{"id":156263,"date":"2025-08-18T17:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/156263\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T17:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:29:14","slug":"dallas-new-inspector-general-is-not-an-attorney-violating-voter-approved-requirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/156263\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas\u2019 new inspector general is not an attorney, violating voter-approved requirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas\u2019 new inspector general,<\/a> tasked with uncovering corruption and ensuring the city government complies with its code of ethics, is not an attorney, and his recent hiring by the City Council violates the city\u2019s charter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A ballot measure voters approved last November<\/a> to create an independent office of Inspector General, outside of the city attorney\u2019s office, calls for the head of the department to be \u201ca competent practicing attorney of recognized ability.\u201d <\/p>\n

How did Dallas miss this work requirement? <\/p>\n

The City Council has been deliberating this issue in closed session for the past two weeks. They will meet again Wednesday in closed session to \u201cdeliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, or dismissal of the Inspector General and seek the advice of the City Attorney on this matter,\u201d as per this week\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

Political Points<\/p>\n

Get the latest politics news from North Texas and beyond.<\/p>\n

In June, council members unanimously hired Timothy Menke, a former federal official who held a similar role in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. <\/p>\n

Menke, who started his job in Dallas on June 30, has decades of experience tracking and investigating ethics cases for various agencies in and around Texas. He has led hundreds of agents and analysts during his tenure in the federal government. He has helped recover over $15 billion in criminal, civil and administrative cases, according to his profile on the city\u2019s website. In Dallas, he was appointed for a two-year term, with avenues for a reappointment and a $210,000 base salary.<\/p>\n

It is unclear exactly where the issue began. <\/p>\n

A job listing<\/a> for the position doesn\u2019t say that the applicant needs to be an attorney, though it does mention that a master\u2019s degree or doctorate of jurisprudence is preferred, and calls for the applicant to have a skillset that demonstrates legal acumen. <\/p>\n

The Dallas Morning News requested public records related to the candidates interviewed by the Dallas City Council. The News reached out to MGT Consulting Group, which was responsible for recruiting candidates, and Menke\u2019s front office and left messages that were unreturned. <\/p>\n

Council members reached by The News declined to comment or deferred to the city attorney\u2019s office. <\/p>\n

Mayor Eric Johnson, who began his tenure with an eagle-eyed focus on ethics reform following back-to-back corruption scandals involving local leaders, hailed Menke\u2019s appointment <\/a>in June as a means of fostering resident trust in government. Johnson, too, did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

Related:Dallas needs more oversight and stronger ethics rules, review finds<\/a><\/p>\n

Will Fletcher, president of the Association of Inspectors General, told The News that it\u2019s part of best practices to have an independent legal counsel in the office of inspector general in order to carry out investigations, and that Dallas isn\u2019t the only office to require the top ethics official to be an attorney. <\/p>\n

However, typical backgrounds of inspector generals can include attorneys, auditors, law enforcement officials and prosecutors. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe AIG doesn\u2019t prescribe what experience or background an inspector general should have except that they have a reputation for fairness, dedication to public service, unimpeachable integrity and will act with the independence required to manage an effective office of inspector general,\u201d Fletcher, whose organization represents thousands of members across the United States and internationally, said over email. <\/p>\n

In Dallas, however, the original intent leaned toward getting an attorney on board, according to Tim Powers, who was part of the ethics reform task force Johnson created. <\/p>\n

Task force members in a 2021 report recommended appointing an official with sufficient legal experience to oversee the OIG. \u201cMost of us on that task force were lawyers, and so when you talk about legal experience, we\u2019re talking about being a lawyer with legal experience,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

City officials took inspiration from the report and changed the city\u2019s laws to create the inspector general division within the attorney\u2019s office. The ordinance also established qualifications for members of the ethics advisory commission, though it did not include qualifications of the inspector general itself. <\/p>\n

Powers, once also the city\u2019s ethics reform czar<\/a>, said the task force had interviewed officers from cities such as Philadelphia and New York and tracked the top 10 peer cities in the U.S. and beyond to come up with recommendations of \u201cwhat\u2019s best for the city of Dallas.\u201d <\/p>\n

The most pressing recommendation had been to establish a boundary between the inspector general and city attorney\u2019s office to avoid conflicts of interest and give the newly appointed official the independence to investigate misconduct, waste and fraud within the municipal government. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou could easily envision the inherent tension if that function is overseen by a city\u2019s legal department, whose objective is to defend the city and\/or limit its liability,\u201d Fletcher said.<\/p>\n

The structure of the refurbished office was also what attracted Menke. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw that the independence of the office was created, that struck my interest in the position,\u201d Menke said at a July 15 ethics advisory commission meeting, where he highlighted his plans to restructure his office and address the findings of an audit that highlighted issues with the department\u2019s case management and lack of independence from the attorney\u2019s office, among others. \u201cWe\u2019re kind of a house without a foundation now,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

During that meeting, Menke also said that though he wasn\u2019t an attorney, he would be relying on his colleagues\u2019 legal expertise. Laura Phelan, an enforcement attorney in the inspector general\u2019s office, and Chief Integrity Officer Baron Eliason work with Menke.<\/p>\n

City employees directed The News to file for an open records request to get contact details of members serving on the ethics advisory commission. <\/p>\n

Last year, voters approved a proposition that waived Dallas\u2019 government immunity if it violated the charter. One resident, John Botefhur, who has run for the City Council before, highlighted concerns at the Aug. 6 council briefing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre the people on this council committed to accountability or tying up taxpayer revenue with expensive lawsuits and subverting the public\u2019s vote?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas\u2019 new inspector general, tasked with uncovering corruption and ensuring the city government complies with its code of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":156264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,14840,14841,80,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-156263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-city-council","11":"tag-dallas-city-hall","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115050955755334787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}