Last year, the Mayor and City Council decided to pass an ordinance offering medical and family benefits to unmarried domestic partners. The ordinance received a backlash from several voters, most especially those from the Christian and religious right citing that the ordinance opened city benefits homosexual domestic partners.

Christian Pastor Tom Brown, founder of “Word of Life Church”, organized a local effort to have the ordinance overturned. With the help of his congregation and several other churches in El Paso, including the Catholic Diocese, the initiative was placed on local election ballot and passed by a 55-45% margin. The success of the initiative led to unexpected results and a new host of problems for City Council, city employees, and city retirees.

For the initiative to be placed on the ballot, the wording could not be discriminatory to any one particular group of people. Due to the generalities, the initiative asked that “only city employees and their families” receive benefits. The implication was that city retirees were also going to lose their benefits. Instead of repealing the benefits of the 19 unmarried partners who had filed for benefits, including two homosexual couples, retired police and firefighters were also set to lose their benefits unless City Council and the Mayor intervened.

City Council and the mayor have the power to vote to amend or overturn any ordinances on the city charter, even those approved by voter initiative. Once a judged ruled in favor of the voter initiative Mayor Cook moved fast to reintroduce the issue to city council. Two council members the mayor needed to overturn the new ordinance, Beto O’Rourke and Rachel Quintana, were soon being replaced by newly elected members. Before the new City Council took their seats the mayor and four representatives voted to overturn the El Paso voter initiative and give employee benefits to everyone. The vote that took place was not without its own new set of consequences.

Pastor Tom Brown stepped back on the public forum and argued that the Mayor and two remaining representatives need to be recalled. The new voter initiative to recall Mayor Cook and Representatives Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega is now underway. Pastor Brown would need 7000 voters to sign a petition to recall the mayor and 700 signatures for Ortega and Susie Byrd.

The passage of a city ordinance that affected a few people has now escalated and has an effect on the entire city. This has created a controversial situation that may end political careers and place the retirements of countless city works up in the air.

Go vote for your SGA representatives today!

The Student Government Association (SGA) Elections will take place from April 6 to April 10, 2009. The UTEP SGA represents over 20,000 students and handles a budget of over $70,000. In order to maximize the quality of the SGA administration (and consequently the student body), it is imperative that every UTEP student intelligently participates in SGA elections and affairs.

In order to help students better inform themselves about their presidential candidates, the Regional Identity interviewed the three candidates about their party platforms and goals.

The Regional Identity (sponsored by the Regional Economic Development Association) is preparing to interview the three SGA presidential campaigns for the upcoming 2009 elections.

We will investigate each candidate’s background information, party platform, stances on various campus issues, and the questions that interest our readers the most. We will also attempt to record and post a unique thirty-second elevator pitch of each candidate.

If you have specific questions that you would like to ask each candidate, please post them below. The best questions will be selected and then asked in our sit down interviews with each candidate. Due to our short time frame (elections are next week!), we will stop accepting questions sometime on Wednesday April 1, 2009.

We hope to conduct the interviews and publish the results on Thursday April 2. Get your questions in!

Recap from the Office of Senator Eliot Shapleigh

Recap of “Adios ASARCO, Hello Future” event:

• Time and date: 11am-2pm on Saturday, February 21, 2009
• Notable guest speakers: Businessman Robert Ardovino, Former Mayor Bert Williams, Mayor John Cook, and Senator Eliot Shapleigh
• Former Mayor Williams was presented with a Senate Resolution from Eliot Shapleigh, applauding his contributions against ASARCO
• Mayor Cook presented Senator Shapleigh with the “Star on the Mountain” Award for his contributions against ASARCO
• Get The Lead Out presented a professional video recapping the grass root movements against ASARCO
• Nearly 10 students/student organizations presented ideas for the future use of the ASARCO site
• Media coverage and promotion from The El Paso Times, Channel 4, Channel 9, Channel 14, Univision, What’s Up El Paso, The UTEP Prospector, the Newspaper Tree, and more
• Following the event, many community members networked together to celebrate the closure of ASARCO and the opportunities the closure will bring. Pizza was generously donated by Papa John’s Pizza.

Student presenters:

• Intro/conclusion: Richard Sapien, Priscilla Moreno
• MC: Erik Pavia
• Derick O’Hara from Engineers without Borders
• Angel Diaz from Students for Reform
• Alex Muñoz from Regional Economic Development Association
• Diego Rico from Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization
• Alan Jiminez
• Mario Salomon
• Claudia Ordaz

The student presentations were recorded and will be available to view next week. However, if you would like to view the PowerPoint file for any student presentation, please request the presentation through our comments section at the bottom of the page.

Media Sightings

With recent news of ASARCO permanently shutting down, Texas Senator Eliot Shapleigh is already looking forward to the prospects of a cleaner, healthier, and more prosperous El Paso.

As the city begins to plan and speculate about the outlook of the former smelting plant property, Senator Shapleigh is interested in what the UTEP student body has to say about the upcoming redevelopment of the land. The prospective uses of the ASARCO property will bring significant social, environmental, and economic effects to the region.

Anybody can attend and enjoy the festivities following the presentations!