Every year, local governments spend millions hiring lobbyists in the hope of influencing state-level policymaking, both before, during, and after each legislative session. These hired guns generally fall into 1 of 3 categories: external lobbyists (i.e. contract lobbyists); internal lobbyists (i.e. intergovernmental relations (IGR) staff); and publicly-funded pro-government associations (i.e. Texas Municipal League (TML), Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), etc.). While each category of lobbyist differs slightly in their type and function, each class seeks a similar end-goal—to expand the money and power available to government, to the detriment of liberty.

Like many local governmental entities, the city of Dallas participates in this practice. According to the city’s most recent adopted budget, officials intend to spend more than $1.5 million during the current fiscal year (i.e. FY 2024-25). One portion of that expenditure, $650,700, is for the employment of one or more external lobbyists (see page 362).

Moreover, the city of Dallas also maintains an Office of Government Affairs staffed by in-house lobbyists. The mission of this department is to serve “as lead policy and communications liaison to local, regional, state, federal, and international levels of government and other independent agencies, including but not limited to outreach on citywide initiatives; leading, developing and managing the City’s state and federal legislative initiatives in coordination with internal and external stakeholders; and securing funding and other resources for City programs.” Given their IGR function, this department can be better thought of as falling within the internal lobbyist category. For the present fiscal year, the department’s budget totals $862,347.

All of this raises the question, what is the city spending more than $1 million to achieve? To help answer that question, let us quickly review the city’s legislative program, which offers up at least a few anti-conservative proposals, like:

  • Promoting ranked-choice voting;
  • Advocating for revenue expansion through gambling;
  • Opposing preemption legislation, presumably even those liberty-minded proposals that empower the individual.

In light of those goals and others, can we really say that Texans are well-served by the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying?