Abbott Takes Aim At Austin Again, This Time On Homeless Front

AUSTIN, TX — The Republican Party prides itself on its ideal of non-government interference into daily lives, but increasingly the tactic doesn't seem to apply for Austin. The latest bit of state intervention in others' affairs is a gubernatorial one aimed at superseding recent council action designed to safeguard homeless people.

Once more, it appears the city's contrarian progressive vibe is in the staunchly conservative governor's cross hairs, this time on the council's most recent substantive action at odds with his ideology. At their last meeting on Thursday, Austin City Council members gutted ordinances prohibiting homeless people from sitting or lying down on public streets. The action came amid evidence that homeless people are often mired in punitive law enforcement action with its attendant citations, adding stress to already taxed lives.

But detractors of the move — most notably Gov. Greg Abbott — appear to view the council action as a tacit endorsement of marginalized folks' setting up camp on public areas. On Monday, Abbott suggested he would spur state efforts to overturn the council vote, effectively nullifying the action..

"If Austin — or any other Texas city — permits camping on city streets, it will be yet another local ordinance the State of Texas will override," Abbott wrote on Twitter. "At some point, cities must starting putting public safety & common sense first. There are far better solutions for the homeless & citizens," he added, offering no ideas toward solving the issues.

At its last meeting, city council voted to ease city rules related to camping, panhandling and sitting or lying down in public. Residents lined up in providing testimony on the issue — both for and against the council's proposal — for hours in a meeting that stretched into the wee hours of Friday morning.

Before the vote, council member Greg Casar presciently predicted the backlash the action might engender by more conservative voices: "I know that changing these ordinances will be unpopular with some people. I'm not trying to downplay the challenges that we're going to face, but we can take on those challenges in a better way. We can house people. We can serve people. We can address the core issues. We can improve all of our safety, rather than perpetuating instability and insecurity."

The council action effectively gutted the most punitive aspects of ordinances aimed at cracking down on homelessness, removing instances of specific behavior and intent of those subject to Class C citations for panhandling, sitting or lying down on sidewalks or sleeping in cars. The aim was to end a virtual criminalization of the homeless population given punitive measures taken toward mitigation efforts.

Yet while revamping the local laws, council members added provisos banning obstruction of sidewalks, punishing aggressive confrontation and prohibiting camping in public parks — a ban that was already in place but reiterated in the most recent council action.

Moreover, officers must first issue warnings before issuing tickets as part of the revised guidelines. And on the same day as the ordinance revamping, council approved an $8.6 million expenditure to buy property in South Austin for a new shelter to be build inside an existing building off Ben White Boulevard at Bannister Lane between Manchaca Road and South 1st Street. The effort is an offshoot of the city's efforts to mitigate homelessness as part of a stated goal of Mayor Steve Adler to build such facilities in each of Austin's 10 council districts.

Homeless man finds shade while seeking donations from passersby along The Drag, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2019. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.

Not good enough, some have intimated in pushing back — in various degrees of stridency. Inevitably, visions of the Golden State have been invoked by detractors in energizing California-bashing rhetoric that seems to be a favored, enthusiastic activity of legions in the Lone Star State.

"Austin TX moves to abolish city ordinances that forbid camping on city streets," Cali-Conservative wrote in a Twitter post shared by Abbott. Dystopian images were invoked: "Every area that has removed bans against camping on city streets has been FLOODED with waves of homeless people! I beg you all to oppose this!"

It may be too late for California, but save yourselves, Cali-Conservative pleaded: "Don't let Texas make the same mistakes California made!!"

It's unclear what moves might be afoot by Abbott in overriding the council vote, but he's not shied in the past from taking aim at the more liberal moves of Austin — often described as the blue dot in a sea of red in referring the city's incongruous progressive vibe in a staunchly conservative state. Given past history, however, it's something of a foregone conclusion the governor will marshal his considerable resources in spurring the GOP rank and file to nullify the local vote.

It won't be the first time Abbot's done that. On three recent fronts — the fight against so-called sanctuary cities, a historic Austin council vote on paid sick leave in the workplace and a call for the open display of firearms as an 2nd Amendment expression — Abbott has inserted himself into local affairs with measurable results.

Abbott opposition to paid sick leave

In what city leaders hailed as historic action, council members last year passed an ordinance that would require employers to provide paid sick leave to workers. Austin became the first city in Texas to craft such an ordinance in a move that other cities — including neighboring San Antonio and, further north, Dallas — subsequently sought to replicate.

Austin City Council passed the state's first mandatory paid sick leave law in February 2018 with a date of implementation the following October. But an appeals court ultimately knocked the ordinance down, finding it conflicted with the Texas Minimum Wage Act, and consequently unconstitutional under Texas law. The Texas Supreme Court hasn't decided whether to respond to a municipal appeal as the ordinance hangs in limbo.

Abbott wasn't having it either. In a February speech to members of the National Federation of Independent Business trade group comprising small business owners, the governor decried the measure as an example of "...a patchwork quilt of regulations" that potentially spike the costs of doing business, as the Austin American-Statesman reported at the time.

In opposing the council action, Abbott vowed to back the Consistent Employment Regulations Act filed by two fellow Republicans (Sen. Brandon Creighton of Conroe and Rep. Craig Goldman of Fort Worth) sought to ban local government from regulating employee benefits.

Related story: Battle Lines Drawn As Austin Considers Paid Sick Leave Mandate

While positing paid sick leave as a potentially key recruiting tool for businesses, Abbott said it shouldn't be a municipal requirement. "It should be an option chosen by the business based upon their strategy of what they want to do, as opposed to a government mandate," Abbott explained, as reported by the Statesman at the time.

Paid sick leave ordinances in both Dallas and San Antonio — patterned after the aborted attempt in Austin — are scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 1. But ever in Abbott's cross hairs, Austin's implementation is pending appeal to the Texas Supreme Court.

Governor pulls state funding in "sanctuary cities" fight

In what is his most strident opposition to Austin machinations to date, Abbott in 2017 pulled state funding on which the county had long relied for myriad purposes in a dust-up over immigration. Abbott has long voiced his opposition to undocumented immigration, dispatching another 1,000 National Guard troops to safeguard the Texas-Mexico border to bring their total ranks to more than 2,000. Along the way, the governor has taken particular umbrage at cities he views as being too soft on immigration and too resistant in cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement too root them out for deportation.

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By February 2017, the dust-up between the governor and Travis County came to a head when Abbott took the unprecedented step of stripping municipal agencies — most having nothing to do with immigration — of $1.5 million in state funding, in retribution for a perceived soft stance on cracking down on undocumented travel.

Abbott takes aim at City Hall gun ban

For Abbott, passage of the state's "open carry" law in December 2015 and its companion "campus carry" the following summer was the culmination of his ardent support of both measures as an unfettered expression of 2nd Amendment freedoms. The former measure allows gun owners to openly display their firearms, while the latter accommodates concealed carry of handguns on state-funded campuses.

Seemingly overnight in the wake of open carry's passage, business owners scrambled to secure specialized signs to affix on storefronts that would enable them to continue gun bans on their premises as allowed by the law. Today, one would be hard pressed to find a business that allows guns on their premises — regardless of the law. State-funded universities preferring to be gun-free zones weren't able to sidestep the law like the private sector given state funding rendering them beholden to state law.

Retailers from grocery titan HEB to the lowliest mom-and-pop shop scurried to secure signs exempting them from the state's "open carry" law. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.

Despite the dual victories, Abbott inserted himself in local officials' fight to keep guns banned at City Hall — a hotbed of impassioned testimony where tempers often flare among residents addressing their concerns to council. To help compel city officials to adhere to the gun-related rule of law, Abbott's legal team took the unusual step of issuing a memo to Ken Paxton — his successor in the attorney general's post —insisting his legal team aggressively remind gun-resistant cities of their need to comply with Texas law.

According to the memo, the new law makes it unlawful for a state agency or political subdivision to bar entry to a governmental building unless the entire building is a "gun-free zone" as designated by state law. Texas law does allow handgun bans in portions of a structure qualifying as a "court," if that function is situated inside a multi-purpose building, Abbott's memo reminded.

Related stories:

Texas AG Demands Austin Allow Guns Into City Hall, Suggests Fines

Court Finds Austin In Violation Of State's 'Open Carry' Law

Uber, Lyft hail their champion

Balking at the city's ordinances requiring the submitting of fingerprints among workers who transport people for a living — a local law required of all transportation workers, from cabbies to pedicab operators, as a security measure to ward off a criminal element — both Uber and Lyft threatened to leave Austin if they were so compelled. They followed through on the threat, staging their return to the lucrative Austin market after Abbott took on their cause by spurring the crafting of statewide regulations that trumped the local ordinance requiring fingerprinting.

Abbott signed House Bill 100 into law with considerable fanfare while flanked with ride-hailing industry officials in tow, effectively undoing local rules Uber and Lyft had categorized as burdensome and draconian. In fairness, the supplanting law does require companies to perform local, state and national background checks on their drivers. But it didn't require drivers to be fingerprinted, handing twin victories to highly valuated Uber and Lyft (worth $60 billion and $15 billion, respectively, on Wall Street) so vehemently opposed to the relatively inexpensive requirement.

"What today really is is a celebration of freedom and free enterprise," Abbott said with rhetorical flourish during a signing ceremony, as chronicled by Texas Tribune. "This is freedom for every Texan — especially those who live in the Austin area — to be able to choose the provider of their choice as it concerns transportation."

It's unclear what the governor might have planned as counter-strike in this ongoing Abbott-Austin feud. Even with the tale of the tape known from previous scrapes, the fate of council's latest watershed ordinance remains murky.

What's increasingly clear is Abbott doesn't much like the progressive vibe in Austin that tends to inform its city council's actions. At times, the governor has expressed his disdain for the aura in literal terms: "As I was coming up here from Austin, Texas, tonight, I got to tell you, it's great to be out of the People's Republic of Austin," he quipped at the Bell Republican Party Dinner at the Bell Expo Center on the city's outskirts in 2017, as reported the Austin American-Statesman at the time. "Once you cross the Travis County line, it starts smelling different. And you know what that fragrance is? Freedom. It's the smell of freedom that does not exist in Austin, Texas."

In the homeless ordinance controversy that's emerged as the latest Abbott-Austin battle, the combatants are literally engaged in a no-holds barred street fight pitting the governor of Texas against the capital city of the expansive state he leads. What might happen is anyone's guess, and we'll just have to wait until the Austin air clears.