THE CITY A Question of Competence

CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JERRY

Bartos has just emerged from a closed committee meeting with the city’s attorneys on the legality of the council’s supporting repeal of the infamous Wright Amendment, which limits flights out of Love Field. “With our legal department’s recent track record,” asks a hovering reporter, “how can you take their recommendations in good faith?” Bartos grins and cocks his head, then answers the question with circular reasoning. He believes the city attorneys, he says, because they’re our city’s attorneys. When it comes to people’s opinions of City Attorney Analeslie Muncy and the way she runs her office-whether based on the department’s recent track record or personal knowledge of Muncy-the world is split into halves: those who heap praise, and those who think she’s as weak as a mouse.

The job of city attorney is unlike that of any other attorney. Spur-of-the-moment legal opinions must be rendered in the unforgiving climate of open public session, and “the boss” is a council of eleven elected politicians. With sixty-five attorneys handling more than 1,000 cases at any one time, Muncy is in charge of one of the largest law firms in Dallas, and her office certainly handles the widest breadth of case types of any firm in town-from contract disputes to police shootings to civil rights litigation.

Whal Muncy knows about practicing law she learned in the service of the city of Dallas. Her legal career began in 1969 when Muncy joined the city’s legal staff fresh out of The University of Texas law school. A quiet, diligent worker, she became first assistant city attorney in 1977, and finally city attorney in 1982. She makes $106,000 a year and is the first woman to hold the post. Analeslie Muncy (named for two grandmothers, Anna and Leslie) has a grown son and a teen-aged daughter and lives in Preston Hollow with her house-husband, Mike.

Many current criticisms of Muncy are due to image and perception: she has an almost painfully small voice (which seems odd-she trained to be an opera singer before going into law), and she often answers council members-questions in a roundabout way, like many lawyers, that makes her seem to be answering both yes and no. That she’s wishy-washy is an oft-heard complaint. Another problem is that the legal cases that lose the city the most money are the ones that grab the headlines. “The [smaller] stuff we win from day to day,” says Ken Dippel, Muncy’s first assistant in charge of litigation, “and the money that [those legal victories] save the city, doesn’t get in the newspaper.”

Unfortunately, the big losses are coming fast and furiously. In the last two years, for example, the city has had to pay $3.8 million to a contractor for city-caused delays in the expansion of the Convention Center in the early Eighties, and $9.4 million to police and firefighters who were denied state-mandated vacation time. True, the litigation explosion continues, and many cities are getting sued because they have the “deep pockets,” but that doesn’t alter the appearance of a losing track record in Muncy’s own hometown.

In most cases, the events that spawned the litigation were beyond the control of Muncy’s office. Former council member Craig Holcomb says Muncy is deeply troubled that she can’t prevent all the city foul-ups that result in expensive court cases. “She can’t get the city department heads to do what she thinks they ought to do. She can tell them what she wants, but they report to the city manager, not to her, and they really don’t have to do what she says.”

Muncy isn’t to blame for the excesses of a litigious society, but some say other, more profound factors limit her effectiveness. Attorney Peter Lesser, a failed mayoral candidate in last spring’s election and one of Muncy’s harshest critics, says the question is whether the council is ignoring Muncy’s advice, or that Muncy simply isn’t giving that advice. If the council is not taking Muncy’s advice, says Lesser, perhaps it’s because Muncy isn’t forceful or convincing enough.

That kind of talk smacks of bias to council member Lori Palmer. “I think that’s sexist.” A soft-spoken, more feminine approach can work, she says, even in the brash, male-dominated structure that is city government. It doesn’t follow, Palmer insists, that just because Muncy is soft that she is weak.

Beyond the forcefulness factor may be a question of integrity. Jerry Rucker, an attorney and former council member, and a candidate for Congress in the Fifth District, claims he’s not a Muncy critic, but says, “Analeslie kind of pulls her punches, knowing how some people [on the council] will react.. .There are three people on that council who control the city attorney,” says Rucker: Al Lipscomb, Diane Ragsdale, and Palmer. ’’And those are the three who cannot win a political majority on the council. They win by having the city attorney coerced, so that valid and important things don’t get raised.” Rucker believes that if Muncy were to lose the support of those three, she could be fired. The council reappoints the CA every two years, and in recent votes, support for her has not been unanimous.

One controversial Muncy ruling involves Al Lipscomb. When Lipscomb was a young man living in California in the early Fifties, he was arrested and convicted of selling heroin. Original court documents call the conviction a felony. In Texas, convicted felons cannot hold public elected office unless they’ve been pardoned by the governor. Lipscomb has not. In 1984, after Lipscomb filled the vacated seat of Fred Blair, who had resigned to run for the state Legislature, Muncy was asked to give an opinion on Lipscomb’s eligibility to hold office.

Sent to the county law library to research California law, a Muncy assistant found this reference in the California Penal Code: “A felony is a crime which is punishable with death or by imprisonment in the state prison. Every other crime or public offense is a misdemeanor…” Lipscomb had served his sentence in the Kern County jail. Therefore, Muncy ruled, since he hadn’t served time in the state prison, he had not committed a felony. He could legally hold office.

Critics cite this as an example of Muncy’s bending the interpretation of the law to keep her job. “That’s just silly,” she says in response. “We rule on the law, and that’s just what the law is [in California]. We don’t have any control over that.” She does concede, however, that this is a strange way to define a felony. If Lipscomb had been convicted of the same offense in Texas, she says, he wouldn’t be allowed to hold office, regardless of where he’d spent his jail time.

It used to be that the city attorney was a member of the ruling troika of Dallas city government, along with the city manager and the city auditor. When Henry Kucera was CA, from 1935 to 1965, the three would go to breakfast and decide the agenda for that day. Even when Alex Bickley took over after Kucera retired, the CA played the role of policymaker as often as legal adviser. Muncy remembers those days as a young assistant. “Back then,” she says wistfully, “council meetings lasted maybe an hour and a half, and most decisions were unanimous and uncontested.” The coming of single-member districts in 1979 changed all that. Council meetings became marathon sessions filled with contention and debate. And the CA became just another staff person whose job was to react to problems-and otherwise keep quiet.

Muncy seems to have taken that new job definition deeply to heart. “A lot of people have a misconception about what our role is,” says Muncy. “We make our recommendations, but we don’t make policy decisions. A long time ago I used to get really upset if someone in the city manager’s office did things that I didn’t think were good. But I finally said it’s no use getting an ulcer over this. I can’t shape policy. Some people call those the good old days, but times have changed.”

No doubt. But the back-seat role of the CA has hurt the city in recent years. The PACE Starplex deal is an example. That contract was reviewed by Muncy’s staff and was stamped “Approved As To Form” and signed by an assistant CA. “Give me a break,” says another assistant CA who left to work in private practice while negotiations were under way with PACE. “If you’re going to review that contract, then you should point out everything you see that might be a problem. That wasn’t done.” Instead, in late 1987, the city accepted a contract that gave huge concessions to PACE in order to get it to come to Dallas instead of Carrollton. A public outcry and political turmoil ensued.

Muncy’s voice becomes slightly higher when she defends her actions on the PACE contract. “That contract was negotiated before we got into it,” she says. “I didn’t negotiate the substance of that contract. The mayor’s office and the Park Department did.” Her voice falls back to its normal pitch. “The City Council decided to lure a company away from another city. Things were offered that I didn’t have any control over.”

In the future there will be more deals Muncy can’t control. When the new council configuration of 10-4-1 is instated, there will be more single-member districts, resulting in meetings that are more contentious and longer than they are now. If Muncy cannot stand up and make herself heard above the din of politics, how will the city avoid repeating the legal mistakes of the past?