Austin leaders used taxpayer funds for Sweetgreen solo lunches, steak dinners and upgraded flights.
“Austin leaders?” we thought. “Surely they don’t mean our old friend, T.C., and even more surely they don’t mean Dallas’ former police chief, Eddie Garcia, who is beloved by all even though he left us in the dust.”
As it turns out, they especially meant Broadnax, who collects an annual salary of $488,800 to be one of the highest-paid city managers in the country. And, to a lesser but still hilarious extent, they also meant Garcia.
An American-Statesman review of city discretionary funding found that Broadnax has a near-daily hankering for Sweetgreen salads. In his first year on the job, between May 2024 and May 2025, he averaged $20 an order (way too much to be spending on a bowl of lettuce) and racked up a $3,300 lunch bill that was paid with city dollars.
“I obviously want to be healthy,” Broadnax told Statesman reporters earlier this month when asked about his proclivity for expensive salads.
The Sweetgreen spending actually started before Broadnax took over as Austin’s city manager. Two meals were comped in April 2024, prior to his May 6 start date, and a salad was expensed on his first day on the job. No meet-the-team lunches for city managers, it seems.
Broadnax told reporters that he was “advised” at the start of the job that his lunch spending was a standard practice around City Hall. In a follow-up statement sent later, Broadnax said that the newspaper’s review “highlighted a need to do a better job” of educating city employees about spending policies at City Hall that warn against “the appearance of impropriety.” City credit card holders are warned against charging regular meals to the card, and the policy states that food purchases must serve a business purpose.
“It is never appropriate to use City funds to pay for employee meals or food on a regular basis,” a 2006 policy memo on food spending states.
Broadnax told the newspaper that he will repay the city his first-year lunch costs.
Spending Woes
The Statesman’s findings come as Austin grapples with a $33 million budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year. The City Council is reportedly considering a tax increase election to help fill the gaps, and the police and fire departments have been put on notice that some staff shuffling will likely be required.Despite those woes, Broadnax’s spending records show the city leader also spent thousands on parties during his first year in the job. The paper found that the retirement parties for four city executives cost taxpayers $4,700. The most expensive gathering was at the Tex-Mex restaurant Chuy’s, where a steak burrito plate costs $15 and a taco-enchilada combo is $12.39.
Broadnax’s office left the restaurant with a nearly $1,700 bill.
The review found that Broadnax treats his team well, ensuring the conference room is always stocked with snacks and drinks for his top execs. Among those purchases was a $344 bill for premade protein shakes, an apparent favorite of Garcia, who started with the Austin executive team last November.
“I’m putting a stop to it right now,” Garcia told the Statesman, adding that he’d believed the executive suite snack stocking was a routine thing.
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, told the Statesman that spending on extras like food or retirement parties can be an easy target when looking to tighten up a budget.
“These are not huge amounts of money, but they suggest that public funds are not being as carefully extended as they might be,” Jillson said.
The Statesman piece has left us wondering about Broadnax’s spending during his tenure in Dallas and about his successor, Kimberly Bizor Tolbert's lunchtime favorite.
Ignorance might be bliss when it comes to that first thought. As for Tolbert’s eating habits, we’ll be keeping an eye out at the downtown Dallas Sweetgreen.
