Austin chief can't bypass officer for promotion who visited brothel on vacation

Police accountability in this state is seriously hindered by the state civil service code, which governs police discipline, promotions and other departmental employment practices for the 70 or so cities which have opted in (including all of the big ones except Dallas and El Paso). Nearly all jurisdictions governed by the civil service code opted in many decades ago - most of them in the '40s and '50s - but in the late '80s the state's large police unions achieved working control over that section of the law at the Legislature and added numerous problematic provisions like closing most disciplinary records (which are public records at non-civil service cities).

To make matters worse, in recent years the police unions (they're officially "associations," I know, but let's call a spade a spade) have been pushing for "meet and confer" authority - which is essentially a version of collective bargaining - and forcing cities to "buy" their way out of bad civil service laws at the bargaining table with higher wages. That's the dynamic that's led to the Austin city budget bleeding red after then-Mayor Kirk Watson backed massive raises for police in exchange for "concessions" like the right to bypass an officer for promotion based on their disciplinary history or other valid reasons.

An example of that may be found in a story out of Austin about Chief Art Acevedo whose efforts to select commanders based on merit instead of tenure earned him a rebuke in arbitration. Now he must promote a commander he doesn't need or want.

At issue was the promotion of Wayne Demoss, who Chief Acevedo wanted to bypass after the department received an allegation that Demoss hired a prostitute while on a trip to Panama. When confronted with the allegation, Demoss admitted visiting the brothel in question but said he did not pay for sex - sort of like Bill Clinton who smoked pot but didn't inhale.

Investigators couldn't definitively prove otherwise so the arbitrator says Acevedo has no choice but to make Demoss one of Austin's 19 commanders, the top non-appointed slot in the department. He'll probably have to demote the guy who was promoted in his stead.

Part of me thinks it's not that big a deal if the fellow visited a legal brothel in another country: As a matter of full disclosure, when I was 18 or 19 I visited Mexican brothels in border towns on a couple of trips, though unlike Demoss I admittedly "inhaled." Of course, I was a repressed Baptist kid from East Texas acting out, not a middle-aged man and a police lieutenant.

OTOH, I don't think Chief Acevedo was overreaching not to want to promote a fellow who likes to visit brothels on his vacation - whether he paid for sex, these are casual leisure associations the department has an understandable reason for discouraging. Even if it's not enough to fire or demote him over, IMO that's enough for the chief (who's kind of a tight-assed, straight-arrow type) not to want him in a top commander's slot.

The arbitrator disagreed, though. They seemingly always disagree. After all, both the union and the department must agree on an arbitrator, and the union won't agree to folks who uphold too many firings or promotion bypasses. The whole thing about having a "property right" to your job over and above your boss' ability to control you is really a labor model from a past era. Out in the real world, folks with longer tenure see younger people with greater skills or ambition promoted past them all the time, and just hanging around longer than anybody else and passing a written test isn't enough to get you promoted to a top management slot. But that's how most larger Texas police departments are run.

As Austin has found out, there's not enough money in the taxpayers' coffers to buy your way out of all the bad provisions in state civil service law that prevent police chiefs from effectively disciplining their officers or managing their department. The chief can't fire who he wants, he can't promote who he wants, but he's held accountable for what the department accomplishes even as he's stripped of all control - pretty damn tough job, if you ask me. The union has more sway with city council at the end of the day than Acevedo does, as has been the case with all of his predecessors since I've lived in Austin.