From pot to police, Dallas faces a real charter danger

The Dallas City Council’s first pass at proposing charter amendments was a swing and a miss.

From an unnecessary “preamble” that reads as a parody of progressive priorities to big raises and longer terms for council members, residents should be wondering what their City Council is up to.

We hope the July break put some council members in a better mind to actually focus on charter amendments that help the city run more efficiently while delivering excellent service.

Today, the council gets a second chance to do just that. And as much as we would like to encourage them to focus their energy there, we are worried that a more serious problem has taken precedence.

There are four proposed amendments to the charter that came not from the City Council but from petitions passed around by two interest groups. All of these amendments, if passed and placed in the charter, would represent serious dangers to our city. The council must focus its political efforts now on ensuring these proposals fail.

The first amendment would “legalize” possession of up to 4 ounces of marijuana. If you don’t know how much marijuana 4 ounces is, it means you’re in business. Police Chief Eddie García has strongly warned that passing this referendum would be bad public policy that would make Dallas less safe.

But the pro-legalization group Ground Game Texas is trying to use Dallas’ charter amendment process to score some political points. “Legalize” is a loaded term here. State law trumps city ordinance, and possession is illegal in Texas. But even as a symbol, such an amendment could prove problematic for police trying to do their jobs.

As worrisome as that is, there are three amendments put forward by the group Dallas HERO that might be worse. These could actually do major damage to the city’s budget and its representative government.

The amendments are complex but would (a) require Dallas to hire 1,000 more police officers by charter, (b) set up the city manager to either double her salary or be fired based on a public survey, and (c) permit residents to sue the city based on failure to comply with its own charter.

If any of those sound reasonable to you, dig into the details.

Dallas already budgets to hire more than 200 cops each year. The problem is actually filling the jobs. There just aren’t enough recruits. And even if there were, there is no way the city could add 1,000 officers immediately without shuttering parks and libraries and letting potholes bloom.

A public survey to either overly reward or outright fire the city manager would be a disaster — so subject to political manipulation that it would leave the city facing ugly annual campaigns over how to fill out the survey.

Finally, the idea that any resident could sue the city for any perceived failure to comply with the charter would lead to massive legal costs for no purpose at all.

None of these amendments should be part of our city charter. They are each so legally dubious that we hope they wouldn’t survive a challenge.

But even the outside possibility that they might become part of the charter should focus the mind of City Council members and civic leaders against them.

We need a lot of political energy aimed at explaining to voters why these proposals would be a train wreck for the city.

Given that, the council needs to narrow its own focus on proposed charter amendments to the absolutely essential. Because come November, voters need to be fully informed about things that could really hurt Dallas.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com