Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson urged the City Council to look for projects they can trim and follow through on cost cutting.
By Devyani Chhetri
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Mayor Eric Johnson on Sunday backed the city’s new cost-cutting measures, slamming City Council members who talk about restraint but approve “bloated” budgets and resist meaningful cuts.
“Council members will pay lip service to fiscal responsibility, but when it comes time to vote, few are willing to follow through. Each has favored projects and programs to which they will tolerate no reductions,” Johnson said in his weekly newsletter.
The newsletter marks Johnson’s first public comments on the budget, likely to stir tension from some council members who support the cuts and have called for a closer look at spending and how the burden is shared.
Dallas officials are navigating a more than $30 million shortfall six months into the current fiscal year, driven in part by rising health care expenses and overtime costs. Last month, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert told department leaders to limit costs immediately.
She also imposed a hiring freeze for most city jobs, halted nearly all overtime and banned unnecessary spending and travel. Departments must now spend money only on essential needs and delay or cancel anything else.
Since then, council members have weighed in, some pushing to grow revenue and others calling for a review of payroll and a “top-heavy” workforce.
Johnson said he hoped Tolbert’s cost-saving directive will serve as “a wake-up call” for the council to hone in on aggressive measures to rein in spending.
He said resistance to cuts makes it difficult to follow through, pointing to the library system in which the council approved branch closures but later resisted implementing them.
In his newsletter, Johnson highlighted his budget record, voting against three budgets, calling to “defund the bureaucracy” and issuing a tax-cut challenge last year.
He again urged council members to identify programs to cut alongside those they want to preserve.
Protecting their own projects makes “meaningful spending restraint…impossible,” he said.
Johnson is one vote on the council and does not control the budget, which is crafted by the city manager and approved by a majority of council members, including the mayor.
The city is scheduled to meet this week for its first public discussion on next year’s budget.
Dallas City Hall Reporter
Devyani Chhetri covers Dallas City Hall. Before joining the Dallas Morning News, she covered South Carolina politics and presidential primaries. She went to Boston University for graduate school.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
