Mike Rawlings and Paula Blackmon’s Role in the Pension fund crisis

• Under Mike Rawlings' leadership, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System crisis deepened due to prior reckless investments. Instead of holding those responsible accountable, leadership focused on cutting police and firefighter benefits, leaving public safety workers to bear the brunt of the fallout.

• Defunding the police wasn't the beginning—Paula Blackmon's inaction on fixing the pension crisis led to the loss of over 800 officers, undermining public safety for all of Dallas.

• While Paula Blackmon enjoys gated-community safety, she’s left Dallas' working families to fend for themselves—vote YES on Prop T & U to hold leadership accountable!

The problem with politicians like Mike Rawlings and Paula Blackmon when it comes to public safety is that the past is prologue.

When we look at stats, it gives us a glance beyond popularized talking points and sentiment. Councilwoman Blackmon’s job was to make sure that the city was safe and that Dallasites needs were met. It takes more than lip service to be a champion for public safety. It takes more than photo ops and feel good moments where we are seem connecting with people we normally have nothing to do with in regards to the everyday circumstance of our lives.

It means that by principle you create and support an environment where everyone in the city can depend on the laws being respected, protected and at times enforced. This isn’t a video game.

People and their family’s lives are actually at risk.

Paula Blackmon worked under former Mayor Mike Rawlings as his chief of staff and was paid handsomely for it. Mr. Rawlings most notable contribution was his failure to address the crisis of the public safety worker pension funds as brought about by Mike Tettamant, then head of the Dallas Police nad Fire Pension System. Tettamant’s salary peaked well over $600,000 plus benefits. The Dallas City Council paid this man to gamble away the pensions of police and fireman by taking the money and making high risk investments which then led to a shortfall and anxiety amongst public safety workers when they rightfully needed their pensions to address their lives.

This brief historic example is exactly why you should vote YES on proposition “S”.  In doing so, Dallas City Hall would have scrambled to make sure that Mr. Tettamant was removed and that the pension system was repaired. They would be encouraged to play closer attention to functionaries of the city and made sure they didnt treat the city and tax payer money like a damn casino.

One must take a moment and marvel at the mendacity of the former Mayor Mike Rawlings, who, along with his notorious theatrics and wordplay, refuses to recognized his role in this debacle. His job, along with Paula Blackmon, was to rectify the matter. Instead of fixing it, he only made it worse. He cut the pensions, cut key benefits and placed limits Deferred Retirement Option Plan. So instead of bringing the perpetrator(Michael Tettamant) to justice, he sabotaged the benefits of the pension plan, damaging the trust that the Public Safety Workers had in the system...which led to a shorfall of 800 officers.

It was never the benefits that were bestowed to public safety workers. It was how leadership managed the fund with a level of depravity we normally associate with gambling addiction.

Why is this important?

These jokers had ten years to address the issue and because of how they covertly cover for each other, and the problem with Paula Blackmon is that she will make claims of how upset and sorry she is about when Darron Burks got murdered or how Clarissa Davids will be blind for the rest of her life, but when it really came time to do what ever it takes to providing adequate protection for law enforcement, she chose up on defunding the police, bypassing any and every opportunity to fix the pension fund, and blocking off all efforts to address accountability in the governance of Dallas.

This is why we should all vote YES on Prop T, so that thermostats like Councilwoman Blackmon CAN get a more accurate read on how her constituents felt about the quality of life they were allegedly entitled to.

The truth is they don’t want to fix the public safety fund...which could have been fixed by making is a priority, so that when there was an excess amount of revenue in the city, those funds could be diverted into the pension and then the crisis is not only averted, it is resolved, and public safety workers are not in an adversarial relationship with the city.

That is why we should all vote “YES” on Propostion U.

As per Paula, when you look at the company she keeps, it is of no surprise that she doesn’t want to do this. She likes her lifestyle in her gated community and doesn’t think public safety workers deserve protection or that EVERYONE in Dallas deserves the same sense of street safety she has come to take for granted.

She will tell us that these Propositions have no place of the ballot and that we have no right to vote for them, …then joins in this circus of making claims of some “sinister” plot while the past is prologue...and it should piss you off as much as it does me.