Last year, when I was a member of the Texas House, I supported Dennis Bonnen to become our speaker.

While I had made the deeply personal decision to seek the speakership myself, I stepped aside because I believed he had the potential to unify the House and help our state address critical issues, such as school finance, that for far too long had been left unresolved.

In the time since the speaker election, I was fortunate enough to be elected mayor of Dallas, a place that I have called home my entire life.

It was clear during my campaign that residents of our great city had grown weary of the politics of division and wanted pragmatic solutions and healthier discussions. I devoted myself to restoring civility and good-faith problem-solving to Dallas City Hall, and I left the Legislature behind. While I was disappointed to hear of a recording of Speaker Bonnen insulting some of my former colleagues, I felt this was a matter for the members of the House to sort out, and so I held my tongue.

But I cannot abide by what I heard the speaker say in that recording about our state’s great cities and their leaders. “Any mayor, county judge that was dumbass enough to come meet with me, I told them with great clarity, my goal is for this to be the worst session in the history of the Legislature for cities and counties,” Bonnen is heard saying on the recording of a meeting with conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan in June.

As both a former state representative and as the mayor of Texas’ third-largest city, I find it appalling that the speaker of the Texas House holds in such contempt mayors who simply want to have a conversation with him regarding the important issues facing our mutual constituents.

I assume that because the speaker was recorded during what he believed to be a private conversation, his troubling words reflect his true feelings toward cities and those who devote themselves to serving their communities at the local level. Such rhetoric reflects a false political narrative perpetuated about cities in Texas.

I am proud to call myself a Texan and a Dallasite, and I am tired of attempts to pit those two identities against each other for political gain.

In Dallas, our politically diverse and proudly nonpartisan City Council last month came together to approve unanimously an annual budget that cut our property tax rate while continuing to invest in vital services that our residents expect and deserve, such as our police and fire departments. I have no doubt that our state’s new revenue caps will make the budget process more difficult next year, but our City Council has responsible leaders who are willing to make tough decisions.

We understand that the complicated matters we handle every day in Dallas — infrastructure, public safety, sanitation, code compliance — are not Republican or Democratic. Potholes are not partisan. Firefighters and paramedics do not care about the party affiliation of the people they rescue. Zoning cases come down to the needs of neighborhoods, not referendums on conservative or progressive values.

But too often of late, in the Texas Legislature, we see cities treated with irrational scorn. Some demagogues choose to descend into the politics of boogeymen to score rhetorical points, which is easier than confronting the difficult challenges our residents face.

The state and its cities should be working together. While I firmly oppose most efforts to reduce local control because they diminish the ability of our constituents to more directly govern themselves, I have no qualms commending the state, when it is deserved, for being an excellent partner to Dallas.

Uber, for example, chose Dallas to expand its operations, but the state provided essential support in the economic incentive package. And the Texas Department of Public Safety helped bolster our city’s summer crime reduction efforts. Neither would have been possible without Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s support, and I am grateful for it.

What we heard in the recording of the speaker detracts from productive discussions about solutions. Bonnen’s comments lacked nuance. His words were crass and, frankly, too small for Texas.

The next legislative session will be critical to the future of our cities and our state. I want the Texas economic miracle to continue, and I want to ensure everyone is able to share in its rewards. But to achieve this end, we cannot afford to wage war on our cities, the economic engines that have driven our state’s success.

The Texas House speaker should be a partner in, not an impediment to, improving lives in Dallas and throughout Texas. We should endeavor to make the next legislative session the best, not “the worst,” in history for both our cities and for Texas.

Eric Johnson is mayor of Dallas. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.