Is it best for police officers, for a city, and for the residents of that city for police officers to work under an active police contract? That all depends on what it says.
Does the contract provide fair pay for police officers and allow the city to fund existing services and meet the growing needs of future Austin residents, or does it promise austerity and vital cuts to services? That depends on what the contract says.
Does the contract provide incentives to recruit and retain officers, or does it encourage officers to work as much overtime as possible and retire as soon as possible? That depends on what the contract says.
Does the contract restrict promotions of officers with a history of misconduct or bias, or does it prioritize standardized test scores? That depends on what it says.
Union leader: Austin Police ready to sign a contract and implement Proposition A approved by voters
Does it align with and build upon the voter-passed Austin Police Oversight Act, or does it undermine democracy and police oversight, transparency and accountability? That depends on what it says.
Unfortunately, unlike any other police contract in Austin in recent memory, negotiators for the city and the Austin Police Association have negotiated this deal largely in secret. The two sides are working out the details in closed session even during official negotiations and, as of this writing, continue to hide proposals even from the City Council.
After publicly declaring last year that it would never vote for the voter-approved Police Oversight and Transparency Act, the APA is now pressuring the City Council to quickly adopt a new agreement. But neither the City Council nor the public knows what it actually says.
The only reason the APA is pressuring the City Council to approve a police contract without seeing it first is to make a deal that benefits the APA and not the public from whom it is hiding it.
The words on the page matter. We can no more trust city negotiators or the APA, which hides contract language it believes fulfills the will of voters, than we can trust a police department that hides evidence like bodycam footage and lab reports from prosecutors and defense attorneys in criminal cases.
The numbers on the page are important, too. The cost of a police contract that results in deficits in the coming years could be paid for by the deterioration of parking and transportation infrastructure, the closure of community centers, and even longer waiting lists for severely underfunded city programs. The police contract is the most expensive single item in the city’s general fund budget, and because it’s part of a police budget that can never go down due to state law, a bad deal could permanently ruin the city’s budget.
Local institutions that oversee our shared resources need transparency, just like those with the power to surveil, search, arrest and use force. The public has seen too many videos that contradict the police narrative to simply trust those who insist on keeping secrets.
Contract negotiations must be brought back into the open and proposed language made public, as Austin has done for decades. This will ensure that the deal can still be changed at the negotiating table if either side’s proposals contain unacceptable terms.
If this does not happen, the city council – depending on what it says – must expect a rejection.
And if the City Council is forced to vote against it, the blame will lie solely with those who insisted until the last minute on keeping the contents of the contract secret, not with the elected officials who rightly argue that a simple police contract is not enough—it depends on what it says.
Harris is a board member of Equity Action.
