Last Thursday, former Mayor Tom Leppert had his takeaway ready for the Dallas Regional Chamber. “Good intentions can result in bad outcomes,” he said. He then repeated it another five times over the next half hour. Leppert was the counterbalance to Dallas HERO’s Pete Marocco, who had been invited by the chamber to sell three city charter amendments to a packed auditorium of the organization’s members at Dallas College’s downtown El Centro campus.
Leppert—along with former mayors Ron Kirk, Mike Rawlings, and Laura Miller—have spent the last few weeks warning voters that propositions S, T, and U could cripple city government. Quick rundown: one forces Dallas to waive its governmental immunity so residents can sue if they believe city officials aren’t following the charter or state or local laws. Another would survey at least 1,400 residents to determine whether the city manager gets a bonus or fired. And a third directs the city to spend at least half of all new revenue on shoring up the police pension and maintaining a police force of 4,000 cops; there are currently about 3,100, and just about everyone says it would be impossible to hire and train that many police so quickly. Those against the changes say their passage would grind City Hall’s operations to a halt and result in a deep reduction in services in order to transfer more revenue to the police department.
The mayors have declined to publicly speculate on the motive or intent from those behind the proposed amendments, instead choosing to see their opposition as operating in good faith—adding cops, funneling money to the underfunded police pension, holding City Hall to account—but going about it the absolute wrong way. But it is getting harder to believe that the HERO group, with its apparent allergy to transparency, is operating in good faith.
On Friday, the Texas Observer published independent journalist Steven Monacelli’s investigation into the brazen politicking and misinformation campaigns led by wealthy hotelier and bomb thrower Monty Bennett, who lives in the Park Cities. Outside of Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West, Bennett is the most prominent supporter of Marocco’s attempt to change the city government. Monacelli’s story makes clear that Dallas HERO has benefited from Bennett’s web of interests that have attempted to normalize what most city officials believe is an extremist Trojan horse aimed at crippling City Hall’s operations.
Bennett uses his Dallas Express, the conservative online news publication that is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to attack his enemies and promote his interests. Those interests include Dallas HERO, to which, he confirmed to WFAA, he has provided office space and some amount of funding. But his involvement is never mentioned in Express stories about HERO. And because HERO is registered as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, it does not have to reveal who is funding its operations. When Marocco speaks in public, he dials back the wild rhetoric that he is happy to share with Bennett’s publication. “People need to see council members in jail, even if it’s for two weeks,” Marocco told the outlet last week. Bennett recently went on conservative commentator Chris Salcedo’s podcast and clumsily tried to distance himself from HERO, even suggesting he was unaware of the organization’s website.
“I’m sure they have an online website and the like,” Bennett said. Remember: Bennett’s hotel companies, the Dallas Express, and Dallas HERO all office together in the same building at the Tollway and Spring Valley. Yet he’s not sure whether HERO has a website.
“They’re not mine,” Bennett told Salcedo, referring to the proposed amendments. “They’re done by this Dallas HERO organization, but I am a big supporter and a big proponent of them, so I’ve been speaking out for them.”
Monacelli’s reporting suggests Bennett has done far more than speak out for the organization, which should color how the public interprets Dallas HERO’s messaging campaign. Last Thursday, Marocco was on good behavior in front of the business audience. He repeated the arguments he has made since Dallas HERO successfully solicited enough signatures to force the three amendments on the ballot: that the city of Dallas will only take accountability seriously once it ditches its immunity clause, freeing anyone to sue city employees for perceived violations of the charter or municipal or state law; that Dallas doesn’t have a plan in place to fix its pension (it does) or hire more police officers (ditto) and forcing its hand is the only way to accomplish its hiring goals.
Marocco didn’t allege that the City Council were felons. Nor did he call Leppert a “grifter” or Rawlings “corrupt,” all of which he proclaimed in an interview with me earlier in the month. It was an exercise in normalization, packaged as a populist effort to deliver power back to the people. His argument did not earn the endorsement of the Dallas Regional Chamber. While most other notable Dallas-area chambers of commerce announced their opposition earlier in the month, the largest waited until it could schedule this debate. “We believe propositions S, T, and U are not the proper means to the envisioned ends,” read a shared statement from DRC Chair Cynt Marshall and Dale Petroskey, the organization’s president and CEO.
On Monday, the largest cop union, the Dallas Police Association, warned that the three amendments “would spell doomsday for the city budget.” And about that city budget: alleging that Dallas hasn’t used its new revenue to invest back into public safety is a lie. City Hall is a homer for cops. Police and fire have long accounted for the largest share of the budget. In fiscal year 2019-2020, Dallas’ budget allocated $874.9 million—61 percent—for public safety. In the 2024 budget, the city now spends about $1.07 billion for police and fire, with the former receiving $719 million. That’s one-fifth of the entire $4.95 billion budget. Starting pay will be $75,397, up from $51,688 in 2019. The budget includes money to hire 250 more cops, but Dallas has long struggled to outpace attrition as cops leave the department.
The City Council tried and failed to neuter the amendments by passing three of its own with language that negated those of Dallas HERO. The Texas Supreme Court found the move to be unconstitutional, which, in Marocco’s telling, was a criminal act by the City Council. Never mind that the Texas Supreme Court is, in its own description, “the court of last resort for civil matters in the state of Texas.”
This is not to say that the police department doesn’t have a lot of work to do. It currently takes officers more than 11 minutes, on average, to respond to the highest priority calls. That’s three minutes above its goal of 8 minutes, about the same as it was last year. It has taken an average of two hours to respond to Priority 2 calls, which include robberies, assaults, major accidents, and in-progress auto thefts. The goal is 12 minutes.
That is a direct reflection of the department’s staffing, which still hasn’t recovered from the run on the pension in 2018. That’s likely at least part of why Rawlings and the other mayors stay away from motive. There are real problems that need to be solved, and these amendments, at least partially, reflect a deep frustration with how City Hall has operated.
But it’s time to recognize evidence of Bennett’s influence and a targeted misinformation campaign aimed at manipulating voters. The true solutions to the police issue are complicated; some of them lie beyond the control of City Hall. Even the Dallas Police Association sees that. Will voters?
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