Another Light Rail Hurdle: A Faulty System of Public Engagement

I am going to start by saying that the views here are mine and mine alone. They don’t represent those of anyone else on the Austin Music Commission or anyone else at Bazaarvoice. I tend to speak my mind in a way that makes people uncomfortable and last night on my plane back from Miami I was in the mood to speak my mind about light rail some more.

One of the main problems Austin faces with light rail, like any issue that involves City Council approval, is the false sense that our political process actually seeks out citywide approval. Someone may say “well Joah, what’s wrong with citywide approval? Are you advocating we just force light rail onto the city like a dictator?” No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is actually a bit more nuanced, but here’s the rub: We need to get out of the habit of being afraid of dissent and work harder to get genuine citywide engagement to find out if that dissent is broad.

Here’s the root of the problem. In a city with incredibly low voter turnout we end up with a political system that does two things: 1) Fosters a false sense of citywide leadership that is based on who can get neighborhoods and various groups known for voter turnout behind them on key issues vs. who can get citywide engagement on multiple issues that impact all of Austin’s residents, and 2) Creates a check-the-box, pass-through system for public engagement that equates appearances at boards and commissions meetings, words at town halls and forums and participation in other public “stakeholder” sessions in which less than five percent of the city’s residents are involved as a rubberstamp of citywide approval.

As a result, this is the typical pattern that I’ve seen on many City issues; most recently I’ve seen the beginnings of this with light rail:

1. City Council begins to consider a (Staff) recommendation for something groundbreaking, like light rail, but a large percentage of the research and recommendation originated from paid consultants, meaning there is already a strong filter before the public is truly involved.
2. The main political institutions have almost always been advised, consulted and informed long before the city’s residents, quickly reducing the number of non-usual suspects who will be considered key influencers on the issue. I have tried like hell to get meetings with various members of City Council to no avail, but now that I’m on the Austin Music Commission it’s become a bit easier, but still not as easy if I were the President of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce or the Downtown Austin Alliance. My point is that even someone like me: uber-engaged, fairly known in the City can’t always get time with City Council members. Sometimes their staff members end up presenting themselves in meetings as if they were the ones elected! How can a City with less than 10 percent of voter participation be this difficult for a resident to be heard directly?
3. The main political participants largely consisting of neighborhood associations, local business groups and active dissenters (this changes for every issue) show their faces at all of the City’s typical pass-through mechanisms for public engagement.
4. City Council members are constantly weighing what their base of voters’ and supporters’ sentiment on the issue is rather than tapping into the citywide sentiment through more dynamic and nontraditional research and engagement methods because there is no perceived political risks. Social media anyone? If Egypt can do it, why can't Austin?
5. Neighborhood associations’ opinions are treated like large percentages of the entire City’s population because they make up significant swaths of specific Council members' voter base and they often have more influence than Council members themselves (DANA?), although the membership of these groups is still miniscule in comparison to the overall voter population in Austin.
6. Local business leaders have outsized influence if they come out against an issue because they are seen to represent the viewpoints of their businesses patrons even though no such statistics exists to demonstrate this notion. Sorry, but when I eat at Guero's I don't sign my check and a sheet that says the owner of said establishment has my support in all of his political positions.
7. General dissenters of the issue work 10 times harder than supporters to show up to all the typical forums and make themselves heard, giving City Council (and media) the impression that there is not enough public support for the issue (although we know this is almost never the case).
8. We end up with a City Council vote that is based more on protecting small groups of people and their positions and less on representing the true values of a city striving to be the Best Managed City in America and failure to account for the countless residents who would love to voice their support but don’t value the traditional methods of engagement because dissent  - from neighborhood associations, local business groups and issue-based voters - is valued more than support from the city at large, and its larger base of residents.

I’m not trying to say those neighborhood associations, local business groups and anyone who dissents to the push for light rail (if you can even call it a push yet) are not worthy contributors to our political system. In fact, I very much value their openness and desire to be heard; this is often much more than I can say of people who I know support light rail but have yet to raise their voices. And God knows we need neighborhood and business groups to advocate for various much-needed proposals in the City.

However, we have a broken political system and it’s not just on the voter turnout levels or the makeup of our City Council. It’s broken all the way down to the town hall, public forum level where too much value is put on meeting with so-and-so and getting buy-in from this group or that usual suspect, rather than putting emphasis on making the case to the city at large.

And why hasn’t anyone made a strong case for light rail in Austin yet? Three reasons. [I’m really being blunt now.]

1. If Mike Martinez or Sheryl Cole comes out for light rail it’s seen as a socio-economic or racial play. Instead of making the case for the entire city, our City Council members are pressured to make the case for their voter bases. This isn’t their fault. It’s the City’s fault for having a charter and election system that makes our leadership more voter-conscious than forward thinking. I personally commend Martinez and the other Council members who have come out staunchly in support for light rail, but I do not feel they’ve done a fair job of convincing the entire city of it’s value, instead focusing on making the case by saying it will serve the most needy and poorest of Austinites, which is not true in some of the City’s with effective rail options.
2. If anywhere along that political process I outlined above comes major dissent, leadership starts to retract (some Council members refuse to share their positions before a vote saying they "want to hear both sides before deciding" which is so ridiculous, you should at least be open enough to have a sense of where you'd fall on the issue). This is mostly because their elections are almost always coming up within the next 12 months and it’s far too risky to go down in flames because of a single issue. This isn't just local either. Obama can make every pro-gay political move imaginable short of saying he’s for gay marriage for this reason. Only extremely conservative Republicans can win votes on single issues because their supporters are single-issue candidates more often than not. Well that, and staunch Planned Parenthood advocates. No offense, but it’s true.
3. The neighborhood groups and business groups are so focused on their viewpoints that they sometimes ignore the overall City’s long-term needs to reflect the short-term needs of their members. It's not the Greater Austin Chamber's job to represent the views of North Austinites, but they certainly care about what Dell thinks. As a result, the City Council members they choose to support must often choose between catering to the goals of their voting blocs and catering to the ambitions of the City. This is part of the reason why you don’t see any cutting edge social media engagement for light rail: why grow the base of people involved when we already have a system that allows a few to control it?

Anyway, that's just some more background on why I feel the way I feel about Austin's government makeup. I'm not trying to throw bombs at various individuals, but as a resident and blogger I feel responsible for being open and honest since our system already places so much emphasis on being reserved and filtered. I support light rail because the City has use for it today and will require use of it tomorrow. I had planned to talk about the main reasons a few people are staunchly against light rail: the classic, it’s too expensive/are people really going to use it/not right now argument. But I’ll save that for next time.