Former President Donald Trump A third rally was held last month in Erie, Pennsylvania, which is in the northwest corner of a swing state that could decide who wins the White House.
Just like the other two times Trump visited Erie to revive his supporters, he left without paying the bill.
City officials have not yet determined whether the Trump campaign owed Eric for public safety expenses at his most recent rally in September.
But Trump owes the city more than $40,000 for rallies he held in 2018 and 2023, according to a city official.
Erie, whose account was previously reported on by the Erie Times-News, is not the only city that hosted a Trump rally and was not paid by the campaign.
Four cities and one county, including Erie, confirmed to NBC News that they are still waiting for the Trump campaign to pay bills associated with reimbursing local officials and other first responders.
The final price for these five jurisdictions is over $750,000, including some bills from back to eight years ago.
At the same time, it is not always clear who has legal responsibility for the invoice.
Reached for comment, a Trump campaign official said in a text message that “questions about local law enforcement and first aid costs should be directed to the Secret Service.”
At least two municipalities seeking reimbursements said they did not have formal agreements with the Trump campaign about expenses before the event.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News that it is the agency, not the campaign, that typically requests local assistance for such campaign activities.
However, the Secret Service “lacks a mechanism to reimburse local governments for their assistance during defensive events,” he said.
Guglielmi added that the agency has “identified this as a critical need” and is working with Congress to make this possible in the future.
Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign declined to comment on how it manages police and fire personnel spending, as well as additional security measures provided by local governments.
Five localities NBC News spoke to sent their accounts to the Trump campaign. One of the largest unpaid bills reached more than half a million dollars
El Paso, Texas, is seeking more than $569,200 in costs from 2019, according to an invoice provided by city spokeswoman Laura Cruz Acosta. The initial bill grew to more than $470,000 after the city charged the campaign with late fees for nonpayment.
In 2020, the El Paso City Council hired a law firm to “defend the city’s interest in collecting outstanding invoices,” Cruz Acosta said. Four years later, the Trump campaign has not paid.
The unpaid bills trace back to Spokane, Washington, which wants to pay the Trump campaign for expenses incurred on a May 2016 visit. He became an official Republican presidential candidate. The bill totaled more than $65,000, according to an invoice provided by city spokeswoman Erin Hutt.
Hutt said the city still owes money to the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns from invoices issued in May 2016. The Sanders campaign owes about $33,000, and the Clinton campaign owes just under $3,000. , he said.
Representatives who previously worked with the campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In Missoula County, Montana, authorities are seeking about $13,000 from 2018 Trump rallies, according to an invoice the county provided to NBC News. The majority of the bill — about $12,000 — goes to police officers and 911 dispatchers, according to the invoice. County spokeswoman Alison Franz confirmed the county did not have an agreement with the campaign on expected costs before the event.
In the swing state of Arizona, the city of Mesa is still waiting for the campaign to pay local officials about $65,000 for Trump's October 2018 visit to Mesa-Gateway Airport, a city spokeswoman confirmed.
According to a 2018 campaign letter from attorney Nancy Sorensen on behalf of the city, the project would pay for the Mesa Police Department's work to provide officers for crowd and traffic control, as well as the department's rent for barricades, towing and much more.
City spokeswoman Ana Pereira told NBC News in a statement that when the city “learned of the incident and the circumstances surrounding the location, city officials took it upon themselves to implement whatever measures were necessary to keep the public safe without first enter into an agreement with the campaign.”
However, he said that “City Hall calculated public security costs based on the campaigns in which the president participated.”
He said the campaign is not legally required to cover these costs, “(we) believe the Trump 2020 campaign should reimburse our city for taxpayer dollars and we ran the campaign accordingly.”
Likewise, Erie's bill was to cover overtime for police officers, firefighters and public works workers, according to city spokesman Rob Lee.
Trump addressed overtime pay during his latest stop in Erie, not in the way city officials had hoped. Instead, he highlighted his proposal for no tax on overtime pay before moving on to his personal views on worker pay.
“I hated paying overtime. I hated it. I wanted to hire other people,” Trump said. “I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to bring other people. I won’t pay.”
