Dallas judge weighs: Can the City deny a resident’s right to apply for a public hearing?

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Should the City of Dallas be allowed to deprive a citizen of rights that are guaranteed under its own laws?

That’s the question attorney Robert Miklos pressed upon Dallas County Judge Gena Slaughter this morning on behalf of Janie Cisneros, who has waited a year for an answer.

Nearly two years ago, in fall 2023, Cisneros visited City Hall twice — “application complete, effective, payment in hand,” Miklos said in his arguments — and the City Attorney’s Office denied her from submitting the application for a public hearing.

The hearing Cisneros sought was to ask the City to set a date to close the GAF shingles plant next door to her Singleton United/Unidos neighborhood, arguing that an industrial, polluting plant next to a residential area doesn’t conform to the City’s development code. The legal problem, Miklos said, isn’t that the City wouldn’t set a date or disagreed with Cisneros — it’s that the City wouldn’t even allow her to begin the legal process.

The ramifications of this kind of “discretionary” action on the part of City staff are “super important” and “super scary,” Miklos argued to Slaughter, because that means the City can “suspend a citizen’s right to apply for something provided under their code,” and let that suspension drag on indefinitely with “no public hearing, no discussion.”

“If the City wants to allow shingles to float into the air in her neighborhood, they have the absolute right to do that,” argued Miklos, who noted he worked at City Hall for 10 years, “but in the future, any City staff member who says, ‘Hey, there’s a state statute, I’m just going to suspend the application until further notice,’ then there’s no bearing on time limit,” and someone who files an application to construct “apartments, a single-family home, a Seven-11 — it could take 10, 20 years.”

The City denied Cisneros saying it needed to first amend its development code to adhere to Texas Senate Bill 929, which hiked up the fees a city would have to pay a company if it declared its property “nonconforming” and forced it to move. One estimate from 2023 showed the City would have to pay GAF somewhere between $36 million and $45 million to force it to close or move before its stated departure date in 2029.

“They don’t want to be forced to either pay out money or to tell their own constituents, ‘Yes, we know this is causing harmful effects and ruining your neighborhood, but we don’t think your health is worth the money,” Miklos argued to Slaughter. “What they’re trying to avoid is having a public hearing where they have to tell their constituents, ‘No.’ “

Now that City Council has passed an amendment that deletes this right from residents and property owners, City Attorney Justin Roy argued Cisneros’ case is “moot” and granting her right to apply would be “retroactive.” Slaughter said she would have a ruling Monday or Tuesday.

“The judge ended this hearing the same way she ended the first hearing,” Cisneros told us afterward. A ruling never came from that initial hearing a year ago, and Cisneros hopes it will this time. 

What she wants, she says, is to exercise “the right that I had at the time.”

“We have these agencies, these entities that are meant to protect the public for our well-being,” Cisneros says. “It is daunting the amount of vigilance that everyday residents need to have because these agencies meant to protect us can just suddenly decide to remove someone’s rights.”