The Dallas City Secretary’s Office appears to be slow-rolling the release of emails regarding interim City Manager Kim Tolbert’s racial activism.
The Dallas Express filed a public records request on March 11, seeking Tolbert’s communications with race-conscious organizations that have supported her ascendency to helm City operations, such as the NAACP, and activists like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Xolani Kendi.
DX requested that these documents be filtered for words like “white fragility,” “decolonization,” “racial justice,” “racism,” “oppressor,” “BIPOC,” and other race-conscious terms.
On March 18, City Open Records Manager Nancy Gonzalez wrote to DX, “Your request for emails yielded an enormous amount of emails. Please let me know if you would like to modify your request.”
DX modified the request to narrow the temporal scope two days later.
Nearly five months have passed since this request was initially filed, and in that time the Dallas City Secretary’s Office has continued to fill dozens of other open records requests filed by DX.
The City Secretary’s Office only recently contacted DX with a notice that obtaining the records would cost $337, setting up another bout of price wrangling that could result in a complaint before the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
DX has repeatedly exposed inconsistencies within this branch of City operations, which is charged with giving citizens information about the affairs of their government.
For example, the open records manager claimed a wide variety of broad legal exemptions protected memos Tolbert would have produced regarding “racial equity” during her previous roles with the City from open records requests.
After DX challenged the exemptions before the Texas Attorney General’s Office, DX received a message claiming the records did not exist. However, less than a handful of records that were already available online materialized without explanation, DX previously reported.
In another instance, the City Secretary’s Office leaked information about a former employee to DX, including her name, Social Security number, address, birth date, telephone number, and other personal financial records — information that had nothing to do with the files DX requested.
The documents sought were a digest of the City’s investments in the employee retirement fund.
DX received a message that read, “Per the Employees’ Retirement Fund, the first two (2) years of records would be provided free of charge. The cost for additional year(s) of records are $5,000 per year. Please accept our apologies for sending the wrong information. Please disregard the previous information that was provided.”
DX challenged the levying of a $5,000 fee for documents that other jurisdictions have had readily available and free of charge, reminding the City Secretary’s Office that members of the press are typically granted fee waivers. No one at the City responded to this reminder, but DX did receive a notice that the City Secretary’s Office was invoking a time extension.
Only after months of wrangling were the investment documents obtained.
DX reported that Tolbert has long been interested in racial causes and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Her work and social media activities have, at times, also included an air of anti-police sentiment.
The City’s “core values” of “Empathy, Ethics, Excellence, and Equity” appear at the bottom of many City documents, including those produced by her office.
DX contacted Gonzalez for comment on what has delayed the production of Tolbert’s emails over so many months; however, she did not respond by publication.