The executive director of the nonprofit Dallas HERO is counting the advancement of his organization’s charter amendments at Wednesday’s Dallas City Council meeting as a win, particularly in light of some City officials’ attempts to thwart their implementation.
The group’s three proposed charter amendments stem from a citizen-led petition campaign. If approved by voters, the amendments would significantly increase police resources, establish more accountability with regard to the city manager position, and empower citizens to sue City officials for failing to abide by the Dallas City Charter, the Dallas City Code, and state laws.
“First of all, it’s just a win that we actually did get on the ballot because there were threats from the council members to oppose us and to force us to sue the City,” Marocco told DX.
Several council members appeared to be openly hostile to Dallas HERO’s proposed charter amendments, expressing their disdain for the prospective measures at a briefing last week on August 7.
Earlier in the month, City officials had allegedly tried to undermine the intent of Dallas HERO’s initiative by distorting the language of the proposals as they would appear on the November ballot.
“The ballot language was fixed in a very last-minute victory where we stopped the poison pill, misleading language from being on there. [It] was designed to make the question before the voters essentially an unconstitutional outcome. So, predicting we would win, they were trying to poison the outcome,” Marocco said.
Marocco noted that most of the council members seemed to strike a more conciliatory tone during Wednesday’s meeting. Petition campaigns that secure the requisite number of resident signatures are entitled to have their proposed charter amendments go before voters. Nevertheless, a couple of council members moved to advance two new charter amendment proposals that would effectively neutralize those of Dallas HERO’s in the event that a majority of voters approved all the amendments.
“The amendments by [Council Members Omar] Narvaez and [Adam] Bazaldua were clearly deliberate backroom shams that were designed on the spot to shoot down the citizen-led petitions, and they will fail,” Marocco claimed.
“First of all, they have not even drafted the amendments. They didn’t collaborate or send them to committee. They did not consult with attorneys, and they did not consider the public at all. So they have completely made fools out of themselves with these two whimsical, nonsense, misleading amendments, and I doubt that they will ultimately make it on the ballot, at least not without a serious legal challenge,” he argued.