City News

Top 5 reasons Dallas City Council should take a pass on VisitDallas

Conventions are way down these days.

Photo courtesy of Dallas CVB

UPDATE 6-10-2020: The City Council approved a 5-year contract with VisitDallas. Voting yes were Chad West, Adam Medrano, Carolyn Arnold, Jaime Resendez, Omar Narvaez, Tennell Atkins, Paula Blackmon, Adam McGough, Lee Kleinman, Jennifer Gates, David Blewett, and Eric Johnson. Voting against: Cara Mendelsohn. Both Adam Bazaldua and Casey Thomas recused themselves.

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On June 10, the Dallas City Council votes on whether to renew its contract with VisitDallas, an organization whose mission is to promote Dallas as a business and tourist destination.

The organization has come under scrutiny ever since an audit in 2019 found a host of problems, financial and otherwise, resulting in the resignation of its financial officer as well as its former CEO, Philip Jones. The new CEO is Craig Davis, who told the Dallas Morning News that "VisitDallas is committed to accountability and transparency."

Since he was appointed, the organization has blocked requests for information on basic matters such as salary and benefits, legal bills, and tangible results of their marketing efforts. (VisitDallas Marketing & Communications Director Stephanie Faulk says in an email that, "Our records indicate that all have been resolved, either through us providing the responsive documents or through a ruling by the Texas Attorney General.")

Beyond the accountability issue, there's also the matter of the coronavirus. VisitDallas gets much of its funding from the hotel occupancy tax (HOT), a fee charged to hotel guests. But with COVID-19, hotels are empty these days.

Residents who watch the city council's expenditures have advocated against renewing the contract.

Here are 5 reasons the city council should not renew the contract with VisitDallas:

On their website, they promote other cities, not just Dallas.
Their salaries are crazy generous. Davis' starting base salary is $360,000, and many employees earn well over six figures.
We are in an economic cataclysm and could use that hotel tax revenue on other, more crucial things.
Their projections seem unrealistic: They assume that dozens of conventions will take place in Dallas in 2020, which does not look promising. In an age of rapidly declining demand for conventions, it makes more sense to reallocate the revenues towards enhancing tourist draws, a permissible alternative use. We need to be encouraging independent tourism, where demand remains strong - not conventions, which are going the way of the dodo bird due to the pandemic and Zoom.
Who is on the hook for their expenses if there is no HOT tax coming in?

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Texas shocks as America's No. 3 least safe state in 2026 report

Photo by Hiroshi Kimura on Unsplash

Texas ranks as the 48th "safest" state — out of 50.

While no state is invulnerable, some do more to protect their residents than others. And a new study has declared Texas one of the five least safe states in America.

WalletHub's "Safest States in America (2026)" report examined all 50 states for their emergency preparedness and for residents' personal and residential, financial, workplace, and road safety. Factors that weighed into the rankings include specific crime rates per capita, the share of the population that is uninsured, road quality ratings, workplace injury statistics, and more.

Texas ranked at the bottom of the list as the 48th "safest" state — or the third least safe state. It's joined by several other Southern states, like Mississippi (No. 50), Louisiana (No. 49), Florida (No. 47), and Arkansas (No. 46).

According to WalletHub, Texas specifically ranks third to last in the nationwide "emergency preparedness" category, which was determined based on the prevalence of climate disasters causing $1 billion or more in damages from 1980-2024, and the loss amount resulting from those disasters.

The Lone Star State also ranked 40th (or 10th worst) across three safety categories: personal and residential safety, financial safety, and road safety. The report additionally found that Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents nationally.

Texas' "workplace safety" was the state's highest-ranking category, landing 30th nationally.

Additional rankings that determined Texas' overall safety include:

No. 30 – Assaults per capita
No. 32 – Fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time workers
No. 32 – Sex offenders per capita
No. 35 – Murders and non-negligent manslaughters per capita
No. 36 – Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel
No. 41 – Loss amounts from climate disasters per capita

According to the report, the five safest states in America are all located in the Northeast. Vermont leads as the country's safest state in 2026, followed by Massachusetts (No. 2), Maine (No. 3), New Hampshire (No. 4), and Connecticut (No. 5).

Though every state has varying levels of safety, WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo asserted that the safest places in the U.S. categorically invest in protecting their residents. Top-ranking states have low crime rates and diligently maintain their road infrastructure, and other states that prioritize their residents' safety have "strong economies and job markets that prevent people from falling into dangerous financial situations."

"[The safest states in America] have high levels of occupational safety and disaster preparedness, too," Lupo said. "In addition, states are made safer by efforts that individual residents take, such as forming a neighborhood watch or working in firefighting and EMT jobs at high rates."

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