Austin News

Bill Aleshire has been listening to live music in Austin since 1970, and knows what a crucial part of the community it is.

Now, with the COVID-19 dealing a crippling blow to live music internationally, Austin’s once-thriving string of venues are suffering while restaurants have seen their revenue plummet. Musicians are struggling to pay their bills and survive as the pandemic continues.

A group of music advocates have asked the Austin City Council for relief, in particular more than $100 million in local tax dollars that could be used to keep businesses and performers from going under. They feel the city, which has provided some grant money, has failed to adequately respond.

During a Sept. 21 council meeting, city officials voted to “look under every rock” to find money to assist venues, restaurants and musicians, but offered no immediate aid.

The council did vote to spend $6.3M to buy land for an expansion of the downtown convention center and begin design work on it. The city plans to replace the current center at a cost of more than $1 billion.

Aleshire said there is a more immediate need for the cash.

“The money to be used for this initial westward land acquisition and expansion would come from City Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) funds that have built up over the last 15 or so years,” he said in a release. “These funds are in excess of those legally committed to cover convention center bonds approved by voters in 1998 and convention center O&M. These reserve funds – generated by years of hotel-staying visitors flocking to the Live Music Capital of the World for live music, Austin’s unique food and craft brew scene, and our natural beauty – total around $200 million.”

Mayor Steve Adler said the HOT money cannot be used to help the music industry.

Aleshire disagrees.

“Mayor Adler is wrong, and intentionally misleading, choosing to hide behind a false legal constraint in order to cut off demands for taking action now to save live music and the uniquely Austin restaurants and brewpubs that draw the vast majority of Austin tourists,” he told Austin News. “Like many false claims, Mayor Adler’s have a thread of truth. Out of the 11 cents per dollar HOT that the city now assesses, 4 cents must be spent on the convention center. These 4 cents include 2 cents approved by Austin voters in 1998 to fund the 2000 expansion of the center.

“The funds from the 2-cent hotel room assessment are dedicated to paying off the construction bonds, refinanced in 2012, and for convention center O&M. The second 2 cents were approved by the City Council last year under a special provision that applies only to Austin, and allows the city to dedicate the 2 cents ‘only’ to a convention center upgrade without voter approval.”

But Aleshire said the city used 4.5 cents of discretionary funds to create a reserve fund that now totals approximately $200 million.

“They are excess to what is needed to cover outstanding convention bonds and O&M, and a substantial part could be reallocated to save the people and places that visitors and residents alike love about Austin,” he said in the release.

The city can slow down on building a new convention center, in Aleshire’s view.

“In fact, reliable reports tell us that in-person conventions are never going to come back at the level they once were,” he said. “And research by the leading academic authority on the convention center industry, Professor Heywood Sanders of the University of Texas San Antonio, tell us that even pre-pandemic demand for expanded convention center space was limited to nonexistent, and a very bad bet for Austin or any other city.”

Aleshire said the mayor and council “have broad discretion to reallocate HOT reserve funds” for assisting the people and businesses that created Austin’s thriving music scene.

“Mayor Adler is a successful attorney and can easily read and correctly interpret the applicable statutes. He chooses, however, to ignore the clear writing of the statute and interpret it in such a way that he can direct as much of the HOT funds as possible to his vision, what he seemingly hopes to be his legacy of a downtown convention center district, complete with Trump Tower hotels,” he said. “Perhaps one could have given Mayor Adler a bit of a pass when the convention center expansion was initiated by council more than a year ago, in pre-pandemic times. With closing music venues and iconic restaurants, and musicians who can’t pay their rent or health costs, Mayor Adler now gets no pass.

“The convention center reserve funds, which are sitting in a bank account, must be utilized on the needy in our city rather than tied up for many years in Adler’s dream building that ultimately may or may not even be built. If the hotel and convention business truly does recover, generating excess revenues above those needed by our Live Music and related communities, the people and businesses that actually do draw real, live visitors to Austin, then we can build a new convention center.”

Aleshire said it’s a desperate time calling for desperate measures. He said his clients hope the mayor and council will change their minds and decide to provide the money needed to keep the music scene from suffering further, or potentially dying.

“The world is much changed since 2019, and Mayor Adler and the City Council have no crystal ball to tell them what will happen in 2021 and beyond,” he said. “All the mayor and the councilpersons know for certain is that Austin, Texas, is suffering, its musicians, music venues, restaurants, local businesses are all suffering. It would be amoral and cruel to not utilize at least some, if not all, of that $200 million current reserve fund on those who have attracted tourists to Austin for many, many years.”

Aleshire is a former associate deputy state comptroller, Travis County judge and county tax collector. He was born in North Carolina, but as the saying goes, got to Texas as fast as he could, arriving with his family as a third grader.

He settled in Austin in 1970 and, after being involved in political campaigns and the rich cultural stew of the city, ran for tax collector in 1980. Five years later, fed up with the manner in which the county spent the money he brought in, he ran for judge, as county leaders are referred to in Texas.

He served 12 years as a judge, then enrolled in law school. He opened his law practice in 2001 and has been representing clients and battling what he sees as shoddy government officials and actions — and usually winning — ever since.

“The thing is, they don’t believe in transparency and I do,” Aleshire said. “And so do the courts.”

On his LinkedIn page, he makes it clear where his sympathies are as he does his work.

“I want government to earn the people’s respect. So, I have devoted my law practice to government transparency and accountability,” Aleshire said. “I also detest bigotry in all its forms and will speak out with others, or alone, to denounce it wherever it is found. I can be reached by people with sincere issues like that.”