The city of El Paso, Texas, this week said it would hire legal counsel to claim more than $500,000 that Trump’s team still owes for security costs and other expenses after the February 2019 campaign.
Last year, the Center for Public Integrity placed El Paso on a list of 10 cities awaiting payments from the Trump campaign for rallies since 2016.
US President Donald Trump campaigned in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the night of November 2.
Several other city officials also confirmed that they had not received the money billed to the Trump campaign, and some cities accepted that the debt would never be paid.
The city of Burlington, Vermont, said the Trump team still has not paid nearly $8,500 in money they owe after the January 2016 campaign before being elected president.
`President Trump’s failure to cooperate with local law enforcement officials and lack of communication with ticket sellers has placed the city’s police under an undue burden and needlessly harmed downtown businesses.`
Nearly five years later, the city of Burlington still hasn’t been paid.
One of the main problems with cities demanding repayment from Trump is that unless a contract is signed by both parties, there is no legal requirement that political committees pay for security costs.
Cities have deployed additional police officers and taken other measures to ensure security, as Trump’s rallies often draw tens of thousands of supporters to areas with similar populations.
Adding more police is also a request from the US Secret Service, an agency that campaign groups say should pay for security costs.
Not only Trump, many other presidential candidates’ campaign teams, including Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, also do not pay local governments for providing additional police.
`To date, the city of Green Bay has not received any reimbursement from the Trump and Clinton campaigns for 2016 expenses,` said Celestine Jeffreys, chief of staff of the mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Another problem is that the legal costs of collecting debt from the Trump team are often higher than the debt.
The city of Tucson, Arizona, which is owed more than $81,800 by the Trump group, confirmed that the legal costs of litigation will exceed this amount and instead learned from experience in future agreements to avoid having to pay the fees.
The city of Albuquerque, which repeatedly owed the Trump campaign more than $211,000 after the September 2019 campaign, said it was waiting to see what El Paso would do next before deciding how to collect the debt.
`It’s not surprising,` said Jessica Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Albuquerque mayor, when asked about the debt.
The Trump campaign has not yet commented.