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Austin leaders crowded City Hall’s front steps Wednesday to denounce Proposition I, the November ballot measure that would amend the city charter and require an independent audit of all city operations every five years.
The rally’s speakers, which included U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, and Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, are not opposed to an audit of city spending. But this particular proposal, they argued, has the potential to gut city departments because it requires the independent contractor conducting the audit to find enough savings to cover the cost of each assessment, which opponents predict could cost $5.2 to $20 million.
“Prop I dictates that consultants must identify enough cuts to pay their own fees … it won’t even matter if the cuts don’t make sense,” Fuentes said. “They can propose for us to shorten hours at Barton Springs. They can propose for us to close libraries on certain days. They can make proposals that are not feasible, that don’t work, and that are not aligned with our Austin values.”
The proposal comes months after the Austin City Council established a separate process mandating comprehensive efficiency audits, despite the city already having an independent auditor’s office. Both audit proposals stem from the overwhelming defeat of Proposition Q last November, which would have raised over $100 million to fund parks, social programs and emergency services. The loss revealed growing skepticism among voters in a tax-friendly city about City Hall’s fiscal stewardship.
Save Austin Now PAC — led by former chair of the Travis County Republican Party, Matt Mackowiak — began collecting signatures around that time in hopes of placing the audit proposition on the Nov. 2026 ballot. The group successfully certified more than 20,000 in July, the threshold needed to put an item in front of voters.
Many at the Wednesday afternoon rally carried signs saying “Don’t DOGE our Austin,” the name a political action committee opposing the proposition chose. The slogan refers to the now-defunct U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, which was initially led by Elon Musk. The program slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from federal departments, leading to sweeping layoffs and some government disruptions.
Casar was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives while DOGE executed the cuts.
“I watched what happened firsthand. Hundreds of thousands of hardworking public servants were pushed out. Life-saving aid and care cut off,” Casar said at the rally. “Prop I would be Austin’s own version of Elon Musk’s DOGE.”
Members of Texas’ American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) gather outside Austin City Hall before a “Don’t DOGE my Austin” rally against Proposition I in Austin, TX on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. ELI HARTMAN FOR AUSTIN CURRENT
Audit versus audit
While the city-led initiative is moving ahead — council members approved in July Public Works LLC to conduct the audit over 25 other competitors — supporters of Proposition I argue that having the assessment written within the charter is necessary for true independence and permanence. Unlike the audit ordinance that City Council approved, any changes to Prop I would have to be approved by voters in the future.
Bill Aleshire, a lawyer and former Travis County Judge who drafted the charter amendment, disagreed with the argument that it would gut some city departments, as the consultant would be professional and “not some political hack,” he said. “They aren’t going to suggest silly cost savings.”
He argues City Hall is not running efficiently now, and it won’t “be hard for (the consultant) to find more savings that could reasonably be implemented than the cost of the consultant’s fee.”
The two audit plans share such similar ambitions that Aleshire said it is not out of the realm of possibility that, if Prop I passes, the same consultant already selected for the city-led audit could also be chosen to conduct the voter-initiated one.
“There’s no prohibition against them hiring the same contractor they’ve got now if they can show that’s what the competitive bidding produces,” he said. “They’ll have to be totally transparent with the bidding process and the auditor selection process.”
In addition to elected officials, which included seven Austin City Council Members, many attendees at the Wednesday rally were members of the city’s labor union, AFSCME Local 1624, who worried the charter-initiated audit would make their jobs more difficult and less efficient.
“We know that a lot of our members work in the departments that would be targeted first for cuts, like parks, libraries, Austin Public Health,” said Brydan Summers, the labor union’s president. “When the efficiency ordinance was passed, we worked with City Council to make sure that it was going to be focused on effective service delivery, and we believe in that.”