(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . San Antonio will vote on wide-ranging police reform measure, but it may not be enforceable [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-09 Tomas said she also believes that the Justice Charter will have an impact despite the fact that the city council previously directed the police not to use public resources to investigate abortions last year, and department policy already bans both chokeholds and no-knock warrants. She told Axios last month that a victory at the ballot box would make it more difficult for elected officials to later reverse these policies and additionally emphasized that San Antonio would be the first city in the state to vote on decriminalizing abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Another progressive organizer, Mike Siegel, who was the Democratic nominee against Republican Rep. Michael McCaul in both 2018 and 2020, also insisted that Republican state officials wouldn’t be the obstacle that Segovia thinks they’ll be. “The state government does not provide special money to enforce marijuana laws or to enforce abortion laws, and every city makes decisions on how to allocate scarce resources,” Siegel told the San Antonio Express News. Siegel noted that even though Austin voted last year to decriminalize possession of marijuana last May, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has yet to file a suit to block the law. “We know that Ken Paxton loves to sue Austin, loves to make an example of Austin elected officials and has not done so,” said Siegel, who is himself a former assistant Austin city attorney. Segovia agrees that Paxton isn’t going to sue San Antonio, but only because the city wouldn’t allow the Justice Charter to go into force. The measure’s foes, though, are not assuming that it’s automatically doomed. The San Antonio police union, which narrowly beat back a 2021 amendment that would have repealed its right to engage in collective bargaining, insists this new referendum is an extension of that fight. “It's dictating what officers can and cannot do,” said union president Danny Diaz, who also said that it wasn’t up to cities to make laws regarding abortion and marijuana. Diaz’s group had $300,000 on-hand on Jan. 25, and local observers anticipate an expensive contest. The amendment will be on the same ballot as the city’s regularly scheduled contests for mayor and the 10-person city council. Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who usually backs Democrats even though he identifies as an independent, doesn’t have any serious opposition in sight in his campaign for a fourth and final two-year term, but both progressives and conservatives are hoping the Justice Charter battle will give their side a lift in important races for the city council. State law also forbids cities from changing their charters more than once every two years, and Segovia says that this rule would apply even if the Justice Charter won but could not be enforced. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/9/2152108/-San-Antonio-will-vote-on-wide-ranging-police-reform-measure-but-it-may-not-be-enforceable Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/