Transparency should be non-negotiable at Austin police contract bargaining table | Grumet

Negotiations are often hold-your-nose affairs, filled with tough tradeoffs and begrudging concessions as both parties inch toward common ground.

But certain things must be nonnegotiable for a government agency. Like allowing the public to see the terms of the deal before it’s approved — especially when we’re talking about an Austin police contract that will affect public safety, taxpayers’ dollars, a worrisome shortage of police officers and the oversight provisions Austin voters demanded last year.

Once negotiators reach a handshake deal — whenever that happens — people deserve to see what’s in the contract before the City Council votes on it.

I’m encouraged that everyone is coming to that understanding now, but that’s not where things began last week, when the city resumed negotiations with the Austin Police Association after a yearlong pause. The public can watch the negotiations in person or via livestream. But the city initially agreed to the union’s request that a contract and related documents would be “available to the public only after the agreement is ratified by the City Council” (emphasis mine).

After swift backlash, city officials shifted their stance. By Wednesday, Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills said the public would get a chance to see the contract before any City Council vote. But how much of a heads-up? Historically these contracts have been densely worded, 100-page documents.

“There are too many unknown factors to definitively say at this time how far in advance, but it will be as much as is reasonable and practical,” Mills said.

Back at the table, Austin police union, city differ on police oversight implementation

Mayor Kirk Watson, who has been pressing to get everyone back to the bargaining table, said his expectation would be for the public to have at least two weeks to review any contract before it goes to the council for a vote.

“If city management and the police union sign off on a proposed contract that is, in their view, ready to be ratified by the governing body, then the public will see that contract with ample opportunity to digest and review it before council votes on it,” Watson told me Thursday via email. “Typically, items are posted two weeks before a meeting in which Council takes action on an item. In my view, that is the minimum for a proposed police contract.”

When I caught up Friday with Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock, he said he, too, expects the public will get to see the contract before any council vote — which could be well in the future, judging by all the issues that need to be hashed out by negotiators.

But it’s clear the police union is feeling cautious after being left at the altar twice before: first with a contract the council kicked back to the bargaining table in 2017, and then with the contract the council tabled last year (rightly, in my view) so voters could decide the police oversight measures on the May 2023 ballot.

“We've not had good experiences most recently, and it's not through any fault of officers or the association,” Bullock told me. “We’ll naturally be hesitant in all of this process to not get burned for a third time.”

The state law on the access to these records is a source of debate. Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code says a labor contract and related documents aren’t subject to the open records law until after a government body has ratified the agreement. That seems to contradict Chapter 142, which says those records aren’t subject to the open records law until the agreement is ready to be ratified.

Ron DeLord, lead negotiator for the police union, argues those provisions mean the records cannot be released any earlier. Others have argued a city still has the discretion to release those records — it just cannot be compelled to do so under the open records law.

Even the opinions from the attorney general’s office on this part of the law have shifted. Opinions from 2001 and 2004 said Austin “may withhold” records related to police contract negotiations, using wording that sounds discretionary; while four opinions between 2008 and 2018 said information being used in labor contract negotiations “must be withheld.”

While it sounds like the parties have agreed to release any proposed contract in advance of the council vote, other records remain under wraps. At the police union’s request, copies of proposed contract language offered during negotiations are not being shared with the public, as they were in the past.

Bullock noted the negotiations are “ever-fluid and changing.”

“Just having the (proposed language) out there tends to cause more confusion than it actually helps,” he said, given how quickly a proposal can be revised or replaced.

Yet this makes it harder for anyone watching the process, including police reform advocates, to follow the discussions at the bargaining table. People can hear what's being said, but without seeing the draft language being discussed, you can feel like you walked into the middle of a conversation without knowing which crucial parts you missed.

For instance, Equity Action’s Kathy Mitchell told me after attending Wednesday’s bargaining session: “There was a lot of talk about the oversight system, and there are two apparently different drafts (of that portion of the contract) ... and there was simply no way to tell anything from what we were hearing about what's in those things.”

Which is kind of a big deal to Equity Action, the authors of the more robust police oversight provisions that 80% of voters backed last May. Some of those provisions can be accomplished only through the police contract — a deal that will be hammered out between a police union that fought Proposition A and a city that Equity Action has already sued for not implementing other parts of the act.

You can see why Equity Action would have some trust issues here.

More: City of Austin, police union agree to begin contract negotiations after over a year

Indeed, trust is in short supply all around, given the bruising battles of the past and the stakes of the present. All the more reason why transparency — being as clear as possible about what’s on the table and what lands in the final agreement — should be the order of the day.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Public will get to see Austin police contract before any vote | Grumet