Council directs negotiators to bring back one-year police contract

City Council voted 9-2 on Wednesday to instruct staff and outside counsel to negotiate a one-year extension of the current contract between the city and the Austin Police Association without taking an explicit position on a four-year deal announced last week by outgoing City Manager Spencer Cronk. Council members Alison Alter and Mackenzie Kelly voted no.

Council voted to fire Cronk earlier in the day, appointing former City Manager Jesús Garza as interim city manager.

Mayor Kirk Watson made it clear that Council should have been given the opportunity to make a decision on any proposed contract weeks ago. He blasted Cronk without naming him by saying, “Last week, a last-minute four-year contract was sprung on us. Let me be clear. We are not going to do our business this way. It stops now.”

He added, “We need to respect the people of Austin … and the City Charter that empowers them (and) also respect our police officers,” who must be sufficiently staffed. “No one should fear the police. Making all Austinites safe … necessarily includes a robust and transparent oversight of the police,” he said.

The current contract expires on March 31, so negotiators will be on the clock as they work to reach another agreement. It was not clear Wednesday whether APA representatives would even be willing to talk about a one-year deal. APA President Thomas Villarreal told Council he would not be happy to negotiate a deal for a single year, adding that he had “no idea” whether the union’s board would agree to negotiate an extension of the current contract.

Council Member Chito Vela sponsored the one-year resolution, which noted that about 250 Austin police officers “are currently eligible for retirement and face a Feb. 26 deadline to make important financial decisions related to their retirements as well as the potential loss of significant retirement-related benefits under the current meet-and-confer agreement, if that agreement expires before they retire.” Vela’s co-sponsors included Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Zo Qadri and José Velásquez.

The other important factor noted in Vela’s resolution, and the reason most Council members did not wish to adopt a four-year contract, is the upcoming May election on two very different proposals regarding police oversight and transparency. If Council decided to adopt the four-year contract, that decision would potentially preempt any decision by voters about police oversight and disciplinary processes set forth in the petitions.

Council members heard from dozens of people urging them to take action in support either the four-year contract or the one-year option.

A number of them identified themselves as current or former police officers and they had a loud contingent of supporters in the audience at Wednesday’s meeting. There was heckling during the public testimony – mostly from opponents of the one-year contract, apparently. As JP Connolly began to speak, he criticized what he characterized as “fear-mongering” by those warning about large numbers of police retirements. A loud voice from the audience started arguing with him.

Mayor Watson put a stop to it, saying, “Everyone has strong opinions or you wouldn’t be here and God bless you for having strong opinions, to be willing to be here so that we can engage in democracy in this room. But if you’re for democracy … you will not interrupt your citizens. You may applaud others, show your respect and support for someone but you will not interrupt. So, we’re not going to have that.” He noted that the heckling had gotten “worse and worse as the day goes by.” His speech ended the heckling.

Kelly’s vote was no surprise since she has been the loudest supporter of the police on Council. She said adopting a one-year contract “creates unnecessary uncertainty … delaying past the expiration date of the current contract,” and noted that there have been 22 public meetings to negotiate. She said the proposed four-year contact “has the most thorough and comprehensive oversight of any in the state of Texas,” adding that the contract presented by Cronk and the APA last week is “not only the best for the officers but for the public.”

Alter said, “I have long believed that accountability and oversight over police misconduct are critical to creating trust between our community and our police officers. I’m one of the few Council members who has been part of a contract negotiation before. I led the quorum in 2017 that worked hand-in-hand with reformers and advocates to champion enhanced police accountability and civilian oversight in our police contract. Our work created the Office of Police Oversight, allowed for anonymous complaints and intended to allow the Office of Police Oversight to conduct independent investigations; many of the things we are discussing today, five years later.”

However, she noted the oversight process that she and other members of the previous Council “painstakingly built in 2017 has been dismantled due to the results of the arbitration process. As we discuss a contract that delivers on police accountability, we must remember that the terms are only real if it is ratified by the APA.”

Alter told the Austin Monitor she would have wanted to add a clause in the contract that would have allowed the city to renegotiate the contract, including the financial provisions, “if there were challenges to the oversight provisions laid out in the contract.” She did not want to go along with the one-year contract, which she described as “more expensive and contain(ing) cascading financial implications for a future multi-year contract.”

She concluded that it was unclear whether the city could achieve greater oversight provisions because state law would require that many of those provisions be ratified by the APA.

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