Proposed police budget increase sparks community pushback

Interim City Manager Jesús Garza’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 city budget proposal would increase the Austin Police Department’s operating budget by $31.7 million, or slightly more than 7 percent, prompting pushback from police reform advocates.

Some of the major cost drivers include:

• A 4 percent base wage increase and a $2,500 incentive payment for all sworn officers, which City Council approved as part of a pay package in March when police labor contract negotiations stalled; 
• Increased payment into the Austin Police Retirement System to address “legacy unfunded liability,” as required by recent state law;
• The transfer of more than three dozen positions from other city departments to the police department; and 
• A new financial incentive program for cadet classes.

Garza positioned his “Back to Basics” proposal as responsive to Council direction. 

“Substantial investments in this budget directly respond to Council priorities, many in the critical areas of affordability, resiliency, quality of life, public safety, and ending homelessness,” he wrote. 

Corby Jastrow, former president of the Greater Austin Crime Commission, applauded this approach, saying at an Aug. 1 budget work session that the commission “strongly supports the funding increase for our public safety agencies and the city manager’s proposed budget at a time when our public safety departments face critical staffing issues.”

But many more Austinites criticized the proposal, citing among other things Council’s August 2020 decision to “reimagine public safety” in response to mass protests against police violence and racial injustice by slashing police funding, a 2021 state law that financially penalizes certain cities if they reduce their police budgets, and the overwhelming passage in May of a ballot proposition that aims to strengthen civilian oversight of Austin Police Department. 

Shelby Bohannon voiced some of these concerns during a July 26 budget meeting.

“Giving an additional $32 million to the police department, knowing that this cannot be later reduced per state law, is ridiculous,” she told Council members. “The police department is still refusing to agree to basic oversight that was won by a huge margin of Austin voters in May.” 

At the same meeting, Chris Harris, policy director for the Austin Justice Coalition, chastised the city for attempting to buy its way out of the department’s long-standing challenges, such as staffing shortages, which are national in scope, and resistance to reform, including at the training academy. 

“You all have given the police a raise with nothing in exchange,” he said. “More money thrown to the police department will not solve our public safety challenges, and they will not solve the staffing issues.” 

Chas Moore, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, said the proposal represented a step backward, harkening back to Garza and Mayor Kirk Watson’s previous terms as city manager (from 1994 to 2002) and mayor (from 1997 to 2001), respectively.

“The fact that we’re putting money into a police budget … is just the sign of … City Council going back to the 1990s and not moving and progressing in the way in which this very smart, capable city has been moving over the past decade,” Moore said. 

Council is due to meet two more times next week before voting on the budget the week of Aug. 14.

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