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Hey there! So, yesterday the Austin City Council made some cuts to the @Austin_Police budget. We can all agree on that. But once you get into the numbers, things can get confusing. 1/ https://www.kut.org/post/austin-cuts-and-reinvests-5-percent-police-budget-promises-more-changes-over-next-year
You’ve probably seen that Austin cut the police budget by one-third, or $150 million. This is a little simplified. I’ll try to be helpful. 2/
The city council immediately cut & reallocated roughly $20 million. That money’s coming out of cancelled cadet classes for the next year and the police overtime budget. It'll be redistributed to things like Austin Public Health, a family violence shelter and housing services. 3/
A note on that $21.5 million you see up there. About $1.2 million of that money is debt servicing to pay for ambulances, and it’s not coming out of the police budget. So that's why I'm using $20 million. 4/
Another ~$80 million comes from moving divisions under APD into other offices or standalone depts. This includes Internal Affairs, 9-1-1 Call Center and Victim Services (this last one will require another vote by council, TBD). I’ve screenshotted the actual amendment here: 5/
Some advocates for cutting the police budget argue this shouldn’t be considered a cut/reallocation because it’s not actually freeing up any money; it’s police by another name (or department). 6/
The last chunk of money, ~ $49 million, is a transition fund; let’s move money out of police now and decide what to do with it later. This includes more from the overtime budget and additional divisions, like Traffic Enforcement. I’ve screenshotted the amendment here: 7/
This money may be reallocated thru the year, as the city gets public input on what policing should look like. They could say, 'Hey, the public wants us to make Traffic Enforcement its own department. Let’s do that.' This would likely require more votes. 8/
So, did Austin reduce the police budget by $150 million yesterday? Yes. They told the city to get those $$ out of there. For the time being only a fraction of it, $20 million, is paying for previously non-police functions. More than half of the cuts represent a reorg of depts. 9/
You can read all about this in my story from yesterday: https://www.kut.org/post/austin-cuts-and-reinvests-5-percent-police-budget-promises-more-changes-over-next-year 10/
