RE Petition Drives and Austin’s Low Threshold for Signatures

Monday saw the rekindling of homelessness as an issue at city hall. More on this story in today’s reads (see, Group Says It Has Enough Signatures To Put Austin's Homelessness Ordinances), but essentially a group, Save Austin Now, has filed 24,087 signatures calling for a ballot initiative to reinstate bans on camping, panhandling, and sitting or lying down in public in certain areas of the city. The City Clerk’s office verifies the signatures over the next three to five weeks.

As a recap, at its June 20, 2019 meeting, the Austin City Council loosened its laws around public camping, solicitation and sitting or lying down in some areas of the city. Led by Council Member Greg Casar (District 4) he and advocates asserted those ordinances unfairly targeted Austin’s homeless population.

Beyond this issue, we wanted to highlight the signature process.

To propose a new law, petitioners in Austin must collect either signatures from 20,000 voters or 5% of voters, whichever number is smaller. Twenty-thousand signatures is currently about 3% of Austin voters and will continue to be a lower percentage as the city grows. Of particular note, this is a relatively low threshold compared to Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. Only El Paso has a smaller signature requirement. The below chart lays out comparisons.

In October 2019 the City Auditor’s office released a special report, Citizen Initiatives, which takes a deeper dive and worth a read.

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//The Bingham Group Team