Speaker 1:	Good afternoon and welcome to Research plus Pizza, a lunchtime lecture that's brought to you by the University of Texas libraries, and that features research presentations by faculty from across the university. We do want you to help yourself to the pizza, and fruit, and salad, and drink that are over there on the right hand side. We're especially grateful to our generous program supporter, Austin's Pizza, we've had another great year of Research+Pizza and we thank them very much. 
	Our presenter today is Professor Sherri Greenberg from the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She will be taking questions after her presentation, so please do hold your questions until after the presentation. We are recording this program, and so we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd raise your hand when you have a question, and I'll come around to you with this microphone so that we can capture what you have to say. 
	Today's program is made possible by the UT libraries and several fine folks over here in the Perry-Castaneda library as well as people over at the Life Science library. If you'd like to learn more about today's topic after the program, then consult people at the UT libraries and we can point you to more information for your edification. 
	If you're sitting near the back, you're probably missing the feedback form. There are feedback forms in these chairs up front, they look like this little half sheet. We would greatly appreciate knowing what you thought of today's program, and also we want information on other presenters that you'd like us to invite the program, or other topics that you'd like to see covered. So, if you're not at a place that has a feedback form, please do come up to the front before you leave and get one of these so you can fill it out and leave it with us. 
	Also, if you haven't voted today on one of these little wooden dividers at the back here, beside that gentleman there, and beside that lady there, you'll notice that we have some print copies of the voter guide, both English copies and Spanish copies, so if you're still making those crucial decisions for today, then we've got some information just like the library's always does. We've got information for you that you can take for your decision making. 
	So, today being election day, we're thrilled to have with us Professor Sherri Greenberg, the Director of the Center for Politics and Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs to discuss Austin's new 10-1 city council district representation and issues of municipal governance. 
	Professor Greenberg is a lecturer and fellow of the Mac Sherman chair in state and local government. Her current teaching and research interests include public finance and budgeting, public procurement and contracting, public pensions, online governance, transparency and civic engagement, campaigns and elections, state and local government, and education and housing. Professor Greenberg served for 10 years as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, completing her final term in January 2001. As a public finance professional, she served as Austin's manager of capital finance from 1985-1989 overseeing the city's debt management and capital budgeting and capital improvement programs. And prior to that, she was a public finance officer at Standard & Poor's in New York, where she analyzed and assigned bond ratings to public projects across the country. 
	Professor Greenberg received a Master's of Science and Public Administration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics, and she has a BA in government from the University of Texas at Austin. 
	Please join me in welcoming Professor Sherri Greenberg. (applause)
Sherri Greenberg:	Thank you very much, more introduction than necessary, but thank you for the warm welcome. I am so happy to be here today to speak, in fact, about the local elections that we have, and it is not too late, and we have voting centers. So, a lot of people don't realize that you don't have to go to a specific polling place in a specific precinct, we have voting centers we've had for a little while now in Travis County. And, you can also get the League of Women Voters guide online if you go to the Austin American-Statesman. So, just some additional resources for you. 
	And, no, you cannot use your student ID to vote, right? Look at that list. Use your driver's license or one of the other approved IDs.
	So, we hear so much about the national elections and the state elections, but we have a very full ballot here, and if you live in the city of Austin, and extremely full ballot. I say pack a snack when you go, but it is very important. And I think that in some ways, many people are more and more turning to local government. There is the feeling that Washington is, what should we say, dysfunctional? And that maybe the states are somewhat functional, but that the local of government is, many people feel, where you can really make a difference right now. 
	Innovation, and entrepreneurism, and not as much partisanship. Here in Austin, this is a really big occasion for us, because for many years, the city of Austin has been really the largest city in the United States that elected its city council members at large. So, what does that mean "at large"? It means that everybody ran city wide. If you go vote for your county commissioner, or had previously, you voted someone in a particular district, your state representative, your member from the U.S. House of Representatives, but for the Austin City Council, not just the mayor but all of the city council members just ran city wide. 
	And we'd had elections numerous times, and initiatives before the voters to change that in Austin. None of them prevailed until just a few years ago when 10-1 prevailed. What is 10-1? 10-1 is actually modeled after San Antonio, which in about 1977, in the late seventies, went to a single member district for electing city council members. 
	Dallas, and Houston, and the other major cities, as I said in San Antonio, have either single member or a mixed system where there are, let's say, 10 or 11 or so members who were elected from single member districts from specific jurisdictional boundaries, and then you may have four or five others who were at large, and the mayor. But Austin was, as I said, the only one that everybody was at large. 
	Interestingly, Seattle has passed an initiative, the city of Seattle, Washington, and will just, for the first time next year, have their city council members elected from single member districts. But, if you looked around the country, our cohorts, the other large cities, whether it was in Texas or elsewhere in the country, we did stand alone for having the system that was purely at large, not even a combination. 
	So that has now changed with 10-1. That means that when you go to vote today, unless you voted early, if not, I'm sure you're voting today, when you go to vote today, you will vote for the mayor, the mayor runs citywide, and then you will vote for only one city council member, depending on which of these geographic areas that you live in of the 10 districts. And so this is really important to understand, and we have seen, I would say, the most greatest level of interest that I've ever seen in the city council elections probably this time. 
	It's also a big change because the city council elections in Austin for the first time are being held in November with the general election. In prior elections, it was a separate election date, typically in May. So, that is another big change in that you will not just have people turning out, as we say, to come to vote for city council, but you have the electric turning out for the general election. So, it's made for a very interesting season for those running for city council. We have 78 people running for the 10 districts and mayors, that's a lot. That's a lot of people, 78. But it shows the amount of interest that this has garnered with having the elections for the first time from these geographic districts for city council. 
	And, there have been many, many forums, you could even go after this and look online if you wanted to hear some of the candidates again. There have been forums within the districts, and all kinds of sponsors including this university, KUT, League of Women voters, and others. So, that is another source of information if you feel that you need more. But, what will happen? Well, we're going to have a lot of run offs. I think there's probably only a couple of those districts that have a chance of somebody winning tonight outright without a run off, and we'll see if those prevail. 
	But, we're going to have lots of run offs in December for city council, for mayor, I think that is what you will see. So, you will at least ... it will be narrowed down at that point, but in many of these districts, tonight is about who will make the run off, because there's so many when you have up to eight people running just the odds. So, I said there are a couple that I think have a chance and we'll see where that goes. When the early voting comes in, that will be telling in a couple of those areas where there's a chance to not have a run off. 
	But, stay tuned, because there will be another round with the run offs. Now, what does this mean for the city of Austin? Because it's been a long time coming, and the idea was that by having these geographic districts you could have more representation, either where you had a community of interest, because of the geographic area, or various voting groups, either by ethnicity, or race, or party, and we'll see what that means. But, it has generated a lot of interest, I would say definitely. But, what does it mean for governance? This has been a big question. People have asked the question "Well, does this mean that we won't be able to get things done in Austin? Does this mean that we'll have 10 council members who, since they've been elected from districts, will be just operating in their base? Their turf?" You know, "I was elected just by a certain number of people and I'm just going to look at what's good for my district."
	And I would say that you can look around the country and see that this is a system, that as I said, other major cities have had quite some time. That doesn't mean that we may not have some ... A process that we go through to reach maturity, so to speak, that in the first year, certainly, a learning curve, and a situation where also we may only have one person serving on this city council who has served previously on the Austin City Council. We have one of the districts where there are three people running, and two of them are current city council members. That's the Tovo/Riley race. They were paired because of where they lived geographically, so one of them wins, which I think is a good bet. There are three, but it's really boiling down to the two of them, then that will be one person on City Council who has prior experience. For mayor, there are a number of people running, two of the people are current city council members, we'll have to see what happens with that. 
	But, you will have a many new people new to city council, and you will have this new system, however all these other cities have managed and do manage to govern and get a lot done at the local level and to be innovative and entrepreneurial with a system of either pure, single member districts or a mixed system. So, I think that Austin will do the same. 
	We will look at some new, I think, governing structures with having 10 members plus the mayor, so that's a larger city council, looking at subcommittees perhaps chaired by various members, looking at what some other cities have done, even some legislative bodies such as legislators where you have people elected from single member districts, so I think that that will be helpful to look at what other cities have done, and what other bodies that have single member representation have done. 
	But, the issues, this doesn't change the issues at the local level, and some of these are issues that we're seeing statewide and nationwide, but here, of course mobility, or lack thereof, transportation, we have on the ballot both state proposition and constitutional amendment that's transportation related looking at using money from the state's reserve, the economic stabilization, otherwise known as the "rainy day fund," good name for it today. Using money from that for transportation projects state wide. And, we also have, of course, Proposition One on the city ballot which is for rail. It's interesting wording. The way that this proposition works is that if the rail passes, then the city will be committed to come up with money for road projects. So, mobility. We'll see what happens with that. 
	Regardless of what happens, mobility is a big issue in this city. Transportation is a big issue, looking at various approaches to mobility, and it's probably going to take all of them. 
	Other issues, of course, affordability. We hear that in Austin and we hear that in other cities. For some cities, such as San Francisco, New York, it's been a long standing issue, but here in Austin it's a growing issue. The affordability, the wage gap, disparities, and, of course, affordable housing. Another one that's related is taxes, and specifically the property tax, because when you have 110 people moving into the area [inaudible 00:14:18], guess what happens? The values go up, and you have people who can no longer afford to live where they are because of the property taxes, or gentrification, or rents are going up. 
	So, those are two of the really big issues that we are seeing here. Of course, water, despite the fact that we're having rain today, it is an issue, it is an issue in Austin, and it is an issue statewide. Energy issues in general, all of the economic development issues, incentives, a big issue locally, a very large issue statewide, and we'll hear more about that in the legislative session. And, of course, standing here in the library at the University of Texas at Austin, education. 
	So, those are some of the big issues that we see, and with that, I think that I will open it up to questions given our time. 
Speaker 1:	If you have a question, just raise your hand, I will bring the microphone to you. Okay. 
	I know I have one. I've been wondering ... So, with these new districts, do they get revisited over a period of years to examine the population in them and redrawing? Or is that it? 
Sherri Greenberg:	No, that's not it. So, we have a system in this country of reapportioning population. People always talk about redistricting, but really what's required is reapportionment. It goes back to our constitution of the United States, the one person, one vote. So, if each of you live in districts but there's 500,000 people in your district, and there's a million in yours, but you each get one representative, we would say, that's not one person, one vote. To have one representative for a million versus 500,000, my one person, one vote is deluded. 
	So after the census, every 10 years after the census, nationwide we have to reapportion. Whether it's for Texas House of Representatives, U.S. House County Commissioners, City Council Districts, anything where you're running from a district. And so what you're doing is redrawing those districts to reapportion the population. What we typically go by is about a 5% deviation up or down to have a relatively, within that 5% deviation, an equal number across the districts, and so that happens, think of it in the odd year of the decade after the census. 
Speaker 3:	I'm curious about some of the history within the city. I've read recently about the gentleman's agreement where the old city council system had minority representation, and how is this enforced? I'm curious to hear-
Sherri Greenberg:	So, it was an informal. In the city of Austin, which I said had this at large system and was really the lone one standing as far as large cities, San Antonio in 1977 went to the 10-1, and this, what we're doing now is really modeled after that. Prior to that, in San Antonio and in Austin still until now, you had these informal systems. Here it was called the gentleman's agreement. And the gentleman's agreement was that be it known to everybody, the gentleman's agreement was we're going to have one of these city council seats, because they weren't districts, it's for a Latino. Hispanic, as we said, or Mexican-American as they said at the time, and one that is for an African-American. And so, that was just the agreement. 
	There were one place for one, and one place for the other. But there was nothing in law, it was just the agreement. It did stand where you had that agreement. It's an interesting situation because many would say "Well, that was a good thing." And in fact it was one as a, quote, "progressive idea" to make sure in days gone by that you would have that minority representation. Others would say "Yes, but times have changed, and we should have minority representation than just one or two districts given the changing demographics and population." Now we have the 10-1 with the Voting Rights Act, and I'm not going to get too far in the weeds here, and we had court ... You know I said Supreme Court decision in the middle of all that, but the districts were drawn to try and provide some minority opportunity districts to elect minorities. 
	Now, that's not always as easy as it seems when you're drawing districts, because if you do have disperse populations where African-Americans maybe are living all over town, or some in [inaudible 00:19:37], they're not concentrated in East Austin, or where the Latino population is more dispersed, or you have an Asian population, but is enough to elect an Asian member yet? These are all the kinds of discussions. There were months. There was a committee appointed of folks from the community by the city council, and that redistricting commission for the city drew the lines, there were lots of public hearings. One that we had at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in the evening as just a location, that one was packed and quite heated I can tell you. 
Speaker 4:	So with the institution of the new voter ID laws, what sort of impact do you think that's going to have on local elections?
Sherri Greenberg:	That's a really good question. The question is what effect will the new voter ID law have, and particularly on local elections. We have so many new things at play here for the local election, we're voting in November, which hasn't typically been the case for city council. We have the single member districts, we do have a lot of students, will that be an issue with student IDs? On the other hand, it's a midterm election, and you all need to go out and vote, because in midterm elections the trend we see is a lot of fall off in younger voters. You see in the midterm more of the older Anglo voters who are going to vote. So, how will that affect it, too? 
	It might be difficult to parse out just the voter ID given that these other things have changed, too. That it's a midterm, that it's in November, and that we have the single member district for the first time. But, certainly afterwards, everyone will be looking at the demographics, at who voted, and there will be both some quantitative and qualitative analysis. 
Speaker 1:	I'm curious about the effect of moving from at large system to single member district system and the effect that is has on the cost of running for office and on the money. 
Sherri Greenberg:	Yes, so one of the benefits, and it's a double edged sword, I'll put it to you that way. When you're running city wide for city council, it takes a lot of money because you are campaigning city wide, but there were fewer members, and you could raise money from the entire city and people were interested. So, now you're running from a small geographic area, so you don't need as much money, but also you can't raise that much money. So, it is that double edged sword. People who are running in these districts, most of them are finding they just can't raise much money. Anybody who's interested in city wide, they're contributing to the mayor. Otherwise, people who are running in those single member districts are having a hard time raising money. Now, you could say "Well, that's okay because they don't have to campaign citywide." That's true, but you still have to have enough money to get your message out. And, so it is this double edged sword, I would say in that respect. 
	And I think there's probably a few races that maybe if they'd had more money, you may end up in a run off, and we have a hunch who might win those, but it's really depending on money. Are they going to have enough money? Have they had enough to really get over that goal line tonight, or is it going to turn into a run off?
	So, there are advantages and disadvantage. An advantage is that you don't have to raise the amount of money to run a city wide campaign, which is expensive. The disadvantage is, you still have to have some money to run a campaign and it's been very hard for many of these candidates to raise any money. 
Speaker 5:	Compared to other places with this style of city government, is it typical to see so many candidates? Like, you know, 67 or 78 or what, so many candidates? Is that common or different than other-
Sherri Greenberg:	No, I think there's a lot of pent up demand here is the way that I would put it. This is an opportunity that a lot of people see "I can get involved, it's not a situation where I have to run city wide," it's a situation where there are very few incumbent city council members running, which is atypical, and so people feel like "I have a chance. I can cover my district. I can walk ..." My neighborhood is larger than that, but "and campaign," and so it's anomaly, I think in that respect, that it's the first time that there's pent up demand, that people see they can run in a smaller, very localized district, and that you have very few incumbent city council members. 
Speaker 6:	I'm curious about your thoughts on the different systems, the at large versus the one member districts. Is this really just a feel good sort of thing, or does the evidence show there really is a difference in the modern, I'd say fairly transparent situation of how voters needs are met, how people are represented? 
Sherri Greenberg:	Both systems can work as far as governing. As I said, the system of having, in a large city, solely at large was rather unique. You more typically see either single member, or a mix of majority single member, and then a few at large plus the mayor. So, in the end, I think so much depends on the people who are elected, their willingness to work together, and the governing structures that you put in to assist that. 
Speaker 7:	Speaking of someone whose congressional district stops at the top of my street, drifts west, loops around up north and then stretches all the way to Katy, Texas, I'm wondering if you foresee any opportunity in the future to resist some of the more overtly politicized gerrymandering that's characterized the way that parties have gotten themselves elected over the last half century?
Sherri Greenberg:	You hit the nail on the head, half century. I mean, politicized gerrymandering has been around in this country forever. Democrats and Republicans have never been protected classes or parties under the voting rights act. So, the various states, counties, cities where you have districts have been free to gerrymander on partisan grounds forever, and I think that will always continue. And, it doesn't really matter which party is in power, either one has and does use the ability to try and maximize the number of officials that will be elected from that party. Now, I will say that I think technology has aided and abetted in this, because with the technology that we have today, and the ability to draw maps that we do today with GIS and all the technology, you can really, with laser like precision, gerrymander. 
	So, maybe it's been taken to a new level with technology. 
Speaker 1:	Any other questions for Professor Greenberg? Alright. Okay, we want to thank you very much for your time with us today. 
Sherri Greenberg:	It's my pleasure, my pleasure. Go vote. 
Speaker 1:	Absolutely do go and vote. Do let us know your feelings about today's programs, and using the half sheet here you can just fill it out and leave it in your chair. Also, I do want to remind you that we do have the paper copies of the League of Women Voters voting guide back there. And, a couple of you I know came in and asked to find a way to check which of the 10 Austin districts that you're in, there is an AustinTexas.gov website called 10-1 that we can look at here if you want to verify which district you're in and where you'll be voting. And you can also get on-
Sherri Greenberg:	You can also get on the Travis County website and find it that way. 
Speaker 1:	Okay, thanks so much for coming. We'll back in February with [Jenny Barchus 00:28:28] on Jane Austen. It will be a lot of fun. See you next year. 
	Okay, thanks so much. 
Sherri Greenberg:	Alright, I hope that's what you wanted. 

RPP-Greenberg 

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