Debate Over Austin City Council Election Plans Heats Up at City Hall

by: Michael Hurta

Thu Jun 28, 2012 at 07:35 PM CDT

At this point, every council member and almost all the politicos claim that they favor change. Two factions have formed, however, in what has turned into an intense battle for what kind of change we want. The current iteration of this decades-long battle began when City Council formed a Charter Review Commission, whose inability to come to a clear consensus on a single proposal has invited the competing proposals up for a vote tonight.

Follow the debate as it occurs below, and continue reading below the fold to see who the key players are along with the basic outlines of arguments being made for the competing proposals.

All Single Member Districts / 10-1 / Austinites for Geographic Representation (AGR): When the Charter Revision Committee came to its conclusions, a 10-1 plan was recommended to City Council on a close 8-7 vote. That is, they recommended that City Council be made up of 10 single member districts and one at large (the mayor). The thing is, however, that one of the 8 votes in favor was from a Republican committee member who actually preferred that we do not change the system at all. Advocating this plan are the Austinites for Geographic Representation, who have been in the game for a while now. As a "backup strategy," the group has collected signatures to put the 10-1 plan on the ballot, and they claim to have 30,000 of those -- easily enough.  They're at City Hall in force tonight, wearing "10-1" stickers, and Council Members Martinez and Cole are sponsoring an Agenda item to put this plan on the ballot in November.

The Hybrid Plan / 8-2-1 / Austin Community for Change (ACfC): The other 7 members of the Charter Revision Committee preferred a hybrid plan - that is, some individual districts plus at-large districts (beyond the mayor). During the committee, a motion was made for a 10-2-1 plan, but the members have since gotten together to advocate for what they seem to really want. Austin Community for Change is here with t-shirts, and they're advocating for 8-2-1 (that is, 8 single member district and, 2 at-large seats plus the mayor). There's no petition for this system, but this plan is sponsored on the Agenda by Mayor Leffingwell and Council Member Riley. Council Members Tovo and Morrison also support this plan, which would make a majority.

The rumor floating around is that the council will not actually take action on either item tonight. The word is that there are four votes to wait until August, the last minute for Council to put a charter amendment on the ballot. The strategy for that is two-fold: to see if AGR's petitions are legit and to get their own proposal (especially the ballot wording) as close to perfect as possible.

ACfC's position paper has an important and insightful statement that they place in bold: "Without consensus to move forward with one proposal on the ballot, there will be little opportunity to achieve change." Most 10-1 advocates also agree that only one proposal on the ballot is the best path towards success.

But no one seems willing to compromise. The 10-2-1 motion on the commission appeared to be a political ploy more than an actual attempt at compromise. The heat reached a boiling point at the council's latest inauguration on Monday night when Mayor Leffingwell implied that a 10-1 plan would be going "from bad to worse," placing himself somewhere very different and much more combative on this issue than he was during his reelection campaign. Each side seems to care more about beating the other than actually coming to consensus and affecting change.

If the Council puts something on the ballot and AGR's petition succeeds, there will be two issues on the ballot, creating voter confusion contrary to all the players' expressed interests.

Will we go down that divisive road? Or can we come together somewhere? Follow tonight's proceedings below. Mike Martinez has already tweeted that there are 13 hours of signed-up testimony for these issues, and we're already very behind. It's going to be a long night.