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Camping bans under I-35 could be reinstated. The Austin City Council OK'd a measure that could effectively bring back targeted bans on camping in public. Council Member Ann Kitchen's plan, known as the HEAL Initiative, asks City Manager Spencer Cronk to identify encampments in dangerous locations, provide resources to move people there into housing and then suggest policies to prohibit camps at those sites. Council members Mackenzie Kelly, Leslie Pool, Pio Renteria and Kathie Tovo all co-sponsored the item. It passed 8 to 3, with Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison joining council member...

Earlier this week, the political action committee pushing a plan that would let voters decide if Austin's top decision-maker should be the mayor or continue to be the city manager cleared an important hurdle. Austinites for Progressive Reform – a PAC made up of political insiders and entrepreneurs fighting to give the mayor supreme authority – gathered more than 24,000 signatures. Those signatures were submitted Jan. 11, and on Tuesday the city clerk issued a certificate of approval indicating at least 20,000 of them were from registered voters – the minimum total the city requir...

In a contentious email exchange with Council Member Alison Alter, Austin Police Department Chief Brian Manley declined to "proactively investigate" to determine if anyone from the department participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection in Washington, D.C. In emails obtained by the Chronicle, the CM also asked the chief to send a message to his officers condemning the participation of law enforcement in the uprising that led to at least five deaths. As of Jan. 16, according to reporting by progressive legal news site The Appeal, 32 people from 15 states who took part in the Jan. 6 " Sto...

But right now. it's the source of a very big fuss. The largely ceremonial title confers no authority to the titleholder beyond running council meetings when the mayor is away. It does not come with a salary bump or a bigger office.  But it could carry weight with voters in the 2022 race to replace Steve Adler as Austin's mayor or could enhance a candidate's résumé in a race for some other office.  For the past two years, District 2 representative Delia Garza has been Austin's mayor pro tem. Her departure — to be Travis County Attorney — opened up the spot, which the colleagues G...

Council Member Greg Casar announced in a Dec. 16 message board post that he had enough votes to be elected by his colleagues as the city's next mayor pro tem. The title is mostly ceremonial, often granted to the CM with seniority on the dais or to someone who would break through some kind of barrier – such as former Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza, the first Latina to hold the position – so it appeared Casar would sail through the backstage campaigning that has characterized past MPT races. But Casar's post ended on a now-telling note: After naming CMs Pio Renteria, Leslie Pool, and