Who's against Prop Q?

Business groups are coming out against Prop Q, the proposed tax hike on the ballot next month.

The board of directors of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce voted to oppose the proposition, said board chair Mark Ramseur in an email to members.

"We believe this measure will further strain affordability for families and employers, making it harder to sustain Austin's competitiveness and quality of life," he wrote.

This is the kind of thing that Kirk Watson, himself a former Chamber chair, was supposed to prevent.

The board of the Real Estate Council of Austin similarly voted to oppose Prop Q. In a message to members, the organization said, "While it is important to fund the City’s essential services, there did not appear to be a significant commitment from the City Council at large to limit spending in non-essential areas."

But more important than whether these groups take a position is how loudly they opt to express it. Notably, will they or affiliated PACs spend heavily against Prop Q? Will they aggressively encourage their members to donate to anti-Q groups? Can Watson convince them to mostly sit this one out?

So far, I'm not seeing evidence in campaign finance disclosures (see below) that any of these institutional advocacy groups are spending big bucks on the effort. That may very well be because they believe Prop Q will pass no matter what they spend.

So, who is spending?

Yesterday groups involved in the tax rate election campaign submitted campaign finance reports.

The principal group supporting the tax rate election, Love Austin PAC, has either raised or received pledges for contributions* totaling about $127k. Almost all of the money comes from organized labor and nonprofits or companies involved in low-income housing or homelessness. The principal donors (full report here):

• AFSCME, the city/county employees union: $25k
• Austin EMS Association: $25k
• ECHO (homeless nonprofit): $25k
• Foundation Communities (nonprofit affordable housing builder): $25k
• Kirk Watson's campaign: $25k
• The Other Ones Foundation (homeless nonprofit): $10k
• Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center: $5k
• SGI Ventures (for-profit affordable housing builder): $5k
• Vanessa Fuentes campaign: $5k
• Family Eldercare (homeless nonprofit): $2k

All of these groups have a very direct stake in the passage of the TRE. The employees union is obviously committed to protecting existing jobs and wages for city workers, while affordable housing developers and homeless service providers depend on funds from the city. To be clear, the service providers actually believe in this work and want to do more of it, and I don't think anybody is getting especially rich off this kind of work.

It's strange to hear people on the right bemoan the "homeless industrial complex." Are you some kind of socialist who would prefer that city government try to do everything on its own? Why shouldn't it contract the work out to experienced private organizations? Why not take advantage of the free market to test out different approaches to the issue, and see what works and what doesn't? There are good service providers and bad ones, of course. And sometimes, even in a competitive bidding process, the city might pick a bad one and hopefully learns from that mistake.

The opposition

There are two groups active in opposing Prop Q. The first is Save Austin Now, the group run by former Travis County GOP Chair Matt Mackowiak.

SAN has raised over $63k (full report here) and most of it comes from people who gave less than $1,000. The only big donors were personal injury attorney Adam Loewy ($10k) and businessman Neil Webber ($10k). There was another person who gave a little over $5k and a few others who gave $1k.

So you gotta hand it to Mackowiak. Four years after the disastrous Prop A campaign, in which Mackowiak raised and spent a bunch of money very dubiously, he still managed to raise a decent amount of money in a short period of time. And while he is apparently working as comms director for John Cornyn's reelection campaign, no less.

When I reached out to Mackowiak by text message about the campaign finance report, which wasn't initially posted on the city website, he told me that he "can't wait to read the hit piece" and asked me whether I would report that Love Austin only has 17 donors – "all of whom benefit from the funding."

I told him he'd have to subscribe to the newsletter to find out. His response:

"I’d rather stab myself in the eye. Repair it over many months. Then stab myself a second time."  

What a strangely specific thing to say. Unfortunately, I'm sure Mackowiak will read it without paying. Loewy will probably hook him up. By the way, if you are also a frequent forwardee of this newsletter, I'd really love to have you as a subscriber!

Moving along...

The other group that has reported spending money against Prop Q is More Affordable Austin, a reincarnation of Restore Leadership ATX, a group that has been active in recent election cycles in support of conservative City Council candidates. The campaign is being managed by Michael Searle, a longtime local operative for conservative candidates and causes.

More Affordable Austin has raised (full report here) $49k from a small group of large donors. Just over half of the money ($25k) comes from ATX Servicing LLC, which appears to be linked to Horizon Bank. Another $10k came from Rex Gore, owner of local landscaping and janitorial businesses. $5k came from tech entrepreneur David Ferdman. A few others gave $1k each.

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