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Israel, Watson running in Dec. 13 runoff for mayor of Austin

By Samuel Wonacott
In 2022 elections, Local
December 7, 2022 at 3:16 PM

Celia Israel and Kirk Watson are running in the Dec. 13 nonpartisan general runoff election for mayor of Austin, Texas. Israel and Watson, who have both served in the state legislature as Democrats, were the top two vote-getters in the Nov. 8 general election. Israel received 40% of the vote and Watson received 35% of the vote. To win, a candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote.

Incumbent Stephen Adler did not run for re-election.

Israel has represented District 50 in the Texas House of Representatives since 2014, while Watson represented District 14 in the Texas Senate between 2007 and 2020. Watson earlier served as mayor of Austin between 1997 and 2001.

According to The Texas Tribune, “While both have acknowledged the magnitude of the crisis and have diagnosed similar issues, they’re approaching it through different philosophies: Israel is looking to enact sweeping reforms to alleviate Austin’s housing shortage and Watson is trying to balance the need for more housing with neighborhood interests.”

Israel says she would provide monetary assistance to renters while reducing parking requirements and increasing density to encourage development. Watson says he supports modifying the development review process to encourage new projects, temporarily halving fees related to development, and giving individual city council members authority to propose housing plans for their districts.

Israel and Watson disagree on how to spend a $250 million housing bond voters approved on Nov. 2, 2022. Israel said the city should “partner with a nonprofit who’s going to work to take our unhoused off the streets first and put them in a dignified place.” Watson said, “So one of my priorities would be to work with the private industry, the private developers as they’re developing their projects, bring in that public money, so we would be able to together be able to buy down those units.” 

The winner of the 2022 election will serve a two-year term instead of the typical four. In 2021, Austin voters approved Proposition D, a measure that aligns mayoral elections with presidential election years. Following the 2024 election, the mayor will serve a four-year term.

Austin has a Democratic mayor. As of December 2022, 62 mayors in the largest 100 cities by population are affiliated with the Democratic Party, 25 are affiliated with the Republican Party, four are independents, seven identify as nonpartisan or unaffiliated, one mayor’s affiliation is unknown, and one office is vacant. 

The city of Austin utilizes a council-manager system. In this form of municipal government, an elected city council—which includes the mayor and serves as the city’s primary legislative body—appoints a chief executive called a city manager to oversee day-to-day municipal operations and implement the council’s policy and legislative initiatives.



Austin initiative to decriminalize marijuana and prohibit no-knock warrants submitted over 20,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot

By Victoria Antram
In Ballot measures
January 13, 2022 at 8:52 AM
Photo of the skyline of Austin, Texas

On Jan. 10, the Austin City Clerk announced that an initiative to decriminalize marijuana and prohibit no-knock warrants had qualified for the ballot. Proponents submitted over 20,000 valid signatures meeting the required number to appear on the local ballot. The clerk used a random sampling method of 25% of signatures submitted or 8,334 raw signatures to determine the signature validity of the petition. The signature validity rate according to the random sampling was 70.5%.

The city council now has 10 days to adopt the proposed charter amendment outright or vote to send it to the May 7 ballot.

The campaign, Ground Game Texas, announced they had collected nearly 35,000 signatures in November 2021. Mike Siegel, political director of Ground Game Texas, said, “With the certification of the Austin Freedom Act, voters in Austin will soon have the ability to use their vote to end the criminalization of cannabis in their community and eliminate the dangerous practice of no-knock warrants by Austin police.”

Chapter 1 of the proposed initiative would prohibit Austin police from issuing any citations or making any arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession offenses, so long as the offenses are not involved in the investigation of a narcotics-related case designated as a high priority or a violent felony case. Austin police officers would be able to seize marijuana if they have probable cause to believe that an individual possesses it, but they must write up a full report and are not permitted to detain the individual if marijuana possession is the sole charge. The initiative would also prohibit police officers from issuing citations for possessions of drug residue or paraphernalia.

Chapter 2 of the proposed initiative would prohibit Austin police from requesting, executing, or participating in a no-knock search warrant. The initiative would define a no-knock search warrant as “any search warrant that does not require the officer to knock and announce their presence and wait at least 15 seconds prior to execution.” 

Supporters of the initiative include former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D), former State Rep. Wendy Davis (D), Austin City Councilmember Greg Casar (D), and Austin City Councilmember Vanessa Fuentes (Nonpartisan).

Since 2020, Ballotpedia has tracked 32 notable local police-related ballot measures. In 2020, voters approved 20 local police-related ballot measures in 10 cities and four counties within seven states. Two were overturned after the election. In 2021, voters approved seven of 12 local police-related ballot measures in 10 cities and one county within nine states. Among the approved measures was a ban on no-knock warrants in Pittsburgh that was approved with 81.16% of the vote.



Texas Supreme Court orders city council to use Save Austin Now’s ballot language for police measure

By Victoria Antram
In Ballot measures
September 3, 2021 at 1:56 PM

Austin voters will decide a ballot measure related to police staffing, training requirements, and demographic representation in hiring on November 2, 2021. The Texas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the city council had to use the caption drafted by the measure’s sponsor, Save Austin Now, rather than the language approved by the city council for the ballot.

The court ruled that the sponsor’s language which appeared on circulating petitions complied with state law and did not need to be rewritten by the city council. However, the court agreed with the council’s addition of a fiscal impact statement saying, “We agree with the City that the omission of any cost information can be misleading and we cannot say that including the City’s cost estimate in the ballot language affirmatively misrepresents the ordinance’s character and purpose or its chief features so as to make it potentially misleading.”

Save Austin Now filed a lawsuit on August 16 arguing that the ballot language adopted by the city council was selective because it did not describe the initiative’s provisions related to diversity hiring and inventive guidelines or the 40 additional training hours for officers required by the measure. They also argued that the five-year cost estimate was exaggerated. 

The city council adopted the following ballot language: “Shall an ordinance be approved that, at an estimated cost of $271.5 million – $598.8 million over five years, requires the City to employ at least 2 police officers per 1,000 residents at all times; requires at least 35% of patrol officer time be uncommitted time, otherwise known as community engagement time; requires additional financial incentives for certain officers; requires specific kinds of training for officers and certain public officials and their staffs; and requires there be at least three full-term cadet classes for the department until staffing levels reach a specific level?”

The following language will be on the ballot according to the supreme court’s ruling: “A petitioned ordinance to enhance public safety and police oversight, transparency and accountability by adding a new chapter 2-16 to establish minimum standards for the police department to ensure effective public safety and protect residents and visitors to Austin, and prescribing minimal requirements for achieving the same at an estimated cost of $271.5 million – $598.8 million over five years.” This language, except the cost estimate, was circulated by Save Austin Now on signature petitions for the initiative.

The Austin City Charter states that ballot initiatives “shall state the caption of the ordinance” on the ballot.

The proposed ordinance would:

  1. establish minimum police staffing and require there to be at least 2 police officers for every 1,000 residents of Austin;
  2. add an additional 40 hours of police training each year on topics such as active shooter scenarios, critical thinking, and defensive tactics; and
  3. provide police with additional compensation for being proficient in non-English languages, enrolling in cadet mentoring programs, and being recognized for honorable conduct.

In Austin, initiative petitioners must gather 20,000 signatures to qualify an initiative for the ballot. The requirement is based on five percent of the qualified voters in the city or 20,000, whichever is smaller. The deadline to collect signatures to qualify for the 2021 ballot was July 22, 2021. If petitioners collect enough signatures, their initiative is sent to the city council, which must either approve the initiative or put it on the ballot for the next allowable election date. 

On July 19, Save Austin Now submitted 27,778 signatures. On August 3, 2021, the Austin City Clerk announced that a sampling of a quarter of the submitted signatures projected 25,786 valid signatures, 5,786 more than the minimum requirement. On August 11, the city council voted unanimously to put the initiative on the ballot instead of passing it outright.

In 2021, Ballotpedia is covering a selection of local police-related measures concerning police oversight, the powers and structure of oversight commissions, police practices, law enforcement department structure and administration, law enforcement budgets, law enforcement training requirements, law enforcement staffing requirements, and body and dashboard camera footage. Click here to read more.

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Austin police staffing minimum and training requirements initiative qualifies for the ballot

By Josh Altic
In Ballot measures, Local
August 5, 2021 at 7:28 PM

On Tuesday, the Austin city clerk announced that the group Save Austin Now submitted enough valid signatures to qualify its initiative for the ballot.

The initiative would:

  • establish a minimum police department staffing requirement based on the population of the city, which would require the city to hire additional police officers;
  • state that the police chief should seek demographic representation in hiring police officers;
  • add additional required training time for police officers; and
  • add new requirements for serving on the city’s Public Safety Commission.

In Austin, initiative petitioners must gather 20,000 signatures to qualify an initiative for the ballot. The requirement is based on 5% of the qualified voters in the city but is capped at 20,000. If petitioners collect enough signatures, their initiative is sent to the city council, which must either approve the initiative or put it on the ballot for the next allowable election date.

On July 19, Save Austin Now submitted 27,778 signatures for the initiative. On Aug. 3, the clerk’s office announced that a sampling of a quarter of the submitted signatures projected 25,786 valid signatures, 5,786 more than the minimum requirement. The city council has ten days to approve the ordinance itself or to put the initiative on the ballot. The deadline for the city council to put the initiative on the Nov. 2, 2021, ballot is Aug. 16.

Matt Mackowiak, chair of the Travis County Republican Party and co-founder of Save Austin Now, said, “Steve Adler, Greg Casar, Equity PAC and associated extreme groups will attempt to smear this effort for the next three months. They do not care about public safety and want to watch Austin burn. We will not let them. We will educate citizens about how our police budget was defunded, how police staffing has become a crisis, and about how a violent crime wave has resulted. We can fix this mess created by a unanimous vote of the City Council in August 2020. Austin must rise up and demand a safe city for every neighborhood.”

Austin Mayor Steve Adler said, “Directing the City Council to hire additional police officers at this time could result in layoffs in other departments. We also need more public health professionals, firefighters, park rangers, and EMS to keep our community safe.”

Austin City Council Member Greg Casar said, “George Floyd was killed one year ago, and instead of working on police reform, this group is fear-mongering and trying to avoid police accountability. Their petition drive is about writing a blank check of taxpayer funds to their own department, while cutting off funds for all our other public employees and critical public safety needs. This petition goes directly against what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about.”

Save Austin Now also sponsored Proposition B (May 2021), which made it a criminal offense for anyone to sit, lie down, or camp in public areas and prohibited solicitation of money or other things of value at specific hours and locations. Austin voters approved Proposition B 57.7% to 42.3% at the election on May 1.

Austin, Texas, Police Policy Initiative: Staffing Levels, Training, and Hiring Practices (November 2021)

In 2021, Ballotpedia is covering a selection of local police-related measures concerning police oversight, the powers and structure of oversight commissions, police practices, law enforcement department structure and administration, law enforcement budgets, law enforcement training requirements, law enforcement staffing requirements, and body and dashboard camera footage. Ballotpedia has tracked eight other measures related to police policies that were on the ballot earlier in 2021 or are on the Nov. 2 ballot.