There’s an interesting bit of politicking going on in Austin right now regarding a ballot initiative called Proposition 2. Municipal ballot initiatives aren’t usually all that compelling, unless they deal with a smoking ban or something, but this one’s pretty great.

Background: In North Austin, there’s a development called The Domain. The name’s ominous, and pretty apt- it’s intended as a fully self-contained community for 6,000 residents and 17,000 workers. It’s essentially a mammoth apartment complex built on top of a mall inside of an office park. Theoretically, it’s entirely possible for a person to live his or her life without setting foot outside of the property- you can work in an office on-site, live in a loft above the Juicy Couture or the Apple Store, and eat at the California Pizza Kitchen, while doing your shopping at the Whole Foods. You get your entertainment at Borders, and there’s a movie theater opening soon. The property is managed by Simon, who probably own your local mall, and everything in it is what you’d find at an upscale mall pretty much anywhere. There aren’t any local businesses inside The Domain, unless you count Whole Foods (which is native to Austin).

The project is currently in Phase I, which really does sound fucking scary- the domain is in phase one! It sounds like something you should tell Darth Vader, who’ll cross his arms and nod and say, everything goes as planned…

Anyway- Phase I, at the moment. More stores and offices and residents and crap coming soon, moving into this previously undeveloped patch of suburbia twelve miles outside of the city. Except here’s the bit about Proposition 2.

The Domain was built because the city promised huge subsidies to Simon for building it. Which tends to stick in the craw of folks in a place like Austin, which prides itself on its wide array of local businesses. And it creates a problem- the appearance of a giant new Borders is reasonable as a competitor to local bookseller Bookpeople and local music store Waterloo Records, part of the way the world works, etc. But forcing these local businesses to actually fund their multinational competition through tax subsidies? That’s fucked up.

The subsidies were promised years ago by the city to the developers behind The Domain (as well as, potentially, another project on the site of the city’s old airport called the Mueller development, which is another gigantic mixed-use residential/commercial property, though not nearly as offensive), who built the thing. Proposition 2 is a ballot initiative that gives the voters in Austin the power to directly revoke those subsidies, forcing them to either pay for what they build themselves or to stop developing and go home.

It’s a pretty popular movement at the moment, and that’s scaring some people in Austin badly. The mayor, who enjoys great popularity and whose real name is actually Will Wynn, has signed off on an anti-Prop 2 campaign whose logo and name is a pun off of an old Austin campaign in favor of local businesses- the irony, presumably, is lost on the mayor. The website for the Keep Austin’s Word campaign is typically blustery, what you’d expect from a political organization on the defensive. What they’re telling voters is this, what the truth is is this! and that sort of thing. They’re saying the initiative will stop this from happening in the future, what they’re not saying is that it’ll just hurt the Domain! And then this is followed with information about the history of the PAC responsible for the initiative, with the deceptive name of Stop Domain Subsidies.

Yeah, it’s stuff like that. The other big tactic is well, we owe it to ‘em to keep our promises! Which is maybe convincing, except I never promised anybody anything. The city representatives, fully entrenched with safe seats, made promises that they knew their constituents didn’t support. Nobody in Austin is going to elect a Republican council or mayor, even as a protest, but we’ll maybe make them look like jackasses.

Because the big argument here is that, if the city cuts off the deal (like developers haven’t screwed over cities on stuff like this since the beginning of time), it’ll be really hard to lure projects like The Domain into Austin in the future. Which is, um, the point.

Fuck ‘em. I can sleep just fine at night even knowing that Simon Properties didn’t get the 20 years of tax incentives they were promised. The city council members that made the deal are out of office (except for Wynn, who was on the council previous to his run for mayor), and I’m not really interested in seeing their back room deals honored once they’re gone.