The most fundamental duty of government is to keep the life, liberty and property of its citizens safe through policing for internal criminal threats and a military for external threats. But the City of Austin’s latest budget proposal continues to show quite different priorities, since they intend to cut police funding while shoveling still more money into the maw of social justice and the homeless industrial complex.
A politically created affordability crisis in Texas’ capital city is poised to worsen, even as the Texas Legislature is set to address local government spending statewide.
On Friday evening, Austin’s city manager released a $6.3 billion budget proposal. This represents a nearly seven percent increase from last year’s previous record of $5.9 billion, and a nearly 15 percent increase from 2023’s record of $5.5 billion.
As a matter of perspective, Austin’s budget was $4.5 billion in 2021 and $3.3 billion in 2013. If adopted as proposed, this budget would represent a near doubling in just over a decade.
Mayor Kirk Watson said the proposed budget includes “several important items” that he believes “will help our city move forward and deliver Austinites the services they deserve.”
As proposed, Austin’s budget contains a record-setting $51 million for vagrancy services, a 42 percent increase from the last budget, with thirteen additional staff positions.
When Austin puts more money into “homeless service,” we know that it’s a great avenue for providing graft, either to the politically connected or the hard left (assuming there’s any difference between those categories). We know because they’ve been caught before and had to take their hand back out of the cookie jar.
And of course the hard left Democrats running the Austin City Council would double-down on social justice just as much of the rest of the nation is tossing it on the ash-heap of history.
The proposal also includes significant increases in various race-based programs, including a nearly 40 percent increase for the “Office of Equity and Inclusion” and a nearly 20 percent increase for the “Small and Minority Business Resources Department.”
Meanwhile, the city proposed a modest cut to the Austin Police Department’s overtime budget.
Actually it’s a $9 million cut, which doesn’t strike me as particularly modest.
Austin City Hall just circulated a memo promising every regular employee a 4 % pay bump, a new higher base hourly wage, richer HSA deposits, and zero increases to health‑plan premiums.
That covers roughly 16,500 workers.
The same budget slashes $9 million in police OT and… pic.twitter.com/q8oOmNBjwp
— Austin Justice (@AustinJustice) July 16, 2025
“The same budget slashes $9 million in police OT and hikes on your utility bill. Austin is raising its own payroll above private sector rates while telling working taxpayers to brace for higher fees and slower police response times.”
If you go back to 2006, Austin violent crime rates were lower than the national average. Now, thanks to underfunding (and defunding) of APD, along with the pro-crime policies of Soros-backed Austin DA Jose Garza, violent crime rates are significantly higher.
Keeping citizens safe should be the number one goal of any city government, but the Austin City Council obviously has other priorities.
Tags: Adam Cahn, Austin, Austin City Council, Austin Police Department, Budget, Crime, Democrats, fraud, homeless, Jose Garza, Kirk Watson, Social Justice Warriors, Taxes, Texas
For some bizarre reason the collectivist/statist/authoritarians attempting to “run” the Dem-wing cities feel that they are immune to cause-and-effect.
I honestly think that they believe that by some kind of unstated miracle that they won’t turn into the next Detroit (or Zimbabwe).
Unless the citizens of Austin come to their senses and massively vote these kinds of people out of office (and hopefully into prison) they are heading straight down the the toilet.
When I mention this to other people, I say “defining” instead of “fundamental”. My reasoning is that an organization that calls itself a “government”, but doesn’t engage in “policing for internal criminal threats and a military for external threats”, isn’t really a government.
It might be a social club, a charity, a conglomerate, etc. but it ain’t a government.
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