Proposal to reorganize Equity, Civil Rights offices draws criticism ahead of budget release

The proposed reorganization of a handful of city offices under the early draft of the city budget is drawing criticism from community groups, who argue the changes will undermine years of work to improve equity, civil rights and services to underserved communities.

As part of the budget plan delivered to City Council members and Mayor Kirk Watson on Friday, four offices – Equity, Civil Rights, Sustainability and Resilience – would be folded into new groups or made parts of other departments, possibly diminishing their autonomy and ability to set their own agendas.

The reorganization would see the Equity and Civil Rights offices combined with the Small and Minority Business Resources Department under the new office of Civic and Business Equity, while the Sustainability and Resilience offices would become part of the Planning Department.

Representatives from a collection of community groups – including Community Resilience Trust, Creative Policy, Austin Justice Coalition and Public Citizen – plan to hold a press conference outside at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon to bring attention to the changes, which they contend were initiated by Watson and interim City Manager Jesús Garza without proper community input.

“The actions of our mayor and interim city manager reflect an approach to leadership that has historically contributed to systemic racism in Austin,” Monica Guzmán, policy director for Go Austin/Vamos Austin, told the Austin Monitor. “Their whole back-to-basics approach and their actions in collapsing and moving the four offices is a violation of the spirit and letter of the 10-1 Council system. It violates the integrity of the structure in which those four offices were established, especially the Equity Office.”

Specifically, those objecting to the reorganization argue the Equity and Civil Rights offices, which had been created as independent entities that most often reported to the city manager, will lose the autonomy needed to evaluate the work of other offices related to combating racism in city bureaucracy. And critics see making the Sustainability and Resilience offices part of the Planning Department as problematic, fearing that developers and other real estate interests will take priority over work to help residents experiencing the effects of weather disasters or other hardships.

Guzmán said the groups haven’t talked with individual Council members yet, but she has “guarded optimism” that there will be objections to the proposed changes when the budget is presented officially on Wednesday.

“I’m not going to assume that they’re all going to be supportive. That is certainly our hope that they will listen and make sure it doesn’t happen,” she said. “Based on what I’ve seen in recent Council activities, the way they’re conducting business … they’re carrying things on like it’s corporate America.”

Janis Bookout, co-founder of the Community Resilience Trust, told the Monitor it’s likely that the reorganized offices won’t have the policy bandwidth or approval to continue doing important work like creating the Project Connect equity tool, the Equity Action Team, the city’s Climate Equity Plan or the newer resilience hubs that partially were a response to recent weather disasters.

“It’s really important for them to maintain their autonomy, because all of these offices play that kind of independent role and they need their independence to not be subservient to another department that might be implicated in their work,” she said. “They need to be free of conflicts of interest.”

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