Mayor Eric Johnson tells City Hall to tighten belt while his own office bloats

The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
Dallas Morning News
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Mayor lectures council but fails to lead by example.

Mayor Eric Johnson recently scolded his City Council colleagues via newsletter for paying “lip service to fiscal responsibility” during the year while voting “for bloat when the time comes.” He patted himself on the back with a story about a time in 2020 when he pushed to “defund the bureaucracy.” 

His comments come on the back of a $33 million shortfall in the city budget, and, in other circumstances, would deserve at least measured support. But if Johnson wants to criticize others, he should first address the bloat in his own office. That would lend credibility to his demands of others.

Going back to the days of Mayor Laura Miller in the 2000s, the mayor’s office has generally had a staff of four to five people, plus the occasional intern and part-timers. We know this from talking to City Hall insiders and from browsing archival webpages. Miller and her successors, Tom Leppert and Mike Rawlings, listed their staffers’ names and contact information. 

But not Johnson. Not a single staffer is listed on his webpage. We had to file an open records request to find out he has seven employees in his office. Their annual salaries add up to more than $720,000, a steep sum for an office that doesn’t want to be found — not by the public or by this newspaper. Our emails to the mayor’s staff almost always go unreturned, and we know that even VIPs can struggle to get a hold of him.

Council support staff technically report to the city manager’s office, but the Dallas mayor and council members usually select their aides. The mayor’s chief of staff, Alheli Garza, joined his office in 2019, when Johnson became mayor. She was a junior aide back then. Garza was promoted to chief of staff four years later, and as of May 2025, her annual salary was about $129,000, which was comparable to that of Johnson’s two previous chiefs of staff. 

Today, however, Garza’s paychecks come out to $167,769 annually — a whopping 29% bump year over year.

“The chief of staff salary is based on the operational needs and scope of work for this critical position within the mayor’s office,” a city spokesman told us in an email.

The next highest-paid position in the mayor’s office is his chief of policy and communications. Online records show that the city had posted that job by May 1 of last year, if not earlier. The top of the salary range advertised for the position was about $129,000, although the posting stated that this was a “starting salary range.” That’s a novel way to say “please ask us for more taxpayer money.”

In June, the city filled the role with Benjamin Setnick, an attorney who is a former schoolmate of the mayor from his Greenhill days and who was a groomsman at Johnson’s 2007 wedding. Setnick had been laid off from the Match Group in May, according to his LinkedIn. The company announced layoffs on May 8 last year.

Dallas taxpayers send Setnick home with more than $152,000 annually. 

A city spokesman told us in a statement that postings for city jobs are advertised with a salary range from the minimum to the mid-point of the pay grade and that Setnick’s salary falls within the full range for his pay grade.

The two senior-most aides for Rawlings, Johnson’s predecessor, each got paid an annual salary of about $121,000 in his last full year in office, records show.

Past chiefs of policy and communications have served as the spokespeople for their mayors. The contact on Johnson’s news releases, however, is not Setnick but Noah DeGarmo, communications and policy coordinator. Most of our messages to DeGarmo in the past couple of years have gone unanswered. The mayor’s silent spokesman makes almost $74,000 a year.

The mayor’s office also includes a chief of protocol who oversees communications and visits with foreign dignitaries. That position was previously part of a city office that was a public-private partnership with the World Affairs Council. Johnson’s office absorbed that job in 2021. It pays $74,000.

The mayor’s roster also includes a council liaison and two executive assistants, according to a city org chart. The senior assistant’s annual salary is six figures, to the tune of $110,000.

We asked the mayor’s office on Thursday to comment on the staffing level and the top salaries. Johnson aides had not responded by press time Friday.

Other council members have smaller staffs, which is typical. Current council members have two or three staffers. Council members, excluding the mayor, average about $203,000 in support staff salary costs, records show.

Today, Johnson’s office costs more than three times that much in paychecks.

“The size of the City Hall bureaucracy has without a doubt grown over the years,” Johnson told KTVT-TV (Channel 11) in 2020. “It needs to be stopped. It needs to be put in check and it needs to actually get smaller.” 

The mayor wants to defund the bureaucracy — just not his.

Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper’s Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editorial Page Editor.

This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.