Council OKs creation of charter review commission

City Council on Thursday approved a resolution authorizing creation of a 2024 Charter Review Commission with an emphasis on studying whether the city should change the number of signatures required for submitting a proposed ordinance to voters for adoption. Council Member Ryan Alter authored the resolution.

His co-sponsors included Mayor Kirk Watson and Council members Natasha Harper-Madison, Alison Alter, Leslie Pool and Mayor Pro Tem Paige Ellis. Council Member Mackenzie Kelly offered the lone vote against adoption of the ordinance.

Under current regulations, people collecting signatures for a referendum on an ordinance must collect signatures from 5 percent of registered voters or 20,000 signatures, whichever is smaller. Watson and Ryan Alter have complained that this is too few signatures and represents only about 3 percent of voters, a percentage that will continue to shrink as the city grows.

Lobbyists and anyone who has been a candidate for public office during the past five years will not be allowed to serve on the commission.

When it comes to petitions, Council always has the option to adopt an ordinance presented by referendum if they choose to do so rather than putting it on a ballot. In addition to studying the number of signatures needed, members of the commission will be asked to recommend changing the rules so that such proposed ordinances would only be considered for a November ballot. Such a rule would lower the cost for the election.

Bill Bunch, speaking for himself, urged Council “to not put your thumb on the charter review commission” by urging them to increase the number of signatures required for a initiating an election by petition for an ordinance. He said getting 20,000 valid signatures is not an easy task, adding that the petition’s supporters had to campaign to convince people to vote for the proposed ordinance. He also reminded Council that state law requires only 20,000 signatures for a charter amendment. So if the city changes its regulations to make it more difficult to initiate an election on an ordinance, people will decide to try to amend the charter “with things that don’t belong in the charter.”

Kelly told the Austin Monitor that she was concerned that increasing the number of signatures needed for an ordinance would have exactly the impact Bunch predicted—more attempts to amend the charter with language that should instead be in ordinance form. She also pointed out that the 2018 Charter Review Commission had made recommendations that still had not gone before the voters.

Attorney Bill Aleshire has also written Council a letter urging them not to increase the number of signatures required for a referendum.

Ryan Alter added a provision to ask the commission to devise ethical guidelines for petitioners while gathering signatures and propose how the city might clarify the outcome of an election “where two similar but different ballot measures on the same subject matter both pass.” That seems like a thorny problem but one deserving some thought, given the similarities of the two police oversight proposals on May’s ballot.

Each member of Council will be able to select one member of the commission. Commissioners will be expected to complete their work in time for Council and the public to consider their proposals before any of those proposals go before voters in November 2024.

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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