周四，前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)不太可能重返民主党大本营新墨西哥州阿尔布开克(Albuquerque)之前不久——就在五天前选举当天，阿尔伯克基的民主党市长蒂姆·凯勒为这位前总统发来了一封特别的欢迎信。
“仍在等待特朗普支付他所欠的50万美元。也许他在给杜克城做万圣节快递?我们不会屏住呼吸，”凯勒在他的社交媒体上发布，并附有一张坐在办公桌前的骷髅照片。
周四是特朗普五年来第一次访问阿尔伯克基，此前官员们表示，他在里奥兰乔的圣安娜明星中心举行的2019年集会上留下了211，176美元的公共安全费用未付账单，该中心是阿尔伯克基大都会地区的一部分。
根据阿尔布开克市的数据，五年后，账单像滚雪球一样增加到444986美元，包括这些年的利息。
阿尔伯克基只是特朗普的竞选活动在举行竞选活动后积累了数十万美元未付账单的许多城市之一，这些城市经常给地方政府带来巨额意外支出，导致它们超出预算。
美国广播公司新闻频道(ABC News)在过去几年里与他竞选过的十几个城市和自治市的官员进行了交谈，他的集会和活动给这些城市带来了数万美元到数十万美元的未报销费用，包括当地警察、消防队员、急救人员和其他第一反应人员的加班费，他们被部署来引导和保护特朗普竞选活动吸引的人群。
特朗普竞选团队仍然没有支付这些费用甚至这位前总统吹捧他对执法人员的支持，并承诺为他们提供更好的福利和工作条件，同时攻击副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯曾经支持解散警察运动。
虽然特朗普不是唯一一个竞选活动给地方政府带来额外公共安全成本的政治人物，但他的访问——将成千上万的人带到小城镇——往往比其他最近的总统候选人需要更多的公共资源。那个，再加上他作为总统候选人连续三次竞选总统的独特而漫长的政治生涯，导致了这堆积如山的账单。
例如，特朗普2019年在阿尔伯克基大都市区的圣安娜明星中心举行的大规模集会，迫使该市关闭了包括市政厅在内的市中心，给该市造成了“资源的极度紧张”。据市长办公室称，当晚协助集会的警察、急救人员和其他城市雇员加在一起加班1500小时。
他的办公室告诉美国广播公司新闻，他们已经将账单送到特朗普在纽约的住所和Mar-a-Lago——一家收款机构目前正在努力收回债务。
一些城市选择完全不为竞选活动收费，比如Rio Rancho，在协助特朗普2019年访问阿尔伯克基大都市区后，最终花费了近24万美元。该市的发言人表示，它选择不寻求特朗普竞选团队的补偿，因为它确定这些成本是“确保公民健康、安全和福利所必需的”。
同样，根据该县少数党预算审查办公室的数据，9月份，拿骚县选择不对特朗普的竞选活动收费，此前他在长岛的大规模集会仅警察加班就花费了100万美元，这促使民主党立法者向联邦选举委员会提起诉讼，指控共和党拿骚县执行官布鲁斯·布莱克曼(Bruce Blakeman)在总统竞选中不当使用纳税人的资源。
竞选法律中心的高级法律顾问Shanna Ports告诉美国广播公司新闻，州或市政府可以将警察等官方资源部署到总统竞选活动中，而不会由竞选活动报销，如果这些资源“仅用于确保与会者的安全-符合它对任何非竞选活动的反应。”
最近竞选活动中的数万张账单使得一些关键州的城市陷入困境
但许多其他地方政府，如威斯康星州的格林湾和宾夕法尼亚州的伊利，特朗普访问了这些地方以争取关键战场的选民，试图从特朗普的竞选活动中获得补偿—收效甚微。
周三，特朗普在威斯康星州格林湾竞选，该市告诉美国广播公司新闻，他今年4月早些时候在那里的集会给该市带来了超过33，000美元的公共安全费用，其中包括大约24，100美元的警察加班费。
这是在2016年特朗普竞选团队在一次竞选活动后离开这座城市，没有超过9000美元的未付账单。该市表示，前国务卿希拉里·克林顿的竞选团队也有近12，000美元的未付账单，来自她2016年在那里的集会。该市仍在确定特朗普最近访问的总成本。
副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯7月的访问花费了格林贝635美元的警力部署该市发言人告诉ABC新闻，截至10月尚未支付。
在另一个战场州宾夕法尼亚州，伊利市最近向特朗普竞选团队发送了一张63190美元的发票，用于他9月的集会，但该市的通信主任罗伯特·李(Robert Lee)表示，竞选团队尚未对该市的付款要求做出回应。
在他9月份访问伊利之前，竞选活动已经有超过35，000美元的未付账单，包括他去年7月份集会的5，200美元和2018年集会的32，000美元。伊利的发言人还表示，该市计划向哈里斯竞选团队收取“市警察局和其他部门与她上个月的集会相关的费用，这笔费用仍有待确定”。
当被问及未支付给当地机构的账单时，特朗普竞选团队的一名官员将与当地执法和第一反应人员费用有关的问题转给了美国特勤局。
特勤局的一名发言人在给ABC新闻的一份声明中承认，尽管当地执法机构在行动中发挥了“至关重要”的作用，但缺乏向地方政府偿还支持特勤局所产生的费用的机制。
“在最近与国会领导人的讨论中，鉴于我们的警察和公共安全合作伙伴所发挥的重要作用，我们认为这是一项迫切需要，”声明写道。“我们感谢持续决议中提供的额外资金，我们将继续与国会合作，倡导必要的资源，以支持每天协助我们的市、县和州执法机构。”
城市如何找到新的方法来确保从活动中获得报酬
与阿尔伯克基一样，德克萨斯州埃尔帕索市议会也聘请了一家律师事务所，从特朗普2019年的集会上收取超过50万美元的未付账单，其中包括大约47万美元的公共安全费用和近9.9万美元的一次性滞纳金。一位发言人告诉美国广播公司新闻说，该市仍在寻求竞选活动的付款。
在亚利桑那州的图森市，该市发言人告诉美国广播公司新闻，该市决定不追究2016年特朗普集会产生的大约8万美元的公共安全费用，也不追究当年伯尼·桑德斯集会产生的大约4万美元的公共安全费用，因为该市决定采取法律行动可能成本更高。
相反，当特朗普9月回到图森时，该市要求竞选团队提前支付估计的公共安全成本和设施租赁成本——确保竞选团队提前支付145，222美元的总费用，包括近116，000美元的警察局费用。
在威斯康星州的一个小镇欧克莱尔，特朗普在2016年的访问给该市留下了超过47，000美元的未付账单，克林顿同年的访问留下了6，800美元的未付账单，导致该市当年的运营预算增加了近62，000美元。
Eau Claire的预算分析师科里·李(Corey Lee)告诉美国广播公司新闻，“总的来说，这是一项较低的支出”，但补充说，“理想情况下，我们希望收回不可预见或超出正常城市运营的成本。”
“但我们也有责任不管在什么情况下保护社区，”他说。
最近，Eau Claire一直通过场馆来支付公共安全费用，而不是直接将发票预先发送给竞选活动，以确保竞选活动的付款，包括万斯参议员9月份访问的4，000美元和哈里斯8月份访问的大约1.6万美元。
威斯康星市长:“我们希望得到补偿。或者我们会说，“别来了”
在威斯康星州人口仅5000多一点的小镇Prairie Du Chien，特朗普的竞选言论集中在边境安全和移民问题上。这项活动于9月在当地高中的艺术中心举行，给该市带来了17000美元的公共安全费用。
该运动在活动开始前向当地学区支付了租用艺术中心的费用，但当Prairie du Chien的市长戴夫·赫默(Dave Hemmer)询问活动开始前公共安全费用的报销时，他们没有得到答复。
“他基本上是说我们通常不会这么做。我说，嗯，我认为这是礼貌用语——我认为这是一堆废话，”Hemmer谈到他在活动前与竞选工作人员的谈话时说。Hemmer说，他还询问了员工关于活动当天报销的问题。
特朗普访问期间，Prairie du Chien的警察局长凯尔·特雷诺(Kyle Treynor)在舞台上作为预编程发言人之一发言，他告诉美国广播公司新闻(ABC News)，特勤局建议他如果他们想报销，就把费用记在竞选活动的账上，因为该服务不报销当地警察局的这些费用。
Treynor说，威斯康星州西南地区其他城市的警察局长也曾举办过类似的特朗普活动，他们告诉他，他们也没有从竞选中获得报销。
“所以我也不期待得到报酬。所以我们会给他们开发票，希望他们做正确的事情并付款。如果他们不这样做，我们将在那个时候考虑选择，”他说。
市长Hemmer说，1.7万美元“不会让我们破产”，但对Prairie du Chien来说“不是一个小数目”。
“老实说，我不指望得到100%的报销，但我会很高兴得到50%的报销。我认为这可能会有所不同，”Hemmer说。
“我已经，我们已经有几个人，当地居民，打电话来，说，要求，'我想知道它的成本是多少，我们会得到补偿吗?'我现在没有任何答案，因为我不知道最终的成本是多少，”市长说。
Hemmer说，欢迎候选人在Prairie du Chien进行竞选活动，但如果他们不支付他们的账单，就不欢迎。
“他在这里是受欢迎的，但我们需要支付我们的账单，我们为他在这里产生的任何费用，或者我们真的不希望他在这里，”Hemmer说。“我要说的是，你知道特朗普或副总统哈里斯也是一样，因为我们是一个较小的城市，如果我们产生了这样的费用，我们希望得到补偿。或者我们会说，“别来了。”"
Trump campaign leaving some cities with hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills after rallies
Shortly before former President Donald Trump's unlikely return to the Democratic stronghold of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday -- just five days ahead ofElectionDay, Albuquerque's Democratic Mayor Tim Keller sent a special welcome message for the former president.
"Still waiting for Trump to pay the half million he owes. Maybe he's making a special Halloween delivery to the Duke City? We won't hold our breath," Keller posted on his social media, with a photo of a skeleton sitting at a desk.
Thursday was Trump's first visit to Albuquerque in five years, after officials say he left an unpaid bill of $211,176 in public safety costs from his 2019 rally at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, which is a part of the Albuquerque metropolitan area.
Fast forward five years, the bill has now snowballed into $444,986 including interest over the years, according to the city of Albuquerque.
Albuquerque is just one of many cities where Trump's campaign -- over his three tries for the White House -- has accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills after holding campaign events, often leaving local governments with hefty sums of unexpected expenses that cause them to go over their budget.
ABC News has spoken with officials from more than a dozen cities and municipalities he has campaigned in over the last few years, where his rallies and events have cost the cities between tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreimbursed expenses, including overtime payments for local police officers, fire fighters, EMS and other first responders deployed to guide and protect the crowds Trump's campaign events attract.
The Trump campaign’s lack of payment for such costs continuesevenas the former president touts his support for law enforcement officers and promises better benefits and work conditions for them, while attacking Vice President Kamala Harrisonce supporting the Defund the Police movement.
While Trump isn’t the only political figure whose campaign events produce extra public safety costs for local governments, his visits – which bring thousands to tens of thousands of people to small towns – have often required more public resources than other recent presidential candidates.That,coupled with his unique and long political career of running as a presidential nominee for three consecutive presidential election cycles,has led tothebills piling up.
Trump’s massive rally at the Santa Ana Star Center in the Albuquerque metropolitan area in 2019, for example, caused an “extreme strain on resources” for the city by forcing the city to shut down the downtown area, including the city hall. Police officers, first responders and other city employees who assisted with the rally worked a combined overtime of 1,500 hours that night, according to the mayor’s office.
His office told ABC News it has sent the bills to Trump's residences in New York and to Mar-a-Lago – and that a collection agency is currently working to recover the debt.
Some cities opt to not bill the campaign at all, like Rio Rancho, which ended up with nearly $240,000 in expenses after assisting with Trump's 2019 visit to the Albuquerque metropolitan area. The city's spokesperson said it chose not to seek reimbursement from the Trump campaign because it determined these costs "necessary to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens."
Similarly, in September, Nassau County opted not to bill the Trump campaign after his massive rally in Long Island cost $1 million in police overtime alone, according to the county’s Minority Office of Budget review, prompting Democratic legislators to file a Federal Election Commission complaint against Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman claiming improper use of taxpayer resources for a presidential campaign.
Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel Shanna Ports told ABC News that a state or municipal government can deploy official resources like police officers to a presidential campaign event without being reimbursed by the campaign if those resources are used “solely to ensure the safety of attendees – consistent with how it would respond to any non-campaign event.”
Tens of thousands bills from recent campaign events leave cities in critical battleground states
But numerous other local governments like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Erie, Pennsylvania, where Trump visited to court key battleground voters, have sought to get reimbursement from the Trump campaign —with little success.
On Wednesday, Trump campaigned in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where his rally in April earlier this year had left the city with more than $33,000 in public safety costs, including roughly $24,100 in police overtime, the city told ABC News.
This was after the Trump campaign in 2016 left the city without more than $9,000 in unpaid bills after a campaign event. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign also has nearly $12,000 in unpaid bills from her rally there in 2016, the city said. The city is still determining total costs incurred from Trump's recent visit.
Vice President Kamala Harris' visit in July cost Green Bay $635 for police deployment, which the Harris campaignhad not yet paid as of October, the city's spokesperson told ABC News.
In another battleground state of Pennsylvania, the city of Erie has recently sent an invoice of $63,190 to the Trump campaign for his rally in September but the campaign has yet to respond to the city's request for payment, according to the city's Communications Director Robert Lee.
The campaign already had unpaid bills of more than $35,000 in Erie prior to his September visit, including $5,200 from his rally in July last year and $32,000 from his rally in 2018. Erie's spokesperson also said the city plans to bill the Harris campaign "for still-to-be-determined costs incurred by city police and other departments in relation to her rally last month.
Asked about unpaid bills to local agencies, a Trump campaign official directed questions related to local law enforcement and first responder costs to the U.S. Secret Service.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service in a statement to ABC News acknowledged the lack of mechanism to reimburse local governments for costs incurred from supporting the Secret Service despite a "crucial" role local law enforcement agencies play in the operation.
"In recent discussions with Congressional leaders, we identified this as a critical need, given the essential role our police and public safety partners play," the statement reads. "We are grateful for the additional funding provided in the continuing resolution, and we will continue to work with Congress to advocate for the necessary resources to support the city, county, and state law enforcement agencies that assist us every day."
How cities are finding new ways to ensure payment from campaigns
Like Albuquerque, the city council of El Paso, Texas, has hired a law firm to collect more than half a million dollars in unpaid bills from Trump's rally in 2019, including roughly $470,000 in public safety costs and nearly $99,000 in one-time late fee. The city is still seeking a payment from he campaign, a spokesperson told ABC News.
In Tucson, Arizona, the city decided not to pursue roughly $80,000 in public safety costs incurred from a Trump rally in 2016, nor did it with roughly $40,000 incurred from Bernie Sanders' rally there in that year, as the city determined a legal action could be more costly, the city's spokesperson told ABC News.
Instead, when Trump returned to Tucson in September, the city required the campaign to pay estimated public safety costs in advance along with the facility rental cost – ensuring the campaign's total payment of $145,222 up front, including nearly $116,000 in police department costs.
In Eau Claire, a small town in Wisconsin, Trump's visit in 2016 left the city with more than $47,000 in unpaid bills and Clinton's visit the same year with $6,800 in unpaid bills, contributing to the city's operating budget going over by nearly $62,000 that year.
Eau Claire's budget analyst Corey Lee told ABC News, "Overall, it is a low expense in the grand scheme of things" but added that "ideally, we would want to recover costs for circumstances that are unforeseen or outside of normal city operations."
"But we also have the responsibility of protecting the community regardless of the circumstances," he said.
More recently, Eau Claire has been billing public safety costs through venues instead of directly sending invoices up front to campaigns, to ensure payments from campaigns -- including $4,000 from Sen. JD Vance's visit in September and roughly $16,000 from Harris' visit in August.
Wisconsin mayor: 'We expect to be reimbursed. Or we'd say, 'Don't come'
In Prairie Du Chien, a small town in Wisconsin of just over 5,000 population, Trump's campaign remarks focused on border security and immigration. The event, held at the local high school's arts center in September, left the city with $17,000 in public safety costs.
The campaign paid the local school district ahead of the event for renting out the arts center but didn't have an answer when Prairie du Chien's Mayor Dave Hemmer asked about reimbursements for public safety costs in advance of the event.
"He basically said we typically don't do that. And I said, well, I think that's in polite language – I think that's a bunch of BS," Hemmer said of his conversation with the campaign staffer before the event. Hemmer said he also asked the staffer about reimbursements on the day of the event.
Prairie du Chien's Police Chief Kyle Treynor, who spoke on stage as one of the pre-programming speakers during Trump's visit, told ABC News that the Secret Service advised him to bill the expenses to the campaign if they wanted reimbursement as the service does not reimburse the local police department for these costs.
Treynor said police chiefs of other cities in the Southwest region of Wisconsin that have similarly hosted Trump events have told him they have not gotten reimbursed from the campaign either.
"So I have a lack of anticipation of being paid as well. So we will invoice them and hope that they do the right thing and pay. And if they don't, we'll consider options at that point," he said.
Hemmer, the mayor, said $17,000 is "not going to bankrupt us" but that it's "not a small amount" to Prairie du Chien.
"Honestly, I don't expect to get 100% reimbursement, but I would be happy to get 50% reimbursement. I think that would probably make it a difference," Hemmer said.
"And I've had, we've had a couple of people, local residents, calling, saying, demanding, 'I want to know how much it's cost, and are we going to get reimbursed for that?' And I don't have an answer either way right now, because I don't know what the final cost is," the mayor said.
Hemmer said candidates are welcome to campaign in Prairie du Chien -- but not if they don't pay their bills.
"He's welcome here, but we need to have our bills paid, any expenses incurred by us for him being here, or we don't really want him here," Hemmer said. "And I would say that about, you know about Trump or vice president here, Harris, the same thing, because, like, we are a smaller city and if we incurred expenses like that, we expect to be reimbursed. Or we'd say, 'Don't come.'"
