Councilman Scott Griggs put the filings in a Dropbox. I’m just digging into them myself. Let’s read together, shall we?
UPDATE (10:26) He’s trying to get a court to halt lump-sum withdrawals of DROP accounts. Why he filed as a citizen I don’t get.
UPDATE (11:06) The mayor’s office couldn’t comment on the matter because it’s not the mayor who filed the suit. They referred me to Laura Reed. While waiting to hear back from Reed, I called someone else who is smarter than I am. Here’s my understanding of the matter:
The mayor — excuse me — citizen Mike Rawlings filed this pleading for a temporary restraining order because if he’d filed as the mayor, or if he’d somehow gotten the city attorney to file (which he wouldn’t have), then the city would have had to give up its sovereign immunity defense in any counterclaim filed by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System. A hearing on this will likely happen today, and it will likely happen in Judge Tonya Parker’s court. The interesting thing about that is Parker was once an attorney at Gruber Elrod Johansen Hail Shank, and Mike Gruber is the lawyer working for Rawlings.
One more thing: it is likely that Rawlings will have to amend his filing. Because the pension also enjoys sovereign immunity, Rawlings will probably have to sue the individual board members of the pension — meaning he’ll be suing the four Dallas city council members that he appointed to the board.
UPDATE (11:40) The hearing will indeed be in Judge Parker’s court, the 116th, at 2:30 today. And here’s the official statement from Rawlings:
As a 40 year resident and taxpayer of the City of Dallas, I have chosen to personally file suit in District Court not only to protect the retirement benefits of all our police and fire personnel, but also to protect the pocketbooks of all my fellow citizens and taxpayers. I am funding this suit and at no time will any taxpayer dollars be expended in this effort.
In deference to the court, I will withhold further comment at this time.
Regarding personal filing vs. city
The Mandamus procedure specifically provides for a private citizen to enforce the laws at issue. There was no need to involve the City, the focus should be the legality of the Board paying out $500 million for a non-constitutionally protected program, that cut pension solvency from 15 years to 10 years in a matter of months.
