El Paso Council Requires Monthly Travel Expense Disclosure
El Paso’s council on Tuesday approved a resolution, recorded as passed in the official record, requiring fully reconciled travel forms for council members, their staff and city staff on the monthly agenda.
The El Paso City Council on Tuesday approved a resolution requiring fully reconciled travel forms to be placed on the monthly council agenda for notation, according to the official meeting record.
The city’s Legistar record for item 26-1251 lists the Nov. 10 action as “Approve,” with the result “Pass.” KVIA reported that the vote was unanimous. The official record opened for this report does not include a roll-call tally.
KVIA said the item came back two weeks after the council directed the city attorney to draft a resolution requiring city-funded travel to be placed regularly on the council agenda, as other expenses already are. District 8 City Representative Chris Canales originally requested the policy after an ABC-7 investigation of travel spending by the El Paso County Commissioners Court. That investigation, KVIA said, found county commissioners spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on travel since Fiscal Year 2021. That figure is from the report on county spending, not a city total.
“I think there was a lot of public interest in the county’s travel numbers,” Canales said when he proposed the city policy, according to KVIA. “And, you know, to a lot of people, I think it was a surprise because there were multiple years of travel spending that kind of all got shared all at once. And so I think it’s a much better system to just proactively share those expenditures as they happen.”
What the official resolution says
The attached resolution in the official legislation file amends Paragraph 30(h)(i) of the city’s FY 2027 Budget Resolution, which the resolution recites was adopted Aug. 18, 2026, and took effect Sept. 1, 2026. The agenda item and the Office of Management and Budget summary said the amendment would take effect Nov. 10, 2026. The signature lines on that attached PDF were blank; the official history still records the item as approved and passed on Nov. 10.
The amended paragraph, as set out in that resolution, requires that “All Special Projects, Discretionary Account, P-Card transactions, and fully reconciled Travel forms shall also be included on the monthly City Council agenda for notation and shall identify the applicable City Council Member, the Council Member’s staff, and City staff.”
A whereas clause in the same resolution recites the council’s Oct. 27 direction that the city attorney prepare a resolution requiring public disclosure of city-funded travel expenses “incurred by members of the City Council and the Mayor through publication on the agenda of the next Regular City Council meeting following completion of the City-funded travel.” The operative paragraph names city council members, their staff and city staff. It does not, in the text opened here, separately name the mayor. KVIA described the adopted policy as covering travel spending by council members and the mayor.
On Oct. 27, the council unanimously voted to direct the city attorney to draft that resolution, KVIA reported at the time. Backup documents for that meeting, the station said, cited recent public scrutiny of travel expenditures in other local government entities. Sasho Andonoski of the city’s Office of Management and Budget told KVIA then that council members receive discretionary funds and, on top of that, $6,000 to travel. The October report also said the county investigation found commissioners logged dozens of legislative trips across the United States, and that the county judge’s travel included a visit to Taiwan. Those are county facts from the investigation, not a city travel ledger.
County and city are not the same ledger
The policy adopted Tuesday amends the city’s budget resolution. It does not, by the official text or the accounts opened for this report, rewrite the county’s travel rules. KVIA noted in October that county officials had separately discussed ways to improve the county’s travel policy, and in its Nov. 10 report said the county had not yet voted to fully establish such a policy.
City Hall is at 300 N. Campbell, El Paso, Texas 79901, according to the city contact page, phone 915-212-0000 or 3-1-1.
Related reading: El Paso Bars New Deals for Fixed License Plate Cameras Without Council Approval.
