Proposition H – Council appoints the City Attorney
Proposition H would let the City Council, rather than the City Manager, appoint and remove the City Attorney. This is a charter amendment that the City Council put on the ballot.
Austin has a council-manager government. Voters elect the council, the council hires a City Manager, and the City Manager runs the city and today also hires the City Attorney. That puts the city’s lawyer under the person who runs city operations, even though the attorney also advises the council, which sometimes disagrees with the manager.
The city’s 2018 Charter Review Commission called Austin an outlier on this point: most large Texas home-rule cities have their council appoint the City Attorney.
The risk is that a council-appointed attorney becomes more political. In practice the attorney already works closely with the council. Making that reporting line explicit gives the elected council its own legal advice, and we found little organized opposition (Austin Free Press).
Recommendation: Yes