Erica Grieder: Greater transparency in Houston police contract negotiations is nothing to fear

Like it or not, Houston has a proposed new police contract. You may very well like the deal itself. But it’s the result of an unnecessarily opaque process. The contract, announced by Mayor Sylvester Turner and police leaders at a press conference last week, addresses an array of concerns that Houstonians have at a time when the city has seen a rise in homicides and there remain ongoing concerns about police accountability. It would raise pay for police officers by 10.5 percent over the next three years, and provides for new investments in technology. Reform advocates are pleased with a provision concerning the so-called “180-day rule.” The current contract states that police officers who commit certain crimes must be disciplined within 180 days of an offense. Under the proposed contract, that clock will start when the city discovers the crime.

The contract isn’t a done deal; it still has to be approved by city council. But Houston is a city with a strong-mayor system, and extensive changes to the proposal are not likely. “There are no outstanding issues,” Mary Benton, Turner’s director of communications, told me. “The contract negotiations resulted in a fair contract with police that the city of Houston can afford.” The contract has nonetheless left some observers skeptical, not necessarily because of the contours of the deal itself, but because of the process used to finalize the deal. Negotiations were not open to the public. Most Houstonians found out about this plan when it was practically a fait accompli. That’s what we’re used to in this context, but it raises the question: why can’t we get a little more transparency? “It is in keeping with, just, democracy,” said Brennan Griffin of Texas Appleseed, one of 18 groups that contributed to a July 2020 report calling for various reforms to Houston policing. “Making sure that the public has transparency as to what’s being negotiated on their behalf allows for more accountability for city government and for more voices to be heard.”