Austinites Reject Proposition I’s Call for Third-Party Audits

As we waited at election night watch parties for Travis County’s early voting results to drop, everyone the Chronicle spoke with had the same prediction: Proposition I would win, but the vote would be close. 

No and no. 

Prop I, which would have enshrined a program of ongoing audits of city government into the City Charter, where City Council members couldn’t touch it, wound up garnering only 44% of the vote in Travis County. Brydan Summers, the president of labor union AFSCME Local 1624, which represents city employees, thanked his fellow citizens for rejecting the proposal. 

“We know that Austin voters are sophisticated, and they saw through this efficiency assessment and saw all the bad things that were in there,” Summers said. “So we’re just really grateful for the voters for having the back of city workers and for caring about city residents.”

AFSCME helped lead a coalition of labor groups, community advocates, and city leaders in opposition to Prop I this fall, creating the Don’t DOGE Our Austin campaign. The group planted yard signs across the city featuring Elon Musk wielding a chain saw, an image that highlighted the links between Save Austin Now, the main supporter of Proposition I, and local monied interests. The image also emphasized the threat to city services that advocates believed Prop I represented.

Save Austin Now’s co-founder, political strategist Matt Mackowiak, was one of those who told us Tuesday’s vote would be close. He credited Prop I’s loss to Don’t DOGE Our Austin’s messaging and to this year’s surge of support for Democratic candidates, according to Community Impact. 

“What’s disappointing tonight most is we did not lose on the facts, we did not lose on the merits,” Mackowiak said to supporters at an election night party. “We lost because the other side very effectively lied about our proposal.” 

Prop I’s audit plan was quite similar to the Comprehensive Efficiency Assessment Program, the plan championed by Mayor Kirk Watson and passed by City Council in February. Prop I would have required assessments of city departments at least every five years to be conducted by independent companies (the CEAP requires audits every three years). One major difference is that the city would have been required to complete an audit within one year of any proposal to increase property taxes, such as last year’s voter-rejected Proposition Q. 

Critics argued that Prop I required an audit to be “completed” but did not define what constituted its completion, saying they feared the vague language would encourage citizens to file lawsuits that would gum up the budget-making process. They also characterized Prop I as a corporate giveaway that would incentivize the company performing the audits to propose cuts to things like parks and libraries, because the company would only make a profit if the cuts it proposed were higher than its fee.

Most of City Council was against Prop I, and its defeat was one of many things to celebrate on Tuesday. “The defeat shows that Austin will not be swayed by a doomsaying message about the failure of their city government and local democracy,” Council Member Mike Siegel said. “Instead, Austinites believe in our city’s ability to manage resources for the greater good of the community.”

And speaking of parks and libraries, Tuesday’s election demonstrated once again that they are among Austinites’ highest priorities. Propositions A and B, which will create a $260 million parks bond and a $35 million libraries bond, respectively, each won with approximately 60% of the vote in Travis County.

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