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If you looked at the Ethics Advisory Commission’s annual reports each year since 2001, you’d think corruption was nearly nonexistent in Dallas. You might even think next to no one’s violated the city’s code of ethics in over two decades.
If you’ve kept up with Dallas City Hall in that time, you know that’s not true, as several high profile corruption cases have come out of the city with convictions as recently as last year.
The false impression is due to the fact that of all the ethics complaints filed between 2001 and 2006, only one resulted in discipline from the City Council. Things haven’t changed much these days. In 2021, the city secretary’s office received 21 ethics complaints. Only one ended up being taken to City Council. All of them were eventually dismissed.
But the city’s ethics enforcement may have more bite with the hiring of Dallas’ first inspector general, Bart Bevers.
Last year, Mayor Eric Johnson proposed ethics reforms that he said would help weed out corruption at City Hall. Those reforms were passed unanimously by the City Council in December. The centerpiece was the creation of an office of inspector general for the city.
The office would investigate potential ethics violations and monitor compliance of the city’s ethics code. It would also act as a resource for city employees and officials. The head honcho of the office would of course be the inspector general, and it would be Dallas’ first.
“For far too long, Dallas City Hall has operated under a cloud of suspicion, opacity, and, yes, clear-cut corruption.” – Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson
After a round of public interviews, the city hired Bevers, 58, to fill the new role this week.
“For far too long, Dallas City Hall has operated under a cloud of suspicion, opacity, and, yes, clear-cut corruption,” Johnson said in a statement. “That begins to change today with the hiring of our city’s first-ever inspector general – the result of a historic ethics reform proposal that won the unanimous support from the Dallas City Council after I brought it forward late last year.”
Bevers is a criminal defense attorney and was the inspector general of the state’s Health and Human Services Commission from 2007-2011. He also served as a state deputy inspector general and an assistant district attorney for Dallas County. He’ll start his new job on March 14. He’ll be hiring more staff for his office, which will work under city attorney Chris Caso, who reviewed 20 other candidates for the job. Forty people applied, but only half of them were attorneys, which was a requirement.
During the interview process, Bevers told City Council members, “You won’t find anybody applying for this job that has a passion for this type of work the way I do.”
His office will investigate internal fraud, waste, abuse and corruption complaints, as well as anonymous tips, and submit the credible ones to the ethics advisory commission. The way the process has worked, the person making an ethics complaints is largely responsible for investigating their claims and making a case to the ethics advisory commission, which often dismisses the complaints.
Now, the inspector general’s office, which has subpoena powers, will be able to vet these complaints and follow up.
“This is a really big deal,” City Council member Cara Mendelsohn said in a post on Twitter. “Maybe you have to be an insider to know it, but it could be the most consequential change at City Hall in decades.”
The new office has been given up to $197,558 in funding. On top of creating the inspector general’s office, the ethics reforms passed last year also expanded the ethics advisory commission to 15 members and includes a chief integrity officer who will help create mandatory ethics training for city employees and officials.
“We still have challenges ahead of us, but Dallas is stronger today than it was yesterday,” Johnson said.
