Greg Casar

In 2014, Austin had its first election with geographic, single-member districts to elect City Council members, instead of an at-large election.[14] Casar achieved first place in the election, but went into a run-off against Laura Pressley, an anti-fluoride activist.[15] Casar won the run-off election, but Pressley sued to contest the results, claiming ballot irregularities.[16] In 2019, her final appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of Texas.[17]

In 2016, Casar was re-elected to Austin City Council in the same election that Donald Trump was elected president. When asked by the Austin-American Statesman if he would shake hands with President Trump, he responded “Hell no.”[18] The day after Election Day, Casar wrote, “Lots of people, including Donald Trump, are calling for healing and unity today. I won't call for healing. I'm calling for resistance.”[19]

In 2020, Casar was re-elected for a second time to Austin City Council.[20] In November 2020, Austin Monthly published "Why Gregorio Casar is the Future of Texas Politics." [21]

Prior to serving as Council Member, Casar was actively involved in several immigrant rights campaigns.[26] Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Casar and Austin Mayor Steve Adler vowed to join other cities in resisting Trump's plans to target immigrants.[27]

Shortly after Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez was elected in 2016, she implemented policies to make Austin a sanctuary city.[28] In response, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted targeted raids in an operation called “Operation Cross Check”, arresting hundreds of people, mostly individuals without a criminal conviction of any kind.[29] While initially ICE claimed that these raids had been long-planned, an ICE agent admitted in Federal Court that these raids targeted Austin specifically as retribution for refusing to fully cooperate with ICE.[30] Following these raids, Casar and other members of the Austin City Council took emergency action and amended the City budget to provide legal services for undocumented immigrants, including deportation defense.[31]

In 2017, Casar joined other local and statewide leaders to protest Texas Senate Bill 4, which forced local officials to cooperate with Federal immigration officials and punishes local officials - including with prison time - who decline to do so.[32] On May Day of that year, Casar and other activists occupied Governor Greg Abbott’s office for a full day, calling on Gov. Abbott to veto the bill. This ultimately led to the arrest of Casar and nearly two dozen other activists.[33]

Casar proposed in a New York Times opinion piece that SB4 must be protested at every possible stage, otherwise it will be passed into law in states across the country.[34] Because of this viewpoint, Casar joined a coalition of grassroots organizations and gathering elected officials from municipalities across the state to initiate a lawsuit against the State of Texas to overturn the law, the first statewide effort of its kind.[35] That lawsuit is still pending.[36]

In 2016, Casar led efforts at City Hall to “ban the box” through a fair chance hiring ordinance.[37] The ordinance delays when employers can do a criminal background check until after a conditional job offer has been made, in order to help reintegrate former prisoners into the workplace and deter employment discrimination. Austin became the first city to ban the box in the Southern United States when it passed.[38]

Because of the limitations on sanctuary cities from Texas Senate Bill 4 and in an effort to reduce the impact of low-level interactions with police, Casar initiated policy changes to make Austin a "Freedom City,"[39] which discourages the police from making low-level discretionary arrests and requires police officers to inform residents that they have the right to refuse to answer questions about immigration status. During the debate, the Austin Police Association attacked Casar for citing data that Black residents are arrested at twice the rate of white residents for discretionary arrests.[40] Casar explained in a Texas Tribune editorial that the intention of Freedom Cities law is to unite the immigration reformers and criminal justice reformers to reduce the disparate impact of policing on communities of color.[41] In the first quarter of the policy being passed, arrests for ticket-worthy offenses dropped by two-thirds. Racial disproportionality of arrests also improved.[42]

When the Austin police union contract was set to expire in early 2017, criminal justice activists called for reform, citing examples in the contract that made police oversight difficult.[43] Greg Casar, Jimmy Flannigan, and other Council members, indicated their intent to reject the contract and send the union back to the bargaining table unless it was reformed.[44] After the contract was rejected, the police union requested bonus pay without a contract in place, but that move was opposed by a divided council.[45] After nearly ten months of negotiations, a new contract was approved, along with the creation of an independent office of police oversight. The new contract made it easier to file complaints, provided more transparency around complaints of police misconduct, strengthened police disciplinary procedures, and increased accountability.[46]

In June 2017, Casar and Council Member Delia Garza pushed Council to eliminate criminal penalties for a juvenile to “walk, run, idle, wander, stroll, or aimlessly drive” during curfew hours, out of a belief that kids should not be pushed into the criminal justice system for being young and "out in public."[47] Many of these laws, including Austin's, were passed during the “tough on crime” policies of the Clinton Administration in the 1990s.[48] Ultimately, Council removed the juvenile curfew. Austin became the second largest city in the country to end its juvenile curfew policy.[49] A study of the impacts on young people after the removal of Austin's juvenile curfew ordinance showed a decrease on juvenile victimization.[50]

In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests reached Austin.[51] During those protests, Austin Police officers harmed multiple civilians,[52] causing Casar to again call for systemic change.[53] Working with community leaders, Casar crafted a three-tiered plan to reduce the police department budget.[54] Austin became one of the only cities in the nation to successfully begin reallocating significant funding from its police department to other city programs.[55]

The council voted unanimously to eliminate upcoming cadet classes in the troubled police academy, diverting $20 million to programs that address homelessness, mental health, and family violence prevention. Over the course of the year following the budget vote, another $80 million will be reallocated from the department by placing some functions, such as forensics and 911 dispatch, within other parts of the city's government. The council also flagged another $50 million for “community led” review. Notably, not a single officer was laid off to accommodate the budget changes.[56]

In 2015, Casar aided fellow council member Ann Kitchen who proposed raising the minimum wage paid to all City of Austin employees to $13.03, and to offer health benefits for all employees, including part-time and temporary workers.[57] After continued advocacy by Casar and the City Council, all City of Austin employees currently make a minimum of $15 dollars an hour.[58] In 2016, Casar sponsored a resolution to extend the living wage requirement to all city contractors and subcontractors, such as airport food workers and construction workers.[59]

On May Day 2018, labor unions, the Workers Defense Project, progressive businesses, the Democratic Socialists of America, and other activists joined together in calling for a paid sick leave requirement for all workers in Austin. The Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Texas Restaurant Association (local chapter of the National Restaurant Association), and the Texas chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses came out against the new requirements, but the campaign ultimately saw a successful vote of the city council for a modified version of Casar's paid sick leave proposal.[60] The sick leave ordinance covered the entire private sector, and provided between 6 and 8 sick days for all workers in Austin. Casar credited grassroots organizations with getting many people to contact their council members to push them to vote for the ordinance through the organization's grassroots canvassing operation.[61] Responding to the success in Austin, and due to the advocacy of the organizations who fought for the policy in Austin, both San Antonio and Dallas passed Austin's version of paid sick leave ordinance.[62]

Following the passage of the Austin paid sick leave ordinance, the Texas business community and statewide Republican politicians moved to block its implementation.[63] A three-member panel of the 3rd Court of Appeals found in October 2018 the ordinance to be unconstitutional because the judges determined that benefits are wages.[64] Two of the three Republican judges on the panel were defeated by Democratic challengers in the November election several weeks prior.[65] During the 2019 legislative session, Republican state lawmakers filed bills to overturn the ordinance,[66] causing protests from a coalition of unions and grassroots organizations. As of May 2019, the bills have not passed. A representative of the NFIB says the bills failed to pass due to a growing progressive movement in Texas, saying: “I think they’re winning in a red state. … They’re starting to take over the state, and they will.”[67]

After organizing with mobile home residents of the Stonegate Mobile Home park against mismanagement, Casar joined a march to the manager's office to demand the electricity of an ill resident be restored. Within 24 hours of the march, power was restored.[68] In early 2015, after hearing of the successful campaign at Stonegate, Casar received reports from North Lamar Community Mobile Home Park that the new owner had raised rent and utility costs. Casar helped the tenants to form a tenants association, Asociación de los Residentes de North Lamar (ARNL).

They organized with Casar and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid to sue the new owner, Frank Rolfe, who had raised rents by 10-25%.[69] Rolfe, who teaches others how to invest in mobile homes, has stated his viewpoints on the value of the investment previously, by comparing mobile home parks to owning a “Waffle House where everyone is chained to the booths.”[70] Elsewhere, Rolfe has said, “At $3,000 or so to move a mobile home, there is a huge barrier to moving out, so tenants will accept pretty much whatever you raise the rents to … within reason!”[71] Ultimately, residents were forced into signing new leases at the higher rents or leaving the community, but the eviction notices residents received were rescinded.[72] They also got the owner to agree to sell the property to the residents, and ARNL is continuing to fight to convert the park into a co-operative.

After several such campaigns involving tenant organizing, Casar directed city resources to create the Resident's Advocacy Project, which later became Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA), to provide for more consistent capacity directed towards organizing working-class tenants in Austin.[73]

Throughout 2015, Casar and his colleague Sabino "Pio" Renteria pushed for housing reforms to allow more “granny flats” or garage apartments (“accessory dwelling units, or ADUs) to be built in Austin.[74] The reforms ultimately allowed an additional home on most legal lots in the city, and waived minimum parking requirements if they were built near transit. Casar saw the issue as advancing fair housing in the city, and AURA, a housing and transportation advocacy group, cited it as a way to integrate the city.[75] He described his motivation as “a moral imperative … We are sick of being on the list of the most segregated communities in this country.”[76]

During the 2018 election cycle, the Austin City Council put almost one billion of bond propositions to the voters, including Proposition A, which allocated $250 to build affordable housing and acquire land to build it on.[77] The Democratic Socialists of America, AURA, and other community groups joined Casar in pushing for a $300 million bond after the city's staff proposed one that was less than $100 million. Through community engagement and work at City Hall, Casar pushed the bond proposition up to $250 million.[78] Casar said at the time, “From social housing to public housing to mixed-income subsidized units, all of that is on the table for us right now.”[79] After a large campaign, Proposition A passed with the support of over 70% of voters, the largest affordable housing bond in Austin's history.[80]

In an effort to extend the reach of the $250 million of Proposition A dollars for affordable housing, Casar proposed an “Affordability Unlocked” ordinance for the city.[81] The ordinance waives or reduces many zoning regulations, like parking requirements, setbacks, occupancy limits, and minimum lot sizes and allowed buildings throughout the city to be built taller, in exchange for 50% of the new homes in the building being reserved for low-income renters or homeowners by the developer. The ordinance also required that for existing aging multifamily buildings, homes that are already affordable to renters must be replaced on a one to one basis to avoid encouraging the tear-down of existing homes for low-income renters.[82] Casar cited the ordinance as an example of his approach to housing politics in an op-ed, where he claimed that “our pro-housing and anti-gentrification movements can co-exist” and that building more housing does not have to mean displacing low-income renters because housing can be built in other places in the city to avoid displacement and gentrification.[83] The ordinance has showed results so far for the city.[84]