{"id":207046,"date":"2025-09-07T07:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T07:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207046\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T07:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T07:21:09","slug":"how-did-dallas-turn-its-inspector-general-office-into-a-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207046\/","title":{"rendered":"How did Dallas turn its inspector general office into a nightmare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, we marked the introduction of an inspector general<\/a> at Dallas City Hall, cheering on the hire of an official \u201ccorruption buster.\u201d Ethics reform was a key campaign promise of Mayor Eric Johnson, and he and the council delivered by creating this position. The city appointed Bart Bevers, a former deputy inspector general at Texas Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

Dallas, haunted by past corruption scandals<\/a>, had on its own hired a watchdog to guard against fraud, waste and abuse. City Hall was letting in the sunlight.<\/p>\n

How innocent we were to be so celebratory, in retrospect. Even those of us who have long chronicled dysfunction at City Hall couldn\u2019t have foreseen the mess this would all turn out to be.<\/p>\n

Today, the city has no inspector general. Bevers is suing City Hall<\/a>, alleging that he was ousted because he blew the whistle on excessive spending and bad procurement. His successor, Timothy Menke, lasted two months because city staff and the City Council overlooked a requirement that the inspector general be an attorney<\/a>, which Menke is not. So the council removed him in August.<\/p>\n

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A turning point here was the passage of a charter amendment in November that created a standalone office of the inspector general. Voters approved moving oversight of the inspector general from the city attorney to the City Council directly.<\/p>\n

In December, council members publicly began discussing conducting a search for an inspector general. Council members interviewed Bevers before his appointment in 2022, but he was the hire of then-City Attorney Chris Caso.<\/p>\n

In his lawsuit, Bevers said he was retaliated against for reporting misspent funds and procurement violations. Around the same time as these reports in January, he had begun investigating the conduct of an unnamed city official, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

Bevers questioned $42,600 in city spending on a council retreat that allegedly exceeded its $17,000 budget and skirted contracting rules, according to reporting by our colleague Devyani Chhetri. Bevers also alleged that a $637,000 aviation contract didn\u2019t go through a formal solicitation process.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what really happened, and the city isn\u2019t saying. A court will ultimately scrutinize Bevers\u2019 allegations. <\/p>\n

At any rate, City Hall has provided persuasive evidence that something is broken with its procurement process with the most recent inspector general hire. Attached to Bevers\u2019 complaint is a recruitment brochure from MGT, the firm the council chose to help hire an inspector general. A bachelor\u2019s degree is required; a juris doctorate is \u201chighly desirable\u201d and \u201cpreferred.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we wrote previously, Menke is a highly qualified law enforcement executive, but the city charter is unequivocal: The inspector general must be an attorney.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how that requirement missed so many layers of vetting. MGT didn\u2019t respond when we reached out last month, and city staff or council members have yet to offer a public explanation. <\/p>\n

The charter calls for a \u201ccompetent practicing attorney\u201d as inspector general. How about a competent City Hall?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago, we marked the introduction of an inspector general at Dallas City Hall, cheering on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":152601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,14840,14841,6083,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-207046","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-editorials","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\/115161811273857421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207046","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=207046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}