(El Paso Matters) — El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson defended his tie-breaking vote Wednesday to stop a City Council effort to negotiate a formal agreement with the Transportation Security Administration, saying the city lacked authority to respond directly to a controversial federal video blaming Democrats for the government shutdown that has stirred frustration at El Paso International Airport.
“Personally, I don’t think TSA should be playing a video like that at any airport, but that is completely not in the city’s purview or in our jurisdiction – it’s being played in the TSA area,” Johnson told El Paso Matters.
If the item had been approved by the City Council on Tuesday, the city manager and city attorney would have been tasked with developing a memorandum of understanding and a future lease agreement for the space the TSA uses for its security checkpoints at the city airport. The item also asked for the city to acquire any necessary security clearances to access and review any existing contracts or lease agreements.
The effort comes after the TSA started airing a controversial video earlier this month that features Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. Dozens of airports throughout the country have refused to play the video. In El Paso, city officials have said federal laws stipulate they have no control over what the TSA does in the space where it operates the security checkpoint.
TSA has responded to media, including El Paso Matters, with a message similar to what’s aired on the video.
The city, in response to the video, on Oct. 17 placed a small sign at the foot of escalators that passengers use to reach the security checkpoint. The sign reads, “The views expressed in the TSA controlled video display do not represent the views of the El Paso International Airport. The El Paso International Airport does not engage in partisan policy. Thank you.”
The airport is collecting donations and nonperishable goods and food for federal and local TSA staff that are not being paid during the government shutdown.
City Reps. Josh Acevedo and Deanna Maldonado-Rocha co-authored the proposal, and city Reps. Cynthia Boyar-Trejo and Chris Canales voted in favor. City Reps. Alejandra Chávez, Ivan Niño, Lily Limón and Art Fierro voted against the proposal, with Johnson breaking the tie vote.
The El Paso City Council is nonpartisan.
Johnson said he voted against moving forward, in part, because he did not want to waste city resources on an effort that would not succeed. Johnson said he sent a letter to TSA Federal Security Director Jared Babib on Oct. 17 to remove the video from the airport.
“I respectfully ask that TSA review the matter and consider taking down the video until an appropriate alternative can be identified or revised messaging is approved,” Johnson wrote in the letter. “It’s important that all communications in our airport reflect the professionalism, neutrality, and hospitality that travelers expect and deserve.”
The response to the letter was “no,” Johnson said.
He also said the majority of constituents who reached out through phone calls said the city needed to focus on city issues.
“There was a majority of them (who said) that it wasn’t a city problem – it’s not a city issue, and they wanted us focused on more city issues, in particular, fixing the streets, fixing the potholes and pulling weeds,” Johnson said.
The city representatives who supported the proposal largely said it would not have been to force or try to control how the TSA operates. Instead, they sought to be better prepared to respond to future controversial incidents at the airport’s checkpoint area.
“We can’t tell them to stop playing it, but what we can do is show a spirit of collaboration on behalf of the city, and try to engage in an MOU (memorandum of understanding) so we’re not blindsided by this, because we did not know that this (video) was coming,” Acevedo said. “They didn’t tell us that they were going to play this video. They just kind of did it, and now we can’t tell them to do anything.”
Other city representatives who voted against the item said few people have noticed or watched the video at the airport.
“This is old news. I mean, let’s move on to other things – bigger and more important (city business),” Limón said, adding she traveled recently and no one was paying attention to the video.
Fierro said it is not productive to rationalize with the federal government at this juncture and that it’s more important to focus on the people being impacted by the government shutdown.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, commended Acevedo for his efforts, saying he sought to protect the airport “from being used in an egregious political manner by this administration.”
The proposal would have “directed the city to get TSA to the table and his effort could have protected the airport’s customers, employees and visitors from the unabashed and illegal partisanship that’s been on recent display by the administration,” Escobar said in a statement Tuesday.
The U.S. federal government was shut down Oct. 1 because Congress failed to pass funding legislation. Republicans and Democrats have continuously disagreed on funding priorities since, including potential cuts to health insurance subsidies.
Many federal workers, including military and TSA screeners and flight controllers, are working without paychecks. Families that rely on Supplemental Food Assistance and Nutrition Program, or SNAP, benefits will not receive November benefits on time but may be issued retroactively when the government reopens.
National parks, museums, some health services and some regulatory agencies have shut down, critical programs such as Medicare, Social Security and active military operations have continued although workers are not being paid.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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