Proponents of Proposition A alleged Wednesday that the opposition to the measure from San Antonio elected officials and the business community stems from a desire to protect future plans to amend the city’s charter.
“Your mayor, business community and elected officials would rather go back on the promises that they made [and] tank criminal justice reform and abortion access in this city for their own political and financial gains,” said ACT 4 SA Executive Director Ananda Tomas at a press conference. A policing reform group, ACT 4 SA led the effort to get the proposed Justice Charter amendment on the May 6 city ballot.
It’s a charge that Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who cited public safety concerns as the reason he encouraged voters to defeat Prop A, and others reject.
Changes to the city charter can only be made every two years. If Prop A passes, plans to increase City Council member pay and remove salary and tenure caps for the city manager — moves that would require voters to approve changes to the city charter — would have to wait.
“The mayor stands by his previous statements on Proposition A,” Bruce Davidson, the mayor’s spokesman, said in a text. “He doesn’t base his policy positions on ulterior motives.”
Proposition A asks voters if the city should change its charter to decriminalize marijuana and abortion, further restrict police officers’ use of no-knock warrants, ban chokeholds, expand the city’s cite-and-release policy for some low-level, nonviolent crimes and establish a justice director position within the city’s administration.
In 2021, voters approved a change that allowed bond money to be spent on affordable housing. In 2018, voters approved changes that capped the tenure and compensation for future San Antonio city managers and changed rules regarding arbitration for the firefighters union’s labor contract.
Though former City Manager Sheryl Sculley was the target of those tenure and salary reforms, City Manager Erik Walsh is the first to serve under them. City managers can serve eight years and their compensation is capped to 10 times the amount of the lowest paid, full-time city employee. Under the current city charter, his last year would be 2027.
If Prop A is approved, another charter election could occur no sooner than 2025.
“In order to accomplish keeping Erik around, we’re gonna have to amend the charter,” Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8) recently told Axios. “And if Prop A passes, that gets us dangerously close to that deadline and will make it unnecessarily difficult.”
Elected officials should be focused on what’s good for the community, not the city manager, Alex Birnel, advocacy director for MOVE Texas, said at the press conference.
“When we do politics this way, it makes it crystal clear the need for genuine grassroots efforts that fight for people in San Antonio on critical issues in our daily lives, not merely about one man’s job in 2027,” Birnel said. “How many people will lose work as a result of arrest by 2027? These are the things that we should be concerned about.”
The San Antonio SAFE PAC, which is allied with chambers of commerce and business leaders in opposing Prop A, is “wholly focused on defeating this amendment because we think that not arresting people for stealing $750, for causing $2,500 in damage or for abusing their spouses is bad policy and bad for the city,” said Kelton Morgan, the PAC’s political consultant.
The idea that opposition is based on the timing of charter amendment elections and other city priorities is an “obscure conspiracy theory,” Morgan said. “It sounds to me like someone wants to change the subject because they’re losing.”
Political action campaigns have spent nearly $2 million, more than 10 times what ACT 4 SA has spent, to sway voters against Prop A.
