Ongoing scrutiny of the ethical conduct of city officials and their appointees notched a new chapter Wednesday at City Hall.
A majority of the Dallas City Council rejected their North Dallas colleague’s nominee to the ethics advisory commission Wednesday, citing adversarial online conduct by her husband.
Posts and videos by the husband featured caricatures of city officials, sometimes using deepfake artificial intelligence.
Natalie LeVeck, council member Bill Roth’s nominee, is a senior counsel at Google and teaches entertainment, tech and marketing law at Southern Methodist University.
Political Points
She gained prominence as a neighborhood rights activist after strongly opposing redevelopment of Pepper Square, an aging retail mall in North Dallas, where a developer had sought to build high-rises with more than 700 units. LeVeck’s mother, Judy Nordseth, whom Roth nominated as a member of the arts and culture advisory commission, was approved Wednesday.
During the council meeting, Roth said LeVeck’s experience covered all the criteria required for the commission, and said she “was an active and vocal participant in community relations.”
“Her husband also is involved and active in addressing city issues, and has some notoriety,” Roth said. “I am not appointing her husband to this position.”
He said he hoped spouses, family members or friends would not determine the merits of an appointment.
Council member Chad West raised concerns about LeVeck’s neutrality.
“Ethics at Dallas City Hall has been a longtime struggle,” West said.
West said he has generally deferred to his colleagues’ judgment on appointments even at times when he disagreed with or did not particularly like the candidate.
“This is a different situation,” West said. He said he wouldn’t have raised concerns had the nomination been for any other commission or board.
LeVeck declined to comment when reached by text.
The back-and-forth
The city’s track record with ethics has been spotty. Officials, including members of the ethics advisory commission who work with the inspector general, overlooked a key job requirement in hiring a new inspector general. The city hired Timothy Menke, a tenured federal executive, for the position only to let him go after less than three months as didn’t meet the requirement of being an attorney. And recently, former inspector general Bart Bevers sued the city, accusing officials of retaliating against him for his investigations.
“The ethics commission, to me, calls for participants to be beyond reproach, to be neutral actors who will join with impartiality and with pure motives,” West said. “I don’t believe that Mrs. LeVeck represents either of those qualities.”
Much of the consternation has surrounded Damien LeVeck, the nominee’s husband, who operates a social media account “Dallas En Fuego” and is known to have created videos and posts targeting council members West, Adam Bazaldua, Paula Blackmon and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Gay Donnell Willis, among others.
West said LeVeck also utilized artificial intelligence to create voices imitating political candidates, elected officials and most recently City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert.
“The imitation of our city manager is in one of his trash collection videos, and it’s particularly troubling, as it shows that Mr. LeVeck will stoop to any means necessary, even creating fake statements that sound real in achieving his goals,” West said.
West said the LeVecks appeared to be unified in social media presence, electoral activities, political donations and speaking at City Hall.
“Mrs. LeVeck cannot be immune from such behavior, and does not need to be in a position where she has access to confidential information about council members, appointees and city staff,” he said.
Mayor Eric Johnson, who supported LeVeck’s nomination and is a big proponent of ethics reform, said West’s argument was well taken. But he said he didn’t want to set a precedent where council members would deny appointments based on personalities and policy positions. He also didn’t want long debates about whether the candidate is liked or not as that makes appointing candidates a difficult endeavor.
“I want members to know that whoever you bring forward, unless they are literally not qualified, I’m going to be okay with your appointees,” Johnson said.
Damien LeVeck is also executive director of Dallas Hero, the nonprofit that was behind ballot measures that mandate the city have a police force of at least 4,000 officers, dedicate half of any new revenue from the year prior to the police and fire pension, as well as other public safety initiatives.
Another Dallas Hero proposition waived the city’s governmental immunity and opened the city up to lawsuits if it was not adhering to its charter. LeVeck, in his association with Dallas Hero, has threatened to sue the city if it didn’t increase homelessness enforcement and follow state law that bans outdoor camping unless authorized.
“It’s not surprising to me that council member West, whom I filed an ethics complaint against for spending his campaign funds at a male bathhouse in DC and labeling it as ‘supplies’ on his expense report wouldn’t want an extremely intelligent, accomplished, and qualified attorney like my wife sitting on the city’s ethics commission,” LeVeck told The Dallas Morning News when reached by text.
“Nor is it surprising that the other council members I’ve filed ethics complaints against followed suit. It was retaliatory pure and simple, which is an ethics violation in and of itself,” he said, adding that the council members he had filed complaints against were Blackmon and Bazaldua.
West responded: “Damien files TEC complaints against political opponents ahead of elections not because he has ethical concerns about them but so that he can make campaign videos accusing them of unethical behavior during the election season. His goal is not to win at the TEC but to deceive people.”
So far, the state has not handed any civil penalties to either of the officials.
“And that’s exactly why his wife shouldn’t be on the ethics commission,” West responded. Bazaldua said LeVeck had weaponized the ethics code and filed complaints that risked impacting situations in which serious violations arose.
LeVeck said he raised questions with the city’s office of inspector general about a recent council meeting, where Blackmon was heard saying she asked Lorena Campos, a lobbyist retained by the city, to help her with state lawmakers from West Texas, as she owns a home in the region.
Blackmon told The News that she was referencing an event hosted by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials where she asked Campos to introduce her to state Sen. César Jose Blanco, D-El Paso, who represents the area where Blackmon has a home.
Blackmon said the Legislature was discussing bills related to the police and fire pension and other issues important to the city. “I just wanted to introduce myself,” she said, saying she hoped the familiarity would help her connect with the lawmaker.
Campos did not respond to texts by The News to verify the account. The News also reached out to Blanco and did not hear from him.
During the campaign season, when the LeVecks supported Roth’s council run, the filmmaker made posts using artificial intelligence against Roth’s opponent and former Park Board member Jeff Kitner. At the time, Roth had denounced the mudslinging.
LeVeck said he also filed ethics complaints with the Texas Ethics Commission against West and Bazaldua on allegations of not properly disclosing campaign finances. West said LeVeck filed four complaints against him, all of which were dismissed.
One of the cases involved an administrative reporting error where West paid for contract services for a campaign worker and reimbursed himself out of the campaign funds.
“That was deemed as permissible as I was not personally paying myself out of the campaign, but I was required to resubmit my campaign finance report to accurately reflect the legal expenditure,” he said.
Bazaldua’s case, which was related to not filing his campaign reports before the deadline, was resolved, according to records reviewed by The News.