuesday.
But when council emerged from executive session, battle lines had been drawn. Leffingwell stated flatly, “It is my duty and responsibility as chair of this body to declare this motion out of order.” His objections were largely due to the item appearing on the work session agenda, a practice he said had never been used on an item that council was scheduled to take up at its full meeting (where citizen input is allowed) later that week and ran counter to the work sessions’ adopted rules. (Indeed, the timing of Morrison and Spelman’s item riled Austin politicos over the weekend, with November-boosters pointedly noting that the 5pm-on-a-Friday appearance of the item ran counter to the oft-touted goals of transparency and public process the ayes had previously promulgated on subjects ranging from planning decisions to Formula One to Water Treatment Plant No. 4.)
Back at the work session: Spelman moved to appeal Leffingwell’s decision, but Morrison soon proposed instead to hear the item at a special-called Friday meeting of council – in theory allowing all three readings to conclude. After further wrestling over parliamentary procedures, the group voted to waive work session rules to allow testimony from the citizens who had attended this one. The speakers were few and slightly edged in favor of November. Former State Rep. Glen Maxey avidly supported the change, for reasons of turnout, but also noted that the night before, Austin Community College had voted to conduct its election in November (meaning one fewer spring partner for the city); he was echoed by Sandy Baldridge. Gus Peña, saying he spoke on behalf of an unspecified Eastside gathering the night before, defended leaving the election in May. (In a hastily called Monday press conference, several officials and representatives of local Hispanic organizations had strongly endorsed the November date.)
The real fireworks emerged once council began debate, focusing less on the merits of May vs. November than on “the process.” Morrison referenced the sparse citizen turnout at the work session, saying, “People don’t know that this is going on,” which “really goes to the root of my fundamental position – the voters should decide when and how we hold our elections.” (She and the others want to see a vote on switching to November elections as part of a City Charter election, along with a suite of election changes including revised terms and term limits, single-member districts, and more.) Riley, a lawyer by trade, approached the issue on legal grounds, stating that since “state law supersedes our authority as a home-rule city,” there was no legal difficulty in making the change; City Attorney Karen Kennard concurred.
Spelman replied that just because the city has the authority, that “doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a good idea.” That led to the meeting’s sharpest exchange, in which Martinez pointedly asked Spelman why the city has then omitted public votes on some revenue bonds, as required in the City Charter but overruled by state law. “We’ve voted repeatedly on millions of dollars in projects and never once gone to the voters,” Martinez said. Spelman said he was in favor of doing so, but Kennard was tight-lipped as to why that was the city’s policy. Still, Riley emphasized that if four of his peers “believe that moving the election violates our charter … six of us [minus new member Tovo] have repeatedly violated our charter” by not putting revenue bonds to voters.
The meeting concluded without closure, bending toward Thursday’s regular session as quite a lively one, with the second vote due on the calendar. Since none of the members seemed audibly willing to change course, barring surprises, the Friday, Oct. 7, special-called meeting (1:30pm) will likely host the third and final approval of municipal elections in May 2012.
This article appears in October 7 • 2011.