Dallas charter proposal would give mayor greater control over city government

A slew of high-profile business departures from downtown Dallas and the fight over the demolition of Dallas City Hall have reopened a long-running question: Who should run the nation’s ninth-largest city, an appointed city manager or its elected mayor? 

Three former Dallas mayors, Ron Kirk, Tom Leppert and Mike Rawlings, announced last week that they are launching a petition drive to amend the city’s charter and give the mayor more control over city operations. If they succeed in securing enough signatures, their proposal would go to voters in May, six months before the city elects its next mayor. 

Texas cities run under one of two forms of government. In a council-manager system, voters elect a council, with the mayor as one member, and the council hires a professional city manager who runs daily operations and prepares the budget. In a strong-mayor system, the elected mayor serves as the city’s chief executive, hiring and firing department heads, proposing the budget and overseeing city departments. 

Houston is the largest Texas city with a strong-mayor system. Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth use the council-manager system. In Dallas, the mayor has one vote on the 15-member city council and limited direct authority over city departments, while the city manager answers to the full council. 

Dallas voters rejected a full strong-mayor system in 2005. The proposed charter amendment, which the former mayors describe as “stronger mayor” rather than a full strong-mayor system, would let the mayor select and remove the city manager and city attorney, subject to City Council approval. It also would give the mayor responsibility for developing the city budget and authority to veto individual spending items, with the council able to override a veto by a two-thirds vote. The city manager position would remain, stopping short of the structures used in cities such as Houston, Chicago and New York. 

Laura Miller, who was mayor in 2005, has argued that the current system has failed. In a June essay for D Magazine, she wrote that the council-manager form of government “doesn’t work anymore,” and that neither does the city’s 14-1 council, in which 14 members are elected from single-member districts and only the mayor is elected citywide. 

In the essay, Miller argues that a mayor responsible for city decisions keeps the focus on campaign promises. She described how, in the mid-1990s, business leaders pushing to replace Reunion Arena worked privately with then-City Manager John Ware, not the mayor or council. John Crawford, the chamber of commerce chairman who led the effort, told Miller, then a reporter at the Dallas Observer, that he “didn’t have to worry about the politicians” because the city manager was the one who had to make the deal work. 

The campaign to get the stronger-mayor proposition on the ballot is expected to begin collecting signatures in October. Supporters need 20,000 signatures from registered Dallas voters to place the charter amendment on the ballot. If approved, the changes would apply to the mayor elected in November 2027. 

The proposal comes as Dallas is wrestling with major facility, budget and service questions. In June, the City Council voted 9-6 against repairing Dallas’ I.M. Pei-designed City Hall and directed the city manager to keep exploring relocation and redevelopment. Two council members, Adam Bazaldua and Paula Blackmon, sued their own city over the process, winning a court order that blocked votes on relocation. Supporters of a stronger mayor argue those fights show how difficult it is for voters to know who is accountable when authority is spread across the mayor, council and manager. 

A separate petition drive by the Save Dallas City Hall Coalition, led in part by Miller, seeks to put a charter amendment on the same May ballot that would keep the current building as the seat of city government unless voters decide otherwise. The coalition plans to file paperwork Oct. 2, starting a 60-day window to collect 20,000 in-person signatures from registered voters. 

Dallas voters have rejected stronger-mayor proposals before. Kirk pursued more mayoral authority while in office but dropped the effort after council resistance. In 2004, the council rejected Miller’s request to let the mayor hire and fire the city manager and veto budget items, even after she offered to delay the changes until after her term. 

A 2005 citizen petition went further than the current plan. The measure, led by attorney Beth Ann Blackwood, would have eliminated the city manager’s office and transferred its powers to the mayor, creating a full strong-mayor system. The Kirk-Leppert-Rawlings proposal keeps the city manager in place, with the mayor selecting that person subject to council approval. The 2005 measure drew opposition from Kirk, then a former mayor, and all 14 council members, and voters rejected it by about 62 percent. 

A scaled-back proposal failed later that year. The issue resurfaced during Dallas’ 2024 charter review, but council members did not advance even more modest changes to mayoral authority. That history is likely to shape how the latest campaign frames the proposal. 

In an interview last weekend on “Lone Star Politics,” NBC 5’s political show, Miller said any successful proposal would need to be built from the ground up through churches, civic clubs and neighborhood meetings, rather than introduced mainly by business leaders and former officials. She warned that voters are unlikely to respond to a top-down rollout built around a press conference with familiar political, business or civic names. Miller also said the language needs to be carefully drafted so voters do not see it as a wholesale transfer of power. 

The former mayors’ campaign will test whether Dallas voters are more open to that argument now than they were two decades ago. Supporters are likely to point to service delays, budget disputes and City Hall uncertainty as evidence that the current structure diffuses responsibility. Opponents are likely to argue that concentrating more authority in the mayor’s office could weaken district representation and politicize city management. 

Mayor Eric Johnson, who is term-limited and will leave office after his successor is elected in November 2027, has not taken a public position on the petition effort. The race to replace him is expected to draw a crowded field. So far, the only declared candidate is Michael Hinojosa, a Dallas native and former superintendent of the Dallas school district, who has said he supports giving the mayor more authority but does not plan to campaign for the amendment. Voters could decide the structure of Dallas government and the future of City Hall in May, months before they choose the mayor who would inherit both. 

Photo by Terrance Barksdale from Pexels