EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Rules regulating the City of El Paso’s email system led to a mayoral candidate’s finance reports going unseen for three months.
The City says emails from Renard Johnson’s campaign had been “unintentionally quarantined” due to filtering of political advertisement.
This had prevented contributions made to Johnson’s campaign from being posted on City Council’s agenda.
On April 23, 2024, the City passed an ordinance requiring candidates for elected office to give notice of campaign contributions of $500 or more within 30 days of being received. The notices would then be posted on a City Council agenda and are already a requirement for office holders.
However, due to filtering rules in the City’s email system, contributions made to Renard Johnson’s campaign had not been posted on the agenda after his campaign’s emails were flagged.
The City told ABC-7 that political advertising is not allowed to be sent to their email system. This caused emails from Johnson’s campaign to be flagged by the system’s rules, which caused previous financial reports to go unseen until Monday, August 5.
According to the City, emails from Johnson’s campaign had been “unintentionally quarantined” because they had language or URLs linked to political advertising.
This is what Renard Johnson’s campaign told ABC-7 regarding the situation:
“We have submitted 100% of campaign reports on time, as required by the City of El Paso ethics rules. The City Clerk just notified our campaign that our reports were caught in their email security filter.”
Following the situation, the City of El Paso told ABC-7 that this rule would now be lifted from their email systems to allow these types of emails to go through.
Financial reports from Johnson’s campaign will now be posted on the August 13th City Council Agenda.
The City also told ABC-7 that the notations of campaign contributions from officeholders and other non-office holders were not flagged or quarantined by the City’s email system.
