The head of the Austin NAACP has submitted an emergency filing to the Texas Supreme Court to have the Austin City Council’s chosen ballot language overturned for Proposition B, which would allow voters to have the final say on the proposed $1.2-billion expansion of the Austin Convention Center.
“The filing was on behalf of more than 30,000 Austin residents who successfully petitioned the Austin City Council to require a vote on the $1.2 billion expansion of the convention center and to repurpose public funds from the convention business to promote cultural and heritage tourism including live music, transportation and local business,” says a statement from Unconventional Austin, a political action committee that opposes the expansion.
Ballot language crafted by Austin staffers is once again at the center of controversy. According to Linder and Unconventional Austin, the proposition is written in such a way that it will mislead and confuse voters into causing their ballot in favor of the city.
“The language says the city must pay for the convention center expansion approval election. That is a false statement,” says local attorney Fred Lewis, who in 2018 also led the charge to give voters the final say in any sweeping changes to Austin’s land development code. Lewis claims the wording of the ballot item intentionally leaves out the specific demands of their petition.
“It limits the Convention Center to getting 34-percent of the Hotel Occupancy Tax. It’s currently getting 72-percent,” Lewis says.
The emergency filing submitted by Nelson Linder reads as follows:
“Realtor brings this action in mandamus maintaining that this ballot language does not comply in two respects with the Court’s common law test in Dacon v. Parker 466 S.W. 3d 820 (Tex. 2015). First, the ballot language states that the city must pay for the cost of a future convention center expansion election, which is false and misleading (there is no additional cost to the city for any ballot measure in November for even-numbered years because the city holds council elections then anyway.) Second, the ballot language fails to inform voters of one of two chief features of the initiative, which is that funds would be redirected from the convention center to cultural, arts, and other authorized tourism-related programs.”
In the coming days, the Texas Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the petition for mandamus. The city will have the opportunity to respond and the court may make a determination on the ballot language.
In 2018, the city council was also accused of intentionally misleading voters via ballot language related to an item that would’ve allowed a third-party to audit every department in the city government. That proposition, which was staunchly opposed by all but two city council members (Ellen Troxclair and Ora Houston), was eventually defeated by voters.
