The City of Dallas is playing hard to get with permitting data despite numerous open records requests.
In an effort to shed light upon the ongoing issues slowing down the building permit process, The Dallas Express has repeatedly sought documents from the City government over the past six months.
On August 19, the newspaper sought records of “all approved building permits and their original filing dates” for permits approved between August 2021 and August 2022. The City refused to provide any documentation, claiming they “were unable to locate any information regarding this request.”
The City added, “Building inspection records are maintained by physical addresses; therefore, please specify which addresses you are seeking information on.”
Responding to this, The Dallas Express asked for “the addresses of any approved building permits.” Dallas government once again claimed it could not “locate any information” on the issues and requested that The Dallas Express “specify which addresses.”
The Dallas Express then acquired a list of over 300,000 Dallas addresses from the Dallas County Appraisal District. The Dallas Express submitted these addresses to the City, requesting the approved building permits for all properties listed from November 2021 to November 2022.
The City, unable to use the previously offered reasons for denial, produced 42,000 permits.
In December, The Dallas Express filed another request with several hundred thousand addresses attached in the exact same manner. However, this time the City claimed that it “reviewed its files and has determined there are no responsive documents to your request.”
When pressed as to why the City refused this request shortly after complying with the previous one, the City changed course and provided some additional documents.
“The people of this city deserve clarity on the issues,” Karin Dyer, the editor-in-chief of The Dallas Express said. “While we applaud Development Services for recently rolling out a new permitting dashboard, the city government has developed a pattern of trying to dodge records requests that provide transparency to the public.”
“Dallas deserves an accountable government,” she concluded.
The Public Information Act explains, “the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government … adheres to the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people.”
Therefore, the law provides, people have the right “to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees.”
“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know,” the law continues. “The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
Although citizens have broad rights to the disclosure of government documents, there are some instances in which that right is restricted.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) noted in its legal guide for Texas open records laws, “Although the Act makes most government information available to the public, some exceptions exist.” However, if a government agency would like to withhold information, it must appeal to the OAG for permission to do so.
However, “if a governmental body improperly fails to release information, the Act authorizes the requestor or the OAG to file a civil lawsuit to compel the governmental body to release the information.”
Dallas has a recent history of missing the statutory requirements outlined by the Public Information Act. In 2016, Attorney General Ken Paxton took the City of Dallas to the Texas Supreme Court after the City failed to respond to a records request within the mandatory time frame.
In two separate instances, the City waited for 26 and 49 business days after receiving a records request before appealing to the OAG for the redaction of sensitive material — many times longer than the required 10-day response period.
A City attorney claimed, “[W]e missed the deadlines in both of these instances. It was inadvertence I believe. There’s … nothing in the record to indicate anything else,” according to court documents.
“Inadvertence” is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary as “Heedlessness; lack of attention; failure to pay careful and prudent attention.”
This all comes at a time when the residents of Dallas are demanding a more transparent and accountable local government.
A recent poll conducted by The Dallas Express suggested that citizens supported the City of Dallas becoming more transparent by a ratio of more than 2-1.
The only demographic group that did not support greater transparency by that large of a margin were those who self-identified as “far left.” In that instance, only 29% wanted more local government transparency, with 35% opposed.