City of Austin Council Message Board

CM Colleagues,

I intend to move postponement of item #22 from the 17-Sep-2015 meeting regarding the $860,000 for state government lobbying.

As the only former Texas State Representative on the Council, I believe CM Kitchen should draft policy guidelines which limit and focus any lobbying efforts to what the current City Council has approved.

I do not support the use of taxpayer funds for lobbying (state or federal), but if tax dollars are going to be spent, then the policy issues must be approved by a majority of elected Council Members.

CM Kitchen has agreed to draft the policy for deliberation by either a committee or the full Council.

Regards,
Don

We had a productive discussion at Work Session yesterday and I look forward to working with the Mayor and my fellow Councilmembers on bringing forward a proposed legislative agenda for consideration.

I'm sure there are a number of Council Members who may want to work on developing an agenda / updating the previous Council's adopted agenda, so let me know if you'd like to help. Also, the Mayor may want to pull together an ad hoc committee, as CM Pool suggested yesterday. So will look forward to hearing from him.

THANKS!