Tenure
The 8th District includes Downtown/Central area to portions of the far West Side in the Upper Valley. In August 2005, a resolution was drafted by O'Rourke and fellow council member Steve Ortega, calling on city officials to discourage the anti-illegal immigrant Minutemen from patrolling the local stretch of the Texas-Mexico border and "reject civilian attempts to enforce immigration law." Essentially, making the Minutemen officially unwelcome in El Paso. Minutemen spokesman Shannon McGauley said his group planned to go ahead with October operations in El Paso, despite the resolution. In 2006 there was a failed attempt to recall O'Rourke over an El Paso Downtown Redevelopment plan. Due to O'Rourke's involvement in and support of the controversial Downtown Revitalization Plan, South Side activist Carmen Felix initiated a recall petition drive against him on May 3, 2006.
Despite the threat of recall, O'Rourke continued to strongly advocate the use of eminent domain in conjunction with the plan to redevelop downtown El Paso. At the El Paso city council meeting held on July 9, 2006, Still under threat of recall, he showed a distinct change in tone toward the El Paso Downtown Revitalization Plan. He responded to a question posed by fellow city councilman Lozano as to whether residents displaced by new construction "could come back to the area", responding in assurance that the city would make "every effort" to ensure displaced residents were allowed to remain in their same neighborhoods. He proposed amendments adopting a portion of an alternate Downtown Plan offered by Lozano, to encourage utilities, large businesses and public sector agencies to move Downtown; as well as a value statement to "explore arena options" -- whether an arena is needed, and where to put it.
On September 5, 2006, lawyers for the Land Grab Opponents of El Paso filed an ethics complaint with the City of El Paso alleging O'Rourke "violated his fiduciary duty to the citizens of El Paso." According to the complaint, O'Rourke stands to benefit from his relationship with the Paso del Norte Group because his firm does business with the group. It states "O'Rourke is impermissibly entangled in the Paso del Norte Group's Downtown Revitalization Plan, through both family and business ties."
The complaint alleged that O'Rourke's company, Stanton Street Technology Group, provides Internet and Information Technology services to the Paso del Norte Group. Despite these ties, O'Rourke voted to extend the group's contract with the city last year and to accept the group's redevelopment proposal in March, according to the complaint. The city's Ethics Review Commission summarily dismissed the first complaint on October 12, 2006. The second complaint was dismissed on October 18, 2006.
The Land Grab Opponents' lawyer, Mr. Blaugrund, stated that his intent in filing the ethics complaints was to make O'Rourke recuse himself from debating and voting on the Downtown plan because his father-in-law, William "Bill" Sanders, is a leader in the Paso del Norte Group which advanced the plan. Blaugrund cited the business relationship between Paso del Norte Group and O'Rourke's Stanton Street Technologies. In the second ethics complaint, Blaugrund pointed to evidence he said suggests that the CFO of Sanders' company, The Verde Group, prepared O'Rourke's income tax return this year. O'Rourke abstained at from the meeting on the establishment of a Downtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. In January 2009, O'Rourke sponsored a resolution asking the federal government to rethink the war on drugs and initiate an "open and honest debate" about ending the prohibition of illegal drugs. The resolution, which was unanimously supported by his colleagues on the El Paso City Council was vetoed by the Mayor, and spurred a larger national discussion on the topic. He told reporters that the reason he decided to speak up about what he called the failed war on drugs was the thousands of people who have been killed in the drug war in the adjoining city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. "I hope it has all had its intended affect of starting the national discussion of the wisdom of the war on drugs … and probably more importantly, helping to bring about a better solution than the status quo, which has led to the terror and tragedy in Juarez."
Read more about this topic: Beto O'Rourke, El Paso City Council (2005-2011)
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