Open Government Austin

Why a citizen's charter initiative?

Organizations have sought a more open city government for years to no avail. The primary example of this is the ACLU's fight over police misconduct records. The ACLU and other local organizations participated in months-long negotiations with the police association and the city over police records, finally accepting a very narrow opening that allowed only complainants to see the investigation file on their own complaint. The city and the police association then turned around and eliminated this carefully crafted compromise in favor of additional secrecy—criminal penalties for civilian review board members who reveal anything they learn.

The people of Austin have been told that under no circumstances will the police association agree to any transparency provisions through the current, secret meet and confer process. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "meet and confer" is the name given to the negotiations between the police union and the city. These negotiations result in the contract that governs many aspects of how APD is run by setting the terms that the officers, as a union, agree to as part of their employment. It includes items far beyond just officer pay, and currently includes many provisions ensuring secrecy.

City officials should be able to simply make transparency a non-negotiable item on the city's side of the table, but they will not do so. Police misconduct records are key to an accountable force and opening up these records is no more than what is already the norm for most departments. As far as the negotiations themselves, open meet and confer negotiations are now required by state law for cities starting a new meet-and-confer program. If we don't bring Austin in line with the rest of Texas, we will be an anachronism that allows for unnecessary secrecy.

In addition to allowing more transparency, opening up the meet and confer process will bring more balance to our budget. The last meet and confer process resulted in the city tying up all future sales and property tax revenue without any public discussion. This will leave only city utility revenue in the future to pay for other city services, such as libraries and parks. The city's own budget summary states that the salaries negotiated during the last (secret) meet and confer "are already out of line in comparison to other major Texas cities – on average our police officers’ salaries are between 18 percent and 33 percent higher than the average salaries of their counterparts in the major Texas cities." Given the budget dollars involved in meet and confer and the impact on all other aspects of Austin’s budget, we desperately need an open meet and confer process.

These are reasonable changes to the police process, but there is no alternative to a ballot initiative to getting them changed in Austin—not because they lack public support but because of a single special interest that exerts too much power over city management and council.

The same holds true for economic development agreements. Companies will not agree to public negotiations if it's left up to them. They have no incentive. Long experience has shown that city staff cannot be counted on to bring the public in early in the process, although they have some discretion. Instead, the City typically announces a done-deal and tries to move it quickly before public debate becomes serious--as they've tried to do with the Guerrero / Green Water treatment deal. State laws protecting third party information (company information) allow for a great deal of secrecy and cannot be overturned by an ordinance or a charter amendment.

Only a clear policy at the city that companies must negotiate in the open to apply for tax breaks can get us a truly transparent process. Because of powerful special interests wanting secret giveaways, this couldn't come to fruition except through a ballot initiative, and couldn't be a permanent part of Austin life unless it was in the charter.

posted by opengovaustin @ Wednesday, April 19, 2006 2 comments

Hearing tonight about surprise Guerrero deal

The Parks and Recreation Board is meeting tonight (Monday, April 17) at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the City's surprise idea to move place a Green Water Treatment Facility on top of one of a handful of East Austin parks. The move was a surprise to the whole community, as Council has been secretly negotiating the deal in closed session.

This has been another case of "done deal first, public disclosure second." The public is just now finding out about a major project mere weeks before Council votes on the issue. Perhaps if Council had opened up discussions with the community earlier in the process, there wouldn't be such an outcry going on right now. If the Open Government Online amendment (Prop 1) had been in place, the people of Austin might have been a part of the process.

Today's Statesman has an editorial asking "Is a park the right place for water plant?"

Come out and express your views at the meeting tonight:

6:30 PM
One Texas Center
3rd Floor Conference Room
505 Barton Springs Road

Agenda available here.

posted by opengovaustin @ Monday, April 17, 2006 4 comments

Tax abatements weren't difference maker in Samsung move

Do tax incentives really make the difference when attracting corporate jobs? Not in the Samsung deal. New York offered double the incentives Austin did, but they're still moving here. Reported the Statesman:

State and local governments ponied up an estimated $233.4 million in tax abatements and other incentives for the project. The State of New York, which is trying to build up its chip industry, offered more than $500 million in incentives.

Samsung chose Austin because of its existing investment here and because Austin has a large high-tech work force and a network of support companies that New York's proposed site, north of Albany, lacked.

Central Texas has about 15,000 chip industry workers and is home to the main manufacturing center of Applied Materials Inc., the world's leading maker of chip manufacturing equipment. Dell Inc. also is a key Samsung customer.

"If it was just based on actual dollars, we would probably be in New York, no question about it," Cryer said.

Lots of people disagree about whether tax abatements are necessary to recruit and retain businesses. According to this academic literature review (pdf, p. 10), "Many economists have been prompted to question why municipalities continue to offer abatements indiscriminately when they have been shown to be largely ineffective and resource-wasting."

By their own admission, Samsung's decision to build a factory here was primarily based on workforce and client factors, not tax abatements that amount to a pittance spread out over two decades compared to a $4 billion investment.For the most part, though, we cannot actively debate the value of these deals in Austin because they are secret until just before a public vote.

Austinites who'd like to participate more fully in discussions about tax abatements should support Prop 1 on the May 13 ballot. If Samsung would have moved here anyway (the New York option lacked the necessary labor pool and supplier network), why should homeowners and local businesses pay a disproportionate share of the increasing tax burden for our city's growth?

Whatever you think about the deal, Austin at least deserved to have that public discussion before city negotiators foisted Samsung's long-term tax burden onto average citizens.

posted by Gritsforbreakfast @ Sunday, April 16, 2006 1 comments