Dallas’ new city manager has taken off running with a list of things advocates want changed at City Hall, promises to keep progress on the fast track
Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez
Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez is a soft-spoken man who says he’s determined to use his influence in his new role to bring change to City Hall.
Change was the chief demand when Gonzalez was selected to replace his longtime predecessor Mary Suhm in January, and in a recent interview with Dallas Voice, he said the changes also will embrace LGBT issues.
The equality resolution the city council approved last week officially directed Gonzalez and his staff to examine inequities in city employment and fix them administratively as well as through council approval. Gonzalez said the resolution is a good start in the work that needs to be done for the LGBT community.
“Now that we have some meat on the bones in terms of direction, we’re going to be asking more specifically what are the things that need to be changed and how do we go about doing that,” he said.
The resolution was stalled for a week when Gonzalez, Mayor Mike Rawlings and Councilman Jerry Allen agreed to discuss the council’s legal questions during executive session. Many advocates viewed the move as a way to kill or water down the measure, especially after Rawlings prevented the marriage equality resolution from moving forward last year. But Gonzalez told Dallas Voice there were genuine concerns and a need to express them openly in closed session.
“Like many things that are different, people process them at different rates,” he said. “And at that time, notwithstanding all the logical reasons why it might have been on a different schedule, there was just a need for some additional time for processing. And it happened.”
One item at a timeGonzalez has a lot of expectations weighing on him. The council unanimously approved him as Suhm’s replacement with a $400,000 salary, the highest city manager’s salary in the nation and a large increase to the $250,000 he earned as interim city manager. It’s also a huge increase to Suhm’s $305,000 salary after more than eight years in the position.
With only a few months on the job, he’s wasted no time addressing LGBT issues. He’s met with staff about how to make the city, fire and police pension programs inclusive for same-sex spouses. Currently, opposite-sex spouses receive benefits for life when their spouses die, but same-sex spouses are treated like any other beneficiary and benefits run out after 10 years.
Since pensions have come up before, Gonzalez expects them, along with family leave, medical coverage and citywide cultural competency training to be addressed first when his office gives its quarterly presentation to the Finance, Budget and Audit committee in June. And while the city’s Employees’ Retirement Fund will discuss the pension in coming months, Interim Assistant City Manager Theresa O’Donnell said preliminary discussions with the pension board staff indicate a “status quo position.”
“This institutional inertia presents a real opportunity for City Manager Gonzalez to demonstrate his leadership and commitment to LGBT employees by guiding the Pension Board and its staff in the direction of equity and fairness,” she said.
So far, Gonzalez seems poised to fix the inequities in employment publicly, as opposed to Suhm’s more quiet approach to resolving issues behind the scenes.
As for comprehensive transgender healthcare, there was a big push to add gender reassignment surgery to the city’s insurance plan last year. Issues about what was actually covered for trans employees also came up with gender markers not being changed and hormones not being covered. Suhm told Dallas Voice in a previous interview that everything except surgery was covered, and adding that coverage was a financial concern, despite other cities that added full coverage seeing a minimal budget impact.
Gonzalez said he’s been made aware of the cases where there was a question of coverage and has worked to resolve them. As for adding the coverage, he said that’ll be part of the conversation among a group of city employees who will discuss what benefits need to change this year, adding that he’ll ensure a trans employee is included in the discussion. But he doesn’t rule out the coverage being added.
“It’s possible, but it’s going to happen only after there’s a lot more research and conversation,” he said.
A longtime ally
Even without the resolution, Gonzalez, a 15-year veteran of City Hall, said he expected changes for the LGBT community to happen.
“I’d like to think that we’d still be moving forward, but it certainly helps that the value is now explicit, and so that creates more energy for change to occur,” he said. “I think [change is] happening. Let’s not discount when the issue came up, some of our best and brightest were put on the case. And that’s not insignificant.”
Gonzalez is referring to O’Donnell and Assistant City Attorney John Rogers, who made three presentations to the finance committee before penning the resolution.
The city also is hiring an ethics and diversity officer to ensure strategies, policies and trainings are inclusive, which will help bring about change at City Hall.
Interviews began this month, and candidates will eventually meet with Gonzalez before a final decision is made.
Calling to mind the city’s “It Gets Better” video made last year, Gonzalez said the new officer could work on similar projects to encourage and celebrate diversity.
Gonzalez’s relationship with Dallas’ LGBT community goes back decades. He worked as an assistant city manager from 1988-1995 before leaving and later returned to the post in 2006. During his first stint, he met with a lesbian who the Dallas Police Department refused to hire because she was gay. That was 1989.
Resource Center spokesman Rafael McDonnell said Gonzalez has been aware of the issues in the community for years and has worked with its members to resolve them. The center’s staff has already discussed the changes the resolution will bring at City Hall.
“He’s been exposed to the LGBT community in Dallas going back a long time,” McDonnell said. “I think that we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to build a real solid relationship. “
‘I don’t get discrimination’
Gonzalez, a San Antonio native, grew up playing sports and learning the value of diversity in athletics and from his parents. So when it comes to inclusivity, he said he’s all for it.
“I don’t know that I see these differences, to be really honest,” Gonzalez said about the LGBT community. “I don’t get discrimination. I don’t understand how that produces a good value to anybody.”
As an example, Gonzalez said he was talking to a group of people about moving people around at City Hall. O’Donnell’s role came up and the possibility of moving her to a higher-profile position. She’s been an interim assistant city manager since he took over last summer as interim city manger. He said O’Donnell asked him how moving her up would be viewed, to which he responded that a lot of women have top positions.
But O’Donnell was referring to the fact that she’s openly lesbian in an office that has a number of openly LGBT staff. She and Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata were featured in the “It Gets Better” video.
O’Donnell said her position changing could be viewed as gay-friendly, and she worried if he “was being politically naïve to what those ramifications might be.”
“In the city of Dallas there’s a lot of council sensitivity about how the community is reflected in the staff,” she said. “Overwhelmingly we got very positive response to the video, but there are still a few critics about why are they doing this. So I just wanted him to be thoughtful about that.”
For Gonzalez, her sexuality wasn’t an issue.
“I know that there’s that factor. I’m not blind to that,” he said, adding that her value as an employee outweighs what people may think. “She’s extremely good at what she does and is a good person, so beyond that I don’t know why the other labels are necessary. And so the people that I deal with are on that basis and their value is what they are able to bring to the table in terms of making good things happen.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 14, 2014.