Council-approved budget contains record-high police funding, sparking dissent from both sides

Three years after mass protests against police violence and racial injustice spurred the now-defunct Reimagining Public Safety initiative, City Council on Wednesday voted 10-1 to approve the Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget, which includes record-high police funding and sets a new minimum for future city spending. Council’s decision has provoked both the police union and police reform advocates, who agree that increased funding will do little to alleviate police staffing shortages – and on little else. 

An unlikely coalition 

Interim City Manager Jesús Garza in his proposal touted the $31.7 million – or 7 percent – increase in police funding as a way to address long-standing staff shortages and Austinites’ concerns about long response times. Major cost drivers include a 4 percent base wage increase and a $2,500 incentive payment for all sworn officers, as well as increased payment into the police retirement system. 

Austin Police Association President Thomas Villarreal questioned this logic. 

“You can have all the budget in the world, but if you don’t have people to show up and work, those budget dollars are absolutely worthless,” he told the Austin Monitor. 

Austin Police Department staffing data dating back to 2010, which Villarreal provided to the Monitor, shows separations (officers leaving the force through retirements, resignations and terminations) began outpacing cadet graduates in 2018, a trend that has since continued.

Villarreal attributed this gap to Council’s first-ever rejection of a tentative police contract in December 2017, which kicked off a renegotiation process largely focused on civilian oversight. He said other policy decisions, including Council’s 2020 move to reallocate police funding to other city departments and to pause the police training academy, exacerbated the staffing crisis, which is national in scope.  

“The end … result of policy decisions are felt for many years, and the reality is that we’re not going to hire our way out of this problem for 10 to 15 years down the road,” he said. 

Police reform advocates also opposed the budget proposal, agreeing that more money would do little to alleviate the shortages. They also criticized Council for rewarding the police department, which they said has made little progress on reform efforts, and for increasing baseline spending in the wake of a 2021 state law that financially penalizes cities that “defund” their police departments. 

Chris Harris, policy director for the Austin Justice Coalition, is one of many advocates who participated in the public budget work sessions.

“It’s a complete betrayal of the reforms that were advanced during the Reimagining Public Safety process, and I think, given the state law that passed subsequently requiring that police budgets never go down, it’s also extremely fiscally irresponsible to add to the police budget with no concrete improvements to public safety,” he said. 

Funding vs. reform 

The pendulum swing from the city’s FY 2020-21 budget process, which slashed the police department’s budget, to this most recent process tracks with that of other U.S. cities, said W. Carsten Andresen, an associate professor of criminal justice at St. Edward’s University.

“There was talk of cutting police budgets,” he said. “There was a backlash to that. It was politicized.”

In Austin, Council didn’t defund the police so much as it reallocated some of its funding to other departments, Andresen said. 

Since then, Council has restored that funding, and then some. But reform efforts continue, including at the training academy. Although the Reimagining Public Safety initiative is “no longer active,” many of its goals have been “operationalized” into city departments, according to a city spokesperson. 

District 10 Council Member Alison Alter said in a statement to the Monitor that she focused on these goals during the recent budget process “by supporting the hiring and retention of both sworn and non-sworn positions in our public safety ecosystem,” among other investments.

Andresen agreed that police funding and police reform can coexist.

“These things don’t have to be distinct, where you defund something and then improve something at the same time,” he said.

But he remained skeptical that increased funding alone will solve the Austin Police Department’s staffing problems, which he suspects are driven by multiple factors, including an exodus of retiring baby boomers and changing attitudes about work. 

He also lamented the lack of nuance around these issues, which he said has been exacerbated by “more extreme” rhetoric from Voters for Oversight and Police Accountability, largely funded by the police union, and Save Austin Now, both of which recently mounted failed ballot propositions related to policing. 

“It’s really injected something really toxic that makes it difficult to have this conversation,” he said.

The next conversation

With a FY 2023-24 budget approved, both the police union and police reform advocates have their eye on the stalled police labor contract process.

The previous contract expired in March without a successor, shortly after Council approved an ordinance preserving officer pay and benefits. In May, Austinites overwhelmingly voted to approve Proposition A, which aims to strengthen civilian oversight of the Austin Police Department by directing the city to codify expanded authority for the Office of Police Oversight in future labor contracts. 

Villarreal said the union’s stance not to return to the negotiating table remains unchanged, despite the morale costs of not having a contract in place. 

“Officers aren’t going to agree to Prop A language,” he said.

Harris, the Austin Justice Coalition policy director, holds out hope that the city and the union will return to the negotiating table “so that those components of Prop A can come to fruition.” But he also worries that the new budget, which continues pay raises enacted after the last contract expired, and other recent policy decisions, which he said have weakened oversight, give them little reason to do so.

“The message that the city manager and this Council are sending to the police association is that, ‘You don’t need to come back to the table,’” he said. 

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