The Texas Attorney General ruled Dallas must release records tied to trips of the mayor and Council members have taken. The city is now suing to keep it secret.
DALLAS — The city of Dallas is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to keep secret details of flights the mayor, City Manager and Council members have taken across the country and around the world, citing an obscure change to the state transportation code that lawyers and lawmakers say was not meant to apply to official travel.
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The lawsuit, filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, comes after a series of public records requests by WFAA and other media outlets seeking information about taxpayer-funded trips to New York, Montreal, Taiwan and others.
The city redacted information tied to the flights — in some cases releasing only the dollar amount spent, but obscuring other ticket information — arguing a change to the state transportation code that took effect in September 2025 protected that information from release.
Lawyers for the city asked the AG’s office, which decides which records are public, to allow it to withhold the information, but the AG declined – and ruled the city must release the information to WFAA and other requesters.
But rather than release the information, Dallas sued the attorney general to keep it a secret.
A city spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
On August 3, Council member Cara Mendelsohn sent a memo to Tolbert asking her to release the travel records.
“Transparency and accountability are fundamental to good government. Dallas residents have a right to know how taxpayer funded travel is authorized, conducted, and paid for,” she wrote.
Mendelsohn said later this summer that she had yet to receive a response from city officials.
“When the mayor and council members travel, they’re using taxpayer money to do that. And taxpayers deserve to know how that money’s being spent,” said Reid Pillifant, an attorney with Haynes Boone – which was hired by WFAA to make the case to the AG’s office that the records should be released.
He said Dallas city attorneys cited a change to the state’s transportation code that keeps private information related to the public’s use of an airport facility – including exempting their names, phone numbers, flight information and TSA Pre-Check status from public disclosure.
“The city is stretching this exception way beyond its intended purpose,” Pillifant said about the city’s argument. “The legislature was not trying to protect information about taxpayer-funded travel by elected officials, like what’s at issue here.”
When told of the city’s argument, State Rep. Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas), who sponsored the bill, said it was “never intended” to be used in such a way.
State Senator Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas), who authored the bill in the senate, provided the following statement: “My bill was intended to protect private data — like name, phone number, zip code, TSA Pre-Check and Global Entry numbers, etc. — of airport customers when they upgrade WiFi or pay for other things sold at the airport.”