A group of police oversight advocates has taken 11th-hour legal action in an attempt to halt City Council from approving a long-term police contract that the advocates fear would set the city down a path that would end with the dismantling of Austin’s civilian police oversight system.

City Council is poised to approve the five-year contract with the Austin Police Association Thursday, Oct. 24, but Equity Action – the group that wrote the Austin Police Oversight Act and later sued the city to enforce it – is asking a district court judge to stop that from happening. EA has requested an emergency hearing to address their request, but as of now, a hearing has not been scheduled.

Late Tuesday, Oct. 22, EA filed an amendment to their original suit alleging that the new contract violates key provisions of the Oversight Act, which includes a clause requiring police contracts to comply with all portions of the local ordinance.

The amended complaint alleges that the new contract could allow the city to maintain a “G file;” that it would limit the Office of Police Oversight’s ability to conduct independent investigations into police misconduct; and, it would allow the APA to undermine the Oversight Act by filing contract grievances over conflicts between the Oversight Act and the contract itself. All of which, EA argues, is expressly prohibited by the Oversight Act.

EA says the lawsuit is a last ditch effort at preserving the will of Austin voters who approved the Oversight Act, which was approved in a landslide 2023 election. “We had to file this suit in the first place because the city simply did not follow the voter mandate,” EA Senior Advisor Kathy Mitchell said in a statement. “We will stay on track protecting what the voters passed and nothing less.”

Council members, on the other hand, seem comfortable with claims from the APA and the city’s law department that the new contract complies with the Oversight Act. In particular, Council member Chito Vela points to verbal agreement between the city’s labor relations team and the APA that the proposed contract does not reseal the “G file” – the secret personnel file where APD has concealed some disciplinary records – as evidence that the new contract does not violate this portion of the Oversight Act.

At Council’s Oct. 8 work session, APA President Michael Bullock said they disagree with the Aug. 30 court ruling that declared the city’s continued use of the G file unlawful. But, Bullock added, “the contract can’t affect the court ruling.”

But community advocates continue to warn that language included in the contract leaves open an avenue for the APA to reseal the G file through the contract grievance process. There, a third-party arbiter would settle contract disputes, possibly without consideration of anything the city or APA said about contract language before it was approved. The fear is not unfounded – the APA used this same strategy to defang the entire system of civilian police oversight established in the 2018 police contract.

A group of advocates who have fought for the local justice system to better serve survivors of sexual assault issued a statement, Oct. 22, outlining their concerns about the APA potentially moving to reseal the G file. The concern is not just around reduced transparency into APD internal investigations, the survivor-advocates wrote. The statement references a story we published last week about a former APD commander who was investigated following a sexual assault allegation and resigned the day before department leadership was set to fire him.

With the G file, “Officers learn that they will never be disciplined for misconduct, and can therefore conduct themselves as they wish, because the City is more interested in keeping bad conduct a secret than achieving good conduct from every officer.”

Beyond oversight concerns, the new contract would require a sizable financial commitment that is virtually certain to result in higher taxes, costlier utility bills, cuts to other city department budgets – or some combination of all three.

The contract would provide Austin police officers with an average annual raise of about 5.6% over the course of the contract, but at a total cost of $218 million – an amount that dwarfs the cost of prior police contracts (the 2018 contract cost $45 million over five years). City staff has audaciously predicted this will not blow a hole in the city budget.

In April, before knowing the cost of the contract, city staff forecasted a $60 million budget deficit by 2029. Now, they say that even if the contract is approved, the deficit will not exceed $6 million. A few factors underlie staff’s new budget forecast: much more favorable tax revenue growth, improbably low spending on overtime in early years of the contract, and a regular transfer of funds from Austin Energy that the utility leaders have said is hazardous to the utility’s financial health.

Still, if Council wants to maintain the Austin Police Department’s budget at around 36% of the city’s total General Fund, which has been a goal for some CMs, future councils will have to raise taxes or cut spending. At Council’s work session, Oct. 22, City Budget Officer Kerri Lang shared an analysis showing if Council raises taxes by about 3% over the voter-approval rate throughout the life of the contract, the city would still end up with a budget deficit of about $1 million.

CM Alison Alter pointed out that this analysis doesn’t factor in other priorities future councils may want to fund – like more firefighters, improved maintenance for city parks, and more support for people experiencing homelessness. The new contract and other funding needs can be met, Alter said, but only “if we tax somebody more money… [and] I’m really hearing from folks that they can’t handle too many more taxes.”

Meanwhile, Julio Gonzalez Altamirano, a local policy analyst, writes in his own analysis that city staff’s “aggressive assumptions” make their overall analysis “unreasonable and faulty.” Gonzalez Altamirano points to five concerns, including an “over-optimistic” guess at how much sales tax revenue the city should expect to generate.

He also points to precarious policy around revenue transfers from Austin Energy. The utility has been something of a cash cow for the city’s General Fund in prior years as its surplus revenue has been used to pay for other city programs, but economic conditions in the energy sector and at AE are changing that. In August, AE leadership opposed Council transferring an additional $4 million from the utility to the GF, citing a host of current and near-term budgetary concerns.