Over the last decade, Austin’s city budget has grown 80 percent while the population grew just 10 percent. The city is now spending $6.3 billion annually,1 and until this November, taxpayers have had no formal mechanism to verify whether any of it is being spent wisely. Fortunately, that’s about to change.
Save Austin Now, a grassroots political action committee, has successfully certified a charter amendment proposal for the November 2026 ballot2 that would require regular, independent performance audits of the entire City of Austin budget, the first of its kind in the city’s history.
If passed, the city would be required to hire an outside, independently selected contractor to conduct a comprehensive performance audit of the entire city budget for every department, utility, vendor, and subcontractor. The first audit must be completed within one year of the contract engagement, with the independent contractor selected within 120 days of passage. After that, audits would be required every five years, and critically, no future tax rate election could be held without one occurring first.
Perhaps most importantly, the selected auditor would be contractually required to identify cost savings that exceed the cost of the audit itself. Taxpayers aren’t just getting more oversight, but they’re getting a process that is designed to pay for itself.
The effort is modeled after a similar independent audit in Houston that identified more than $120 million in suggested savings. Austin, which spends more per resident than most comparable Texas cities, has never had anything close to that level of scrutiny applied to its books.
Getting the amendment certified was no small task.3 Save Austin Now spent six months collecting signatures, running three internal validation rounds and removing invalid or duplicate petitions by hand before submitting them to the city clerk. Out of 21,131 signatures submitted, the city verified 20,051 as valid at a 94.89 percent validity rate. On June 22, City Clerk Erika Brady officially certified the petition, sending the measure to Austin voters this fall.
Save Austin Now’s push for a charter amendment is timely. In February 2026, the Austin City Council unanimously passed an ordinance establishing a recurring efficiency audit of city departments. However, Save Austin Now pushed forward anyway, and for good reason.
An ordinance can be overturned by six council votes at any time. A charter amendment cannot. Once embedded in the city charter, any changes to the audit requirement would require another vote of the people. That distinction matters, especially in a city where council members have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to reverse course on fiscal accountability the moment political winds shift.
This charter amendment also comes on the heels of Austin voters rejecting Proposition Q last November,4 a ballot measure that would have raised property taxes by 20 percent.5 Voters shot it down 63 to 37 percent, sending an unmistakable message that city taxpayers are not willing to just simply hand over more of their money.
The audit charter amendment is the logical next step. Before Austin’s city leaders can go back to taxpayers for more, they’ll have to open the books. Austinites will have the chance to make that demand permanent this November.
This story should be an inspiration for other Texans across the state. Taxpayers do not need to accept the status quo, but should be reinvigorated that a small group of dedicated citizens can make a huge impact in their local communities.
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- https://www.austintexas.gov/news/austin-city-council-approves-63-billion-fiscal-year-2025-2026-budget ↩︎
- https://www.kvue.com/article/news/politics/austin-mayor-and-council/save-austin-now-petition-certification-city-audit/269-c5895c39-220c-4a40-9506-b529d3469f2f ↩︎
- https://x.com/MattMackowiak/status/2069146245914902858?s=20 ↩︎
- https://texastaxpayers.com/the-fallout-from-proposition-qs-defeat/ ↩︎
- https://texastaxpayers.com/examining-austins-prop-q/ ↩︎
