For the second time in a week, the City of Austin has been sued in the Texas Supreme Court over the wording of a question headed to the November ballot. This time, petitioners are challenging how the city wrote a proposition regarding whether residents should have the power to reject land-use rewrites like the now-defunct CodeNEXT.
Bill Aleshire is the same attorney in . The suit argues the city 鈥渓acks discretion鈥� to write its own ballot language and instead should use the language petitioners submitted.
Here鈥檚 what council members agreed to put on the ballot:
鈥淪hall a City ordinance be adopted to require both a waiting period and subsequent voter approval period, a total of up to three years, before future comprehensive revisions of the City's land development code become effective?鈥�
And here鈥檚 what petitioners wrote:
鈥淧etition for an Austin ordinance requiring both a waiting period and voter approval before CodeNEXT or comprehensive land development revisions become effective.鈥�
last spring with more than 30,000 signatures asking the city to require residents to vote on every land-development code overhaul and to enact a waiting period between when a new code is approved by council and when it goes into effect. Supporters of the petition were against CodeNEXT, the city鈥檚 rewrite of the land-use code.
In July, after council members voted to neither adopt it nor put it to a public vote. Weeks later, council members , in a quest to find a less 鈥減oisoned鈥� process, as Mayor Steve Adler put it.
To be clear: The petition on the ballot does not ask residents to vote on CodeNEXT, but whether all processes like it should be subject to public approval.
The city has until Sept. 4 to send final ballot language to the county.
