Dallas voters passed Propositions U and S in November 2024, setting minimum police pay and staffing standards and allowing citizens to sue the City for accountability.
As The Dallas Express reported, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued city leaders in February, claiming the City fell short of Proposition U. And on March 26, they asked to dismiss the suit.
As the suit brought the charter amendments into focus, Rawlings spoke to members of the Dallas Bar Association on March 31.
“The amendments were well written, okay? And everybody understood them. People are saying, ‘Let’s sue the city,’ and ‘Let’s bring in more police officers,’” Rawlings said. “I think the council and the mayor right now, over the last four years, created an environment that people felt this was the only way to deal with this issue.”
“They couldn’t work it through their representative government, and that’s what got us into this conundrum,” Rawlings added.
Rawlings said the amendments stemmed from the fundamental question of good government. In that election cycle, voters shot down Proposition T, which would have launched an annual community survey to rate the City Manager’s performance, with bonuses or termination as the result.
“What is the right way to approach issues at the City? I was not a supporter of this, and brought a campaign up against S, T, and U,” Rawlings said. “I think it’s a fair point that people want crime to be down and they want to be in a safe place.”
Rawlings was a strong critic of the amendments, specifically taking issue with Proposition S for opening the City to what he called a “flood” of legal complaints.
“I love holding government officials accountable… There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it,” he said at the time. “For some reason, these people want Dallas to be the only city in the nation to give away immunity.”
Rawlings, a Democrat, served as Dallas mayor from 2011 to 2019.
Police Pay, Staffing Shortages
Ever since Dallas voters passed Proposition U, the City has continued to fall short of staffing and pay requirements for the Dallas Police Department.
Proposition U requires Dallas Police to keep a minimum of 4,000 officers, as The Dallas Express reported. It also requires the department to rank among the top five departments in North Texas for combined salary and non-pension benefits among agencies serving populations of more than 50,000.
Dallas’ budget for FY 2026 only anticipated hiring 350 more officers, ending the year with 3,424 sworn officers – 576 short of the statutory minimum. One regional pay comparison suggested the department’s base starting pay would rank 12th among area departments, seven ranks below the minimum.
Despite the shortfall, Dallas police have been reducing violent crime and response times – though critical emergencies still face alarming delays.
When The Dallas Express asked Gov. Greg Abbott about Dallas’ compliance with Proposition U in January, he pledged to look into the Dallas Police Department’s staffing shortage.
“We’re going to be looking into what the City of Dallas has or has not done with regard to funding the police, and see if there’s a violation of the state law that I signed,” Abbott said to DX at the time.
“Dallas is bearing the burden of their failure to have fully staffed law enforcement, their failure to contain a homeless problem,” Abbott added. “We will defund any city that defunds the police.”
The Lawsuit
When Paxton sued over alleged violations of Proposition U, he named the City of Dallas, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland Jr. as defendants, as The Dallas Express reported. He claimed the City violated its charter by improperly calculating excess revenue to meet funding mandates under Prop. U.
Ireland allegedly reported roughly $61 million in excess revenue for FY 2026 to the Dallas City Council, calculated by excluding certain revenue categories. Paxton claims the City’s projected excess revenue is actually roughly $220 million, when calculated under the charter’s broader definition.
Dallas asked to dismiss the suit, claiming Paxton lacks legal standing to challenge violations of local charter amendments.
A major question of the lawsuit, Rawlings said, is whether the voters can circumvent the council and mayor when they feel officials are falling short. He emphasized “sovereign immunity,” which has historically protected cities from spurious suits – but which Dallas voters cast aside with Proposition S in favor of accountability.
“I think there are a lot of people that felt that the city was off base and not dealing with the issues that needed to be dealt with,” Rawlings said. “There’s a dialectic going on here between cities and state, and I think this lawsuit by Attorney General Paxton is a good example of that.”
“It’s like, ‘Hey, they passed this. You stick to the letter of the law,’” he added. “That’s going to be in the hands of the court. There’s nothing we can do.”
