Rising Lonestars interviewed Austin City Council member Chito Vela to discuss his nomination to the RLS Top 10 in June. Alongside his efforts to create the GRACE act and protects women seeking abortions, Councilwoman Vela discussed his experience as a first-year Austin council member.
Transcript
Chito Vela
I’m Chico Vela. I’m the city council member in Austin for District four.
Simon Nichols
Now, Councilmember Vela, if you could just briefly explain what exactly the Grace Act seeks to accomplish and what your place in making it come about was.
Chito Vela
So the Grace Act does two things. The first is to make any criminal abortion investigations the lowest priority for our police department. We want the police department to focus on your burglaries and robberies and aggravated assaults and much more serious crimes than to go after, you know, women who have received abortions. Second, it restricts the city from using any funds to collect information about, like, alleged abortion crimes.
Chito Vela
You know, we don’t want any kind of abortion crimes databases or abortion crimes task forces or anything like that. We don’t want city funds going to investigate and arrest people for these types of crimes. And the genesis of the Grace Act was really when the Supreme Court opinion leaked. My staff and I were very upset and alarmed at the potential of Roe v Wade being overturned.
Chito Vela
And we wanted to do everything we could at the local level in preparation for the worst case scenario, which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. And that’s essentially where it came from. It was like, well, what can we do on a local level? Given that Texas has a trigger ban, given that it’s unlikely that the legislature is going to do anything positive about it, what can we do here in Austin to protect abortion rights, to protect reproductive rights?
Chito Vela
And I think this was the best that we could do without coming into direct conflict with the state and still be in compliance. I didn’t want to pass something that would immediately be struck down by the courts or would immediately be invalidated. Although the Grace Act is very, very carefully drawn and narrow, it, I believe, will survive any legal challenge and will be effective in preventing the arrest and prosecution of women who choose to terminate the pregnancy.
Simon Nichols
Yeah. The turnaround time on this proposal coming out was incredibly fast, given the Supreme Court’s official ruling coming out. So you’re saying that you and your staff were working on getting this ready before the official ruling even came out?
Chito Vela
We had it ready. When did we have it ready? Two weeks after. Ready? Fully. I think we had it over to the law department the week after… Yeah. Two days after the ruling came out, like, kind of a draft. Jenna was working on it probably hours after the leak.
Chito Vela
And she’s been, you know, she’s been just Herculean in her efforts on the on the Grace Act. And, you know, Law had their edits. We we passed it around to different organizations so they could give input. And we probably had what was close to a final version of it within to weeks after the leaked document. And then we were holding it because, you know, the scope of the Supreme Court ruling could have been narrow.
Chito Vela
You know, it didn’t have to be. So we were ready to edit it in in case that we had a better decision from the Supreme Court. But it turned out that. No, not at all. And I have to say… I’m so happy that we are going to protect abortion rights here in Texas as much as we possibly can in Austin, as much as we possibly can.
Chito Vela
But the fact that so many other cities around the state and around the country have picked up the copy that was drafted here in the Austin City Hall and have passed it is just such a satisfying and heartening feeling. It’s just great to see something that we did here spread across the country as other cities that are in states that are not going to protect abortion rights, that are going to criminalize, you know, reproductive rights.
Chito Vela
Those cities are also looking to the draft as an example of what they can do. And so, again, it just makes me so, so proud, honestly, that it’s being passed, you know, not just in Austin, but around the state and around the nation.
Simon Nichols
I think a lot of people don’t realize that local governments from around the entire nation do look at each other for these sorts of resolutions. You know, everything doesn’t just happen in a closed system. Other local governments, other cities. Look to Austin or look to cities like Austin for their own bills, for their own resolutions.
Chito Vela
And I’ll say I am you know, I as an attorney, you know, even before I got in, I copy things all the time from other attorneys that are they’re very good attorneys, you know, like how did that excellent attorney do their motion or their, you know, in even in you know, in Austin, we always look to other cities for best practices.
Chito Vela
You know, this city is doing something so well. How do they should we adopt those ideas? So again, I think that’s at the heart of any city’s success is looking around at what are best practices that we can copy. And we have no pride in authorship. You know, run with it.
Simon Nichols
Gotcha. So my next question for you is that you have a background in criminal justice and immigration law. And I’m wondering how you view Austin’s position in the state of Texas related to those two subjects. What is Austin and Austin City Council’s role in criminal justice and immigration law for the state?
Chito Vela
Austin has been a leader in many ways in those two areas, and I want Austin to continue to be a leader in those two areas. I’ll tell you, the Grace Act was in many ways modeled on the marijuana the misdemeanor marijuana legislation that Austin passed two years ago, where saying that again, that that misdemeanor possession of marijuana arrests were the lowest level priority for the Austin Police Department.
Chito Vela
Basically, we’re telling the Austin Police Department we do not want police officers wasting time arresting people. You know, prosecuting people going to testify against people who have a little baggie of marijuana, that that was not a priority. And since then, we have seen zero, I believe, misdemeanor marijuana arrests in Austin, which is great. And that was absolutely a model for the Grace Act.
Chito Vela
Austin has done similar things with regard to immigration. We have always tried to be a pro immigrant city. Honestly, we have an economy that depends on immigration. You know, these towers all over Austin The construction boom that we’ve seen in Austin does not happen without immigrant construction labor. The hotels and the restaurants that we have, the service industry, vibrant service industry that we have in Austin, Texas, does not happen without immigrant labor.
Chito Vela
Hotels do not get cleaned up and rooms do not get made ready without immigrant labor. We recognize that and we’re honest about it. You know that these are folks that are contributing to our society, that are contributing to our economy. And we don’t think they should be persecuted for being hard working residents of our community.
Simon Nichols
You are the newest member of the Austin City Council and you are already headlining on as being a sponsor of what will inevitably one of the biggest be one of the biggest resolutions from the year for this year from the city council. What message do you want that to send to your constituents and even to your fellow council members?
Chito Vela
I mean, I’m here to get things done. I’m here to work. You know, I’m not here to just kind of look pretty on the dias, like, you know, I’m here to roll up my sleeves and get things done and make Austin it’s great city, but we can be so much more. And right now, my main goal is to make sure that Austin is a welcoming city for working class people.
Chito Vela
We Austin has always been a very welcoming city. But now the economics and the prices that we’re seeing for rent for just living in Austin are continuing to skyrocket and we’ve got to get that under control. I don’t want Austin to be a playground for the rich. I want it to be a welcoming city for working class people.
Chito Vela
And to do that, we’ve got to build housing. We’ve got to improve the our transportation system and improve, essentially the quality of life for lower income people. You know, we can’t be pushing all our lowering people out to the suburbs. You know, the cheaper housing out in the suburbs, we’ve got to allow people the center of Austin is just such a beautiful place.
Chito Vela
There’s so many amenities, you know, parks, cultural opportunities, economic opportunities. We’ve got to allow the broader community to access all of those opportunities.