The city’s Charter Review Commission continues to take a close look at the petition process in Austin in anticipation of putting changes on this November’s ballot.
At the most recent meeting, commissioners discussed a new “letter of intent” that aims to add transparency to a process that is somewhat shrouded in secrecy until signatures are collected and handed in to the city clerk for validation.
The letter of intent would give a heads-up to the city about when a petition was being circulated, allowing staff to prepare resources in advance. It could also standardize the format used to collect signatures, which is left up to petitioners currently.
“Essentially, right now there’s not a whole lot of transparency,” explained Cynthia Van Maanen, who is part of a working group looking at the issue. “You don’t have to identify who is funding a petition effort. You don’t have to identify who is initiating a petition effort. The people who are submitting those signatures – the actual people carrying the signatures to the clerk’s office – are not required to be residents of Austin.”
The proposed notice of intent would change that.
If approved, the notice would alert the city clerk’s office about the petition and its purpose, provide contact information about those conducting the drive and include the election date that petitioners would like the ballot item to appear on.
City Clerk Myrna Rios said her office would be grateful to have a letter of intent as part of the process. She told commissioners that under the current system, they were left to find out about petitions in the same way as any member of the public would – through being approached with a petition or hearing about it from someone. Rios said it was left to them to figure out how to track them down.
“We desperately seek the letter of intent,” she said. “I hear about a petition being circulated because I’ve been approached or staff have been approached, or we hear it somewhere. It’s us reaching out trying to get that information … just so we can get an understanding of what the petition is about. So the letter of intent, that would be amazing for us. That’s all that we’re asking for.”
In addition, standardized petition forms would make sure that certain information – like contact info, proposed ballot language and where to find the petitions online – would be easier for the public to find. And signatures would be considered valid only if accompanied by the signee’s address, date of signature and proof that they are a registered voter.
Currently, the clerk’s office needs a minimum of 30 days to validate signatures.
“It’s all hands on deck, but we still have other duties to perform,” Rios said, adding that they would like to create standardized signature page to make the process easier and more consistent. Some petitions “validate the signatures and either provide a date of birth or the voter identification number, which makes it a lot easier for us to look up. But then we have others that just don’t do anything. So that takes us longer because all we get are their name and their address.”
These changes would be in addition to proposed changes to when referendum elections are held and how many signatures will be required to hold an election that is initiated by a petition. Commissioners said that they expected that today’s town hall would focus on those topics and hoped to incorporate public feedback into their final recommendations, but took a moment to dive in to the details of an issue that continues to be divisive among commissioners.
The main debate centers on whether to tie city policy petition drives to a percentage of the population, which would make it a higher threshold than City Charter petitions because of state law. A memo from Commissioner JC Dwyer argues in favor of adopting a percentage, but during the discussion other members expressed reservations about inadvertently encouraging changes to the City Charter and making it harder to get voter referendums on the ballot in general.
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