{"id":377278,"date":"2026-07-17T21:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/377278\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:49:17","slug":"el-paso-rep-proposes-ban-on-phones-during-council-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/377278\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso rep. proposes ban on phones during council meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM<\/a>) \u2014 City Rep. Lily Limon wants her fellow City representatives and City staff members to put down their cell phones and pay more attention during council meetings.<\/p>\n

Limon has an agenda item set for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 21 that if passed, would prohibit the use of City and personal cell phones and personal electric devices on the dias during work sessions and council meetings.<\/p>\n

This comes after photos of City Attorney Karla Nieman went viral on social media platforms of her looking at her phone and scrolling through social media accounts.<\/p>\n

This was during a June 9 meeting in which there were hours of testimony from El Paso residents, expressing their frustrations with a project to build a controversial Meta data center in Northeast El Paso.<\/p>\n

That day, the council voted 5-3, after hours of public testimony, to defeat a proposal to begin the process to end the City’s agreement with Meta.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Above are two photos from a KTSM viewer, who wanted to remain anonymous, of Nieman scrolling on her phone during that contentious June 9 meeting.<\/p>\n

In Limon’s agenda item, the backup material reads: “Recently, citizens during Call to the Public have expressed frustration and felt a lack of respect as mayor and council were not paying attention to the speakers as we were focused on our phones.”<\/p>\n

Limon’s item also says that this sort of conduct by council members and City staff is also a “clear violation of the Open Meetings Act and goes against our Rules of Conduct.”<\/p>\n

The agenda item also says that previous councils have enacted rules for the removal of cell phones and electronic devices during council meetings.<\/p>\n

A City spokesperson declined to comment and referred us to Limon.<\/p>\n

The El Paso City Council will meet at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 21 at 300 N. Campbell.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) \u2014 City Rep. Lily Limon wants her fellow City representatives and City staff members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[26525,46631,73202,56879,133406,133405,138,140,139,133407,19057],"class_list":["post-377278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-agenda-item","tag-cell-phones","tag-city-representatives","tag-city-staff","tag-city-staff-members","tag-council-meetings","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-karla-nieman","tag-lily-limon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}