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Constable Bruce Elfant
Notebook Archives
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Constable's Notebook - October 2006
For the first half of the 1900s, the Austin City Council was comprised of five council
positions that were all elected at large by a plurality of votes. The councilmembers,
not the voters elected the mayor. In 1948 Emma Long, a self-proclaimed liberal, was
the first woman elected to the City Council. The city’s establishment community was
not so much bothered by Ms. Long’s election as they were concerned that voters might
possibly elect four more like her. So they changed the method of electing council
members from the at-large system of five separate races to one where the top five
vote getters in a single election were elected. In 1967 the City Council was expanded
to seven members and reverted back to at-large elections. Berl Handcox and John Trevino
were the first minorities elected to the City Council (1971 and 1975) in more than
100 years. This was achieved by an acknowledged “gentlemen’s agreement” of the white
power brokers who agreed to reserve one seat for an African American and one for a
Hispanic. In 1977 Carole McClellan was the first woman elected mayor, so many believed
that the Austin City Council finally represented the diverse populations who live in
our city.
But that belief was not universally shared. While the power brokers agreed to the minority
seats on the City Council, most often they also chose the candidates who would run for and
fill those seats. The establishment of the “gentleman’s agreement” and the growth of
neighborhood associations helped create an environment where many came to believe that
their interests would be best represented by candidates elected from single member
districts who best knew their community. During much of the 70s and 80s the City Council
was dominated by conservative members who resisted any changes that would threaten their
majority, while most (but by no means all) liberals and minorities supported a change to
single member districts. Since the 1970s, Austin voters have rejected single member
districts or a mixed system of single member districts and at-large positions five times.
Interestingly, Austin is the only major city in Texas and one of the few in the nation
that has not adopted a single member or mixed system of electing its council members.
Last July, Council Member Mike Martinez indicated that he plans to ask the City Council
to appoint a task force to consider “some form of hybrid system that encompasses geographic
and at-large districts”. Some members of the Blackland Neighborhoods Association,
representatives of the Austin Neighborhoods Council and others have also decided to take
a fresh look at restructuring the way we elect our council members. One could wonder why
anyone would again want to go through the effort for an issue that has been shot down
five times. Perhaps the more interesting question is what is it about the current at-large
system of electing council members that still concerns many people and what changes could be
implemented to resolve those concerns – that could receive a majority vote? The November
edition of the Constable’s Notebook will continue to examine the pros and cons of the current
system of electing our City Council as well as various proposals that are intended to improve it.
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