Dallas charter amendment plan is a progressive mess

We’ve worried for some time that our Dallas City Council is becoming disconnected from the people of this city. Now the evidence is in, and it’s damning.

Most of the 15 proposed charter amendments the council is scheduled to debate today demonstrate that too much of the council is out of touch with what residents want this city focused on and what they think of the job the city council is doing setting policy for Dallas.

The charter review process presented the council with a golden opportunity to look seriously at the function of local government and to recommend to voters reforms that could increase efficiency, lower cost, raise voter participation and improve Dallas’ standing as a city on the rise.

Instead, the amendments on the table largely serve to give the council more power, more money and less accountability while also indulging progressive pieties.

The first proposed charter amendment on the council’s agenda is a rambling “preamble” to the charter that promises Dallas’ commitment to “justice and equity for all residents.” Modeled on a New York statement and dripping with language ripped from a cultural studies seminar, the proposed preamble is not the inclusive statement its authors intend it to be.

From the holier-than-thou land acknowledgement that disregards the complex local history of indigenous tribes, to the commitment to relieve systemic inequities, to the assurance of providing “trauma-informed child and youth educators” and “trauma-informed health and mental health care,” the statement makes promises it cannot keep while emphasizing racial and class divisions.

Even as we wrote this editorial, there was a behind-the-scenes scramble to soften the excited undergraduate tone, but the effect appears to be the same.

From there, it’s on to the money, for the council naturally. Some council members want a big raise, from $60,000 a year to $125,000. No one doubts that serving on the City Council is hard work. But it’s also a volunteer role, or at least it was intended to be.

The people who formed Dallas’ strong-manager government did so to avoid creating the sort of professional political class that has corrupted so many American cities. The current council appears to want to reverse the intentions of those who created Dallas as we know it — a place with a government that has proved surprisingly resistant to the sort of endemic corruption that plagues cities with highly paid council members and aldermen. (Chicago pays its aldermen six figures, and need we say more?)

Some council members argue they deserve the money, and they work for it. But a council member is not supposed to be a miniature city manager, resolving code complaints or negotiating zoning deals. We’ve reached a point where some council members carry two phones — one is just for constituents trying to hop the line for service that comes too slow from City Hall.

It can’t be that way. The council must set policy, and the bureaucracy must implement it while handling the day-to-day concerns of residents. The role of the council has become distorted in practice, requiring more time from council members. The answer is not to reward the distortion, but to restore the appropriate balance between what city management does and what council members do.

Meanwhile, council members want to answer to voters less often, switching the charter from four two-year terms to two four-year terms. There is some value in this debate. So few eligible voters cast ballots in municipal elections that we might get more participation with fewer terms.

But debate is the key word here. We would be more inclined to support two four-year terms if the council agreed to hard term limits. Once a person has served eight years on council, they shouldn’t be able to run again for that council seat or for any other council seat other than mayor. There are examples of people doing eight years on council, then sitting out a term or so and running again, pushing out fresh voices with new ideas.

The next substantial item the council wants to try to force on voters is the diminishment of citizenship in local government. Voters already rejected this idea the last time it was raised. The planned amendment would eliminate the provision that members of the city’s charter-required boards and commissions be registered voters, qualified voters or qualified taxpaying citizens.

All residents of Dallas deserve to be heard. But boards and commissions are invested with important powers that affect the governance of the city. Such a power is appropriately reserved to citizens. Citizenship has been a cornerstone of democratic governance since the creation of representative government. Dallas voters made their support for that principle clear in 2021, when many members of this council were serving.

Some council members would also like to make it easier to govern by referendum by extending the time period from 60 to 120 days to collect the required signatures for a referendum and to reduce from 10% to 5% the total number of registered voter signatures needed to call a referendum.

Referendums are usually bad ways to govern. Government works best when elected representatives consider policy carefully, weigh pros and cons, and work through compromises. Referendums more commonly empower populist sentiments, or throw so much sand into the gears of government that nothing gets done while a referendum is debated and voted on.

Another bad amendment would reduce the mayor’s power to appoint committee members, giving the council veto power over mayoral appointments. The mayor is the sole person elected by the entire city and committee appointments are one of the few charter powers the mayor enjoys. It should remain vested in the mayor.

With so many bad amendments, we are left with little room to focus on good amendments that got left on the cutting room floor. First among these was a plan to put the office of inspector general in the city charter to provide greater independence and more oversight to prevent fraud.

As the council begins debate today, this looks like a do-over. The amendments on the floor are, by and large, either divisive statements of activism or self-serving sops to the council itself.

There are good ideas out there, but what the council has decided to debate is largely bad. It’s time to begin again and get it right. Or if these are our only choices, do nothing and do less harm.

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