DIRECT ROAD FROM CITY HALL TO LOONY BIN

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Serving on the Dallas City Council will make you a little nuts. You’re probably thinking, “You’ve got to be a little nuts to begin with if want to serve on the Dallas City Council,” and there may be some truth to that. But it doesn’t change the fact that when nice, normal, rational people enter Dallas City Hall, it changes them.

People who once seemed level headed begin raising their voices. Folks who had previously displayed a propensity for playing well with others suddenly can’t seem to get along with anyone. Reasonable men and women who had never before displayed signs of mental illness begin to exhibit paranoid tendencies.

Notably, this psychological malady doesn’t seem to affect those council members that one would generously describe as “go-along-to-getalongers.” No, it’s the ones who keep banging their heads against the wall, fighting the status quo, questioning the power elite — they’re the ones who are hit the hardest by City Hall Anxiety, Paranoia and Tantrum disorder (CHAPT).

Take for example Councilman Scott Griggs. He’s a mild-mannered guy. Studious and quiet. The kind of guy you might find browsing the nonfiction shelves in a bookstore if he weren’t making the daily trek to city hall. A few months back, he yelled at a city staff member he believed was committing an illegal act — posting a notice for a council meeting when the deadline had passed, then backdating the timestamp and lying about it. I won’t bore you with the details of open records laws, but suffice it to say that the mayor had sneakily called a special meeting about the Trinity Toll Road. I say “sneakily” because the mayor had called a “special meeting” to prevent councilmembers from exercising their right to delay the item.

But it seemed the mayor had missed the open meetings posting deadline, so Griggs loudly demanded that city staff stop what appeared to be an illegal posting. He requested that the city attorney come immediately to witness what was going on and make his own determination.

The city attorney came down, looked around, and, to no one’s surprise, declared nothing was wrong and told everyone to go about their business.

It’s what happened next that should be incredibly troubling to all of us. Instead of conducting a thorough internal investigation on the possible illegal posting of notices, the city tried to charge Griggs with felony coercion of a public official. A conviction would have sent him to prison for up to 10 years, and stripped him of his council seat and law license.

Fortunately, a grand jury declined to charge Griggs with any crime. It was later revealed that city attorney

Warren Ernst had pushed to have Griggs charged — over the objections of the Dallas Police Department and the staff member involved. (Ernst has since resigned.)

I suspect there are some residents who look at City Hall mavericks like Griggs and Philip Kingston and snicker at their paranoid talk of powerful forces that control city hall. These are the same people who can’t imagine that the city manager would cut a secret deal with gas companies to allow drilling in parks, and who cannot fathom that staffers would use taxpayer money to hire investigators to perform “forensic traces” on inquisitive councilmembers.

But here’s a little secret I want to let you in on: Those mavericks aren’t really nutty at all. Their frustration is perfectly reasonable in the face of obfuscation, deception and, yes, conspiracies at city hall. You can’t really understand it unless you’ve been there, but I can attest to the fact that I went onto the city council (relatively) sane and city hall drove me bonkers. I learned the hard way that just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

So the next time a council member loudly demands answers from city management, argues forcefully against questionable city projects, or refuses to go along to get along, please don’t cluck your tongue at his tone of voice or bad manners. Just send him a thank you note and be thankful you’re not the one in the nuthouse.