How voucher vendors could make millions from ‘school choice’

AUSTIN – The Texas Observer reports that in August 2024, the business magazine Inc. released its annual list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States. At 815th, a burgeoning upstart called ClassWallet cracked the list’s top 20 percent for the third straight year. By expanding its operations managing school voucher programs for states across the country, earnings for the Florida company grew by 610 percent over the previous three years. Founded in 2014, ClassWallet now has more than 200 employees and has contracts to administer school vouchers and other educational programs in 18 states through its “digital wallet” platform. Indeed, managing school vouchers has become a big business. And, as Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature gear up to pass their own program this session, private companies like ClassWallet are descending on the Capitol to lobby for the vouchers legislation and the lucrative contracts it could generate. This comes as other states have drawn scrutiny over myriad problems with the private contractors, including ClassWallet, they’ve hired to administer their voucher programs.

Senate Bill 2, which sailed through the upper chamber early last month, is a universal school voucher proposal that would give students $10,000 a year to attend private school or $2,000 for homeschooling. Lawmakers have initially set aside $1 billion in funding for the Texas school voucher program in 2027, though the Senate bill’s fiscal analysis says the program’s net cost could balloon to $3.8 billion by 2030. The bill stipulates that up to 5 percent of appropriated funds may go to pay up to five outside vendors like ClassWallet, which the legislation calls “certified educational assistance organizations” (CEAOs), to act as middlemen between the state, parents, and private schools by processing program applications and voucher payments. If the bill were to pass, these private companies could soon be reeling in tens and even hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars per year. These private vendors could, under the bill, be tasked with managing a complex application process, connecting parents with private schools and education vendors, accepting payments, and “verify[ing] that program funding is used only for approved education-related expenses.” “They’re a for-profit pass-through, which just means the state appropriates dollars, the vendor holds it, they reserve a small fee for themselves, and then they pass it on to the consumer,” Josh Cowen, education policy professor at Michigan State University and author of the book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, told the Texas Observer.

Army Corps projects uncertain under GOP spending bill

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the future of Army Corps projects along the Texas Gulf Coast, like the overhaul of flood control systems around Houston and the widening of the Houston Ship Channel, are in question after House Republicans on Tuesday passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through September. Their bill calls for reducing the Army Corps of Engineers’ construction budget by $1.4 billion, a 44% cut. In addition, the White House would assume control over which projects get funded, decisions that are currently made by Congress. The bill nows moves to the U.S. Senate, where Republicans must win over at least seven Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to consider the measure. To avoid a government shutdown, Congress must pass a spending bill by the end of Friday.

Public officials and contractors in Texas are scrambling to figure out what the possible Army Corps cuts could mean for their projects, said Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston. “It’s anyones guess what the Trump administration will do, but that’s a huge part of the problem. It’s the chaos and uncertainty continuously coming out of this administration,” she said. “The port project is hugely important not only to our regional economy but our national security.” A spokeswoman for Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, denied the $1.4 billion reduction in Army Corps spending was a “cut,” saying the department’s previous year’s budget had been inflated due to the injection of funds from other legislation. “These funds were expended for a one-time purpose. So, no, House Republicans are not cutting any funds for the Army Corps of Engineers,” he said. The continuing resolution passed by House Republicans on Tuesday calls for a $13 billion reduction in non-defense spending and a $6 billion increase in defense spending — relatively small amounts considering the $6.8 trillion federal budget. It passed in a narrow 217-213 vote, with the Texas delegation split along party lines.

Abbott touts a new ally in his school voucher push

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports that as state House members began debating a school voucher plan on Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott appeared more optimistic than ever that his signature legislation would finally pass the chamber where it has died repeatedly. The difference from past sessions — when a coalition of House Democrats and rural Republicans blocked the bill — is the new speaker now leading the House, Dustin Burrows, Abbott said. “We’ve been down this pathway before, but have never been so close to getting this passed,” the governor told a crowd of supporters in Austin. “And the reason is, because we have not had a speaker willing to step up and stand for school choice.”

For the first time in years, Abbott and a Texas House speaker are aligned, at least publicly, on his vision to send public dollars to families for private education. Burrows took over this year for former House Speaker Dade Phelan, who declined in 2023 to publicly back a voucher plan and later dropped his bid for reelection after Abbott helped unseat several of his former supporters. Burrows, a Lubbock Republican and former Phelan ally, appeared alongside Abbott last month in San Antonio, and he joined the governor again on Tuesday to address a crowd of supporters at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. “These are your elected representatives who are about to make school choice a reality in Texas, something that’s been fought for for 30, 40, 50 years — and it’s going to happen,” Burrows said. “It’s a big day, a monumental day.”

UT Tyler holds Vietnam veterans 50th year commemoration

TYLER – The University of Texas at Tyler Military and Veterans Success Center will hold multiple events on campus for the community to recognize Vietnam War veterans and the 50th anniversary since the war ended. These events are hosted in partnership with the UT Tyler history department, VFW Carl Webb Post 1799, Vietnam Veterans of America Rose Capital Chapter 932, American Legion Post 12 and other local veteran serving organizations. “We proudly present these excellent events as a way to honor our Vietnam War veterans here in East Texas and across the country,” said Coby Dillard, UT Tyler director of military and veterans affairs. “The men and women who served during Vietnam faced unspeakable challenges both in country and at home. As a community, it is important that we continue to celebrate the service of those who returned, while honoring the sacrifices of those who were lost during this conflict.” (more…)

Houstonians pay tribute to Sylvester Turner

HOUSTON (AP) – Mourners in Houston paid tribute to the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas as he lay in state at city hall Tuesday, part of a week of public events to honor the Democratic lawmaker and former mayor.

Turner, 70, died on March 5, just weeks into his first term in the House and only hours after attending President Donald Trump’s address to Congress in Washington. His family said he died at his home following health complications.

Residents observed a memorial at Houston City Hall, where Turner served as mayor for eight years before being elected to Congress in November. Houston Mayor John Whitmire made brief remarks to mourners and the Houston Symphony performed while visitors paid their respects.

“Sylvester knew each and every community, and he treated everyone with equality and inclusion,” Whitmire said. “That’s what made him really special. He brought that public service and that message across not only our great city, but our great state.”

Turner had filled the House seat held by longtime Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in July. Prior to becoming mayor, Turner served as a legislator in the Texas House of Representatives for 27 years.

Turner is also scheduled to lie in state at the Texas Capitol beginning Thursday. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday in Houston.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet announced when a special election will be held for Turner’s seat.

Federal appeals court reverses Texas death row inmate’s conviction

AMARILLO (AP) – A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman’s death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg’s 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.

Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

The appeals court disagreed, saying that the informant was critical to the jury’s determination of guilt and that the prosecution violated Holberg’s due process rights by hiding information that, according to a landmark U.S. Supreme court ruling, must be disclosed. Writing for the majority, judge Patrick E. Higginbotham cast Holberg’s case as a blight on the criminal justice system.

“We pause only to acknowledge that 27 years on death row is a reality dimming the light that ought to attend proceedings where a life is at stake, a stark reminder that the jurisprudence of capital punishment remains a work in progress,” wrote Higginbotham, a Ronald Reagan appointee.

Holberg was sentenced to death by an Amarillo jury when she was 23 years old. The jury found her guilty of murdering A.B. Towery, an 80-year-old man and former client of Holberg, a sex worker. During trial, Holberg asserted that she acted in self-defense and that she stabbed Towery because she feared for her life and sought to protect herself after he struck her on the back of the head and refused to relent.

The prosecution, however, presented testimony from Holberg’s jail cellmate Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick, who alleged that Holberg had admitted to killing Towery “in order to get money” and said she “would do it all over again for more drugs.”

Kirkpatrick was at the time working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police, a fact prosecutors did not disclose. They instead presented Kirkpatrick as a “disinterested individual who ‘wanted to do the right thing,’” Higginbotham wrote.

Holberg had experienced severe and repeated sexual abuse during her childhood and fell into a crack cocaine addiction. She turned to sex work to support her addiction, according to court documents.

On Nov. 13, 1996, she had a minor traffic accident and then sought refuge in Towery’s apartment. A heated argument turned violent, leaving Towery dead with part of a lamp lodged within his throat. Holberg left the apartment cut, bruised and bleeding from her head where Towery struck her.

While in jail, the Randall County District Attorney’s Office approached multiple inmates to question them about Holberg, offering them a deal in exchange for testimony. Kirkpatrick, who was placed in the same cell as Holberg, produced a statement detailing an alleged admission from Holberg. That same day, Kirkpatrick was released on bond.

In a lone dissent, circuit judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote that the jury did not solely rely on Kirkpatrick’s testimony to reach their decision of guilt.

“The jury was presented with graphic physical evidence that Holberg sadistically butchered a sick old man—with a lamp rammed down his throat as the coup de grâce,” Duncan wrote. “That evidence doomed Holberg’s self-defense theory and there is no chance that impeaching Kirkpatrick would have resurrected it.”

Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, who was the assistant district attorney when Holberg’s case was first prosecuted, said in an emailed statement that he was “disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling. He declined to comment further on the case until the Texas Office of the Attorney General decides how to proceed. “They are currently discussing the legal options available,” Love said.

Holberg’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to The Texas Tribune’s request for comment on Monday. A Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said the agency had no comment on Holberg’s case. Holberg is currently being held at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit, a Gatesville prison that houses females on death row, among other inmates.

Texas leads the country in executions and is among the top three in imposing death sentences. The state’s use of capital punishment has waned, however, and the number of people on death row has dropped by more than half over the past twenty five years. There are 174 people on Texas’ death row, and seven of them are women.

Rep. Shofner introduces bill to improve healthcare in rural East Texas

NACOGDOCHES – Our news partners at KETK report that Advanced Practice Registered Nurses could soon have full practice authority in rural East Texas. Rep. Joanne Shofner filed HB 2532 on Feb. 6 that would allow APRNs to practice as independent practitioners. The bill will give APRNs the ability to treat health problems and prescribe medications (including controlled substances). In order to qualify, APRN’s must apply to the Texas Board of Nursing and pay an application fee. The deadline for the fee will vary by program and school. Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN) range from nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists and clinical nurse specialists. (more…)

Selena’s killer Yolanda Saldívar seeks parole

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports The woman convicted of killing Selena Quintanilla believes she has served her time as her parole eligibility fast approaches, a relative recently told the New York Post. Yolanda Saldívar, a San Antonio native, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the murder of the 23-year-old “Queen of Tejano” at a Corpus Christi hotel on March 31, 1995. Saldívar is now 64 years old. The relative, who was not named in the article, told the Post that Saldívar “feels like she’s a political prisoner at this point,” adding, “Enough is enough.” Saldívar was the president of Quintanilla’s fan club before she killed the singer after the star confronted her over embezzlement alegations, which Saldívar has denied. Quintanilla had conquered the Spanish music scene and was on the verge of an English crossover before she was shot and killed two weeks before her 24th birthday.

$1 billion for school vouchers won’t be enough

AUSTIN – The San Antonio Express-News says Republican state leaders pushing a private school voucher plan have emphasized it would transform the face of education in Texas. They also say its cost would be limited to $1 billion for the first year. But projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board show demand for the program providing students with taxpayer funds to subsidize homeschooling or private education options could quickly outpace that initial investment, pressuring lawmakers to pour more and more money into it, while pulling millions from public schools. According to the LBB, demand for the program is projected to grow from $1 billion worth of vouchers for its first year of operation in 2027 to $3.2 billion the following year, then $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion by 2030. In other words, the $1 billion budget line on this biennium’s state budget could grow to more than $8 billion over the two-year period up for approval by the Legislature in 2029 as more and more students seek a voucher.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican carrying his chamber’s version of the voucher bill, Senate Bill 2, has described the fiscal note as a “fairy tale” because lawmakers would need to sign off on any future funding increases. “Senate Bill 2 is entirely subject to a future appropriations process and the Legislature making a decision to grow the population of students served,” he said during a committee hearing earlier this year. Although the program’s initial investment would be set at $1 billion under Creighton’s bill, there are other pathways to grow it, even without lawmakers’ support. Gov. Greg Abbott, the state’s biggest voucher proponent, has been able to circumvent the Legislature for funding increases in the past, namely with his ongoing border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, which began with an appropriation from the Legislature of less than $3 billion. Abbott grew the program by billions more while the Legislature was out of session by moving money amongst state agencies with the approval of a small group of lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the House speaker. Critics warn the same thing could happen with vouchers. “What will most likely happen based on what we’ve seen in other states, to start drawing down those dollars… it’s really unlimited,” said Jaime Puente, a policy analyst with the left-leaning group Every Texan who is critical of vouchers. “It’s really an unlimited amount of funding, an unlimited amount of seats that people will be advertised to with state dollars.”

Texarkana Police need help finding hit and run driver

TEXARKANA – The Texarkana Police Department is currently searching for a driver who was involved in a hit and run that left a woman critically injured on Friday, according to our news partners at KETK. Texarkana PD said a woman pedestrian was critically injured after she was hit by a white SUV in the 2300 block of New Boston Road at around 10:20 p.m. on Friday night. Officials are searching for the driver and are asking anyone who lives near the hit and run scene to check their security cameras for a white SUV in the area near that time. “We’ve been working non-stop all weekend to track down the driver, but we still haven’t been able to identify the vehicle. If you live or work in the area, please check your security cameras! If you see anything that might help—no matter how small—please reach out to us. It could well be the break that we need.” Anyone information can contact Texarkana PD by phone at 903-798-3876 and any video can be submitted to the Texarkana Police Department online through their new online evidence portal.

Suspects arrested in major credit card skimming operation

TYLER – The Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center in Tyler, in collaboration with multiple law enforcement agencies, has successfully dismantled a sophisticated credit card skimming operation, leading to the arrest of two Romanian citizens. The operation is estimated to have prevented more than $5.2 million in potential losses to victims in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. During the execution of a search warrant at the suspects’ residence, law enforcement officers uncovered a fully operational credit card skimmer factory, where the suspects were actively constructing and assembling skimming devices designed to attach to ATMs. Authorities seized hundreds of altered credit cards containing stolen victim information, approximately $16,000 in cash and tools and equipment used to manufacture skimming devices. (more…)

No “Drill Baby Drill” until the price rises

TEXAS – The Hill reports that President Trump and Texas lawmakers are pushing to loosen the laws and liabilities governing the state’s oil and gas industry and give companies a freer hand to “drill, baby, drill,” drawing mixed reactions from the heart of oil country. On his first day back in office, the president declared a “national energy emergency.” With demand for electricity rising, the U.S. would now be able to “do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem,” he said. His administration has moved quickly to strip away a number of regulations and liabilities that impacted the oil and gas industry, lifting endangered species protections in the Permian Basin, instructing the Army Corps to fast-track pipeline construction under the Clean Water Act and laying the groundwork to overhaul a bedrock law that requires the government to consider environmental consequences before approving infrastructure projects.

Industry executives are hailing the new administration as a breath of fresh air: an end, as oil executive Kirk Edwards of Odessa-based Latigo Petroleum told The Hill shortly before Trump’s inauguration, to “these useless regulations that have been coming our way that we have to battle all the time.” Energy experts have been widely dismissive of the idea that Trump can increase drilling, however. They say that a rising global price of oil — potentially driven by more upheaval abroad — is the only likely driver of further oil-sector expansion. In regulatory terms, fossil fuel “investors have a friend in the White House,” Trey Cowan of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis told The Hill. But he added that markets, and not the White House, would determine whether there would be more drilling. And personal injury attorneys, law enforcement and worker safety advocates alike warn that if the sector does expand — particularly in tandem with continued deregulation — it would mean a lot more deaths on the nation’s roads, construction sites and well pads, where some workers already report being pushed past the limits of safety.

Kaufman County deer breeding facility quarantined

KAUFMAN COUNTY – A deer breeding facility has been placed under quarantine by the Texas Animal Health Commission, after ante-mortem tests for two white-tailed deer reveal positive results for a fatal neurological chronic wasting disease. A first for Kaufman County, according to our news partners at KETK. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department confirmed the results for a 20-month-old male and an eight-month-old female after two laboratories detected the disease. The Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory analyzed the samples and then the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa provided a second opinion which came back with the same conclusion. (more…)

Rural Texas scrambles to respond to measles

LYNN COUNTY – The Texas Tribune reports that Five years ago, Melanie Richburg used a roll of duct tape, a HEPA filter and a portable fan to draw contaminated air out of a hospital room where patients were tested for the coronavirus.

Now, as the state’s largest measles outbreak in three decades sickens an increasing number of Texans in the South Plains region, the Lynn County Hospital District, where Richburg serves as the chief executive officer, is still without specialized isolation rooms to treat patients.

So, she’s prepared to bring out the duct tape again.

“If we see the volume of patients exceeds the number of beds available at children’s hospitals, we’re going to need a contingency plan,” said Richburg, whose county is 30 miles south of Lubbock and has had two measles cases. “The biggest struggle we have is the same struggle we had during COVID.”

The coronavirus pandemic underscored the need for robust public health infrastructure. And it brought to light a remarkable urban-rural divide in access to basic health services. In the months after the virus ravaged the country, federal dollars flowed to local public health districts, and policies targeting health care deserts saw a renewed push.

Yet as a disease that had been declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 makes a resurgence, rural West Texas communities and state officials are scrambling to respond. Aging infrastructure, a dearth of primary care providers and long distances between testing sites and laboratories plague much of rural Texas, where the measles outbreak has concentrated.

At least 198 people in Texas have been infected with measles since late January, and one child has died from measles, the first such death in the country in a decade.

More measles cases are expected, and the outbreak could last for months, state health services commissioner Jennifer Shuford told lawmakers last week.

Though different from COVID in many ways, measles is similarly revealing how a lack of public health resources leaves rural communities vulnerable. What’s left are local leaders forced to scrape together the few tools they have to respond to an emergency, contending with years of lackluster investment from the state and federal level to proactively prevent emerging public health threats.

“We’re in a public health shortage area,” said Gordon Mattimoe, director of the Andrews County Health Department.“ You have to think outside the box.”
Lack of infrastructure

Some 64 Texas counties don’t have a hospital, and 25 lack primary care physicians, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture. Twenty-six rural Texas hospitals closed between 2010 and 2020, according to a rural hospital trade organization, and although closures slowed in the years since, those still standing are often in crumbling buildings with few medical providers.

Swaths of Texas have scant resources for public awareness campaigns. And they lack sufficient medical staff with expertise to provide the one-on-one education needed to encourage vaccination and regular visits to the doctor.

“We have a difficult time in our area finding pediatricians for our newborns,” said Sara Safarzadeh Amiri, chief medical officer for Odessa Regional Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center. “That’s a problem. If you can’t find a pediatrician, then when a serious question comes up, who do you ask?”

Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County. Cases have also been confirmed in eight other counties spanning Dallam near the Oklahoma border down to Ector, south of Gaines.

To contain the illness, rural health care teams have cordoned off spaces to conduct measles testing, used social media to blast residents with information about vaccination efficacy and schlepped throat swabs across counties to ship them to a state lab in Austin — the only public state facility that was conducting measles testing until the Texas Tech University Bioterrorism Response Laboratory, part of a national network of CDC-funded labs, began measles testing last Monday.

Testing is critical for measles, experts say, because infected individuals can be contagious for several days and must isolate themselves to avoid spreading it further.

In Gaines County, runners have had to drive specimens up to 70 miles to get to a FedEx office where they could ship the specimen to the state laboratory. It could then take another 48 hours to get test results. During that time, public health officials would ask patients suspected of measles to quarantine — but they don’t know if they followed through.

“Some people need the test to say ‘I’m positive’ before they actually do something or follow the directions given,” Amiri said. “Having that testing available is very important.”

In Andrews County, just south of Gaines, Mattimoe is using the old City Hall building as a testing site because he doesn’t have a reverse pressure room.

Those rooms prevent contagious diseases from spreading to other people, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends suspected measles patients are treated there when possible. In the absence of such spaces, rural counties including Lynn and Yoakum have improvised a room for measles testing, hoping they don’t get overrun with more patients they can handle.

Mattimoe, who said he is anticipating more cases, opted to open up City Hall for testing since that building happens to be vacant.

Without it, Mattimoe said, he’d have to “shut down the entire department for two hours between suspected cases.”

Public health is based upon prevention, yet it’s emergencies that spur the most action, particularly in rural communities.

It was only after a school-aged child died from measles that state and federal support intensified. Twenty seven contractors were brought into the outbreak area last week to assist local health departments, Shuford, the state health services commissioner, said during a legislative hearing. A public awareness campaign with billboards and social media messaging was also launched. And, upon a request from the state, the federal CDC sent “disease detectives” to West Texas.

County officials also doubled down their efforts. In Ector County, County Judge Dustin Fawcett made media appearances to discuss the efficacy of the MMRV vaccine whose two doses provide 97% protection against measles. And the commissioners court approved the purchase of a $7,695 freezer to store measles test specimens — samples shipped after the date of collection must be kept at -70 degrees celsius.

In Andrews County, residents stepped up their communal responsibilities. Mattimoe saw a surge of people coming into the clinic to get vaccinated. “Unfortunately, the death of a child was one of the things that spurred many people to come in,” Mattimoe said.

Even as state and federal officials are sharing more information on vaccines, experts say those campaigns needed to come sooner. They have known for years that vaccination rates have been declining.

“We shouldn’t be doing it during an outbreak,” Amiri said. “We should be doing it beforehand to prevent the outbreak.”

Getting vaccines in residents is further complicated by the fact that Texas has a mostly decentralized system of public health. Cities and counties can stand up their own public health departments or districts, but the majority of rural counties can’t afford to have their own. Instead, they rely on one of 11 public health regions.

Those regions cover vast territories with limited dollars and don’t always know the ins and outs of local communities, especially on how to motivate residents to get vaccinated. The logistical challenges of traveling across counties adds another layer of difficulty.

“You have to call these tiny towns and figure out who can give you space for free to set up a testing clinic,” Wells said. “Then you’re driving from Lubbock to rural areas and that cuts how long you can keep the clinics open.”

And then, rural public health departments are having to contend with mixed messaging from the federal level as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, has cast vaccination as a personal choice while downplaying the news of the outbreak.

“I think with the changes that are occurring at the federal level, we need to realize that we do need to strengthen our local public health,” Amiri said.
The power of funding

Years of underinvestment in public health left Texas ill prepared for the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Hospital equipment was scarce, and state and local health departments had outdated technology that limited access to crucial data.

The pandemic also exposed the rural-urban inequities in health care access. Residents of Texas counties without hospitals died from COVID-19 at 20% higher rates than residents of counties with hospitals, according to an analysis by the Austin American Statesman.

An influx in federal funding helped shore up local public health departments and stave off more rural hospital closures. Texas received $35.5 million in grants for improvements in public health infrastructure in fiscal year 2020. An additional $221 million — the most of any state — is flowing to Texas through the CDC’s five-year Public Health Infrastructure Grant.

That funding has helped some local health departments address the measles outbreak, public health officials said. The Lubbock public health department has nearly doubled in size thanks to a $2 million grant. Those extra workers have been on the front lines of testing for measles and vaccinating children.

“It moved us from undersized to right sized,” said Katherine Wells, director of the city’s public health department. “It got us to the…health department we need for Lubbock.”

In Andrews County, Mattimoe has also used grant dollars to grow his health department. Four new employees, including an epidemiologist and a social worker, have helped the county complete a population health assessment that offers a snapshot of residents’ needs. And its year-round vaccine clinics have helped stave off the worst of the measles outbreak.

“Community immunity has really saved us,” Mattimoe said. “There will be a case eventually, but there’s something to be said about herd immunity.” Andrews County does not have any confirmed measles cases as of Friday.

The influx of dollars that rural communities received during the height of the pandemic showed the meaningful changes that officials could do with more support, but it still hasn’t been enough.

Texas spends less on public health per person than the vast majority of other states, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, whose analysis shows Texas spent $17 per person on public health in 2023. A decade earlier, the spend was $19.

The low levels of state funding particularly hurt rural communities that have higher rates of uninsured Texans and more senior citizens with greater health needs, according to the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. Deteriorating buildings and the shortage of medical professionals still persist in rural areas, while lower volumes of patients means higher health care operational costs.

In Lynn County, Richburg, the CEO of the health district, had hoped the makeshift contraption she made during COVID for a reverse pressure room wouldn’t be needed again in her rural community of 5,500 people. She attempted to pass a bond last year to pay for infrastructure upgrades, including a mini intensive care unit with four negative pressure rooms.

Voters rejected the proposed tax increase, though, a gut punch to Richburg.

“We wanted those four specific beds so that when we had situations where we needed to isolate patients, they’d be adequately cared for and not in a room with a broken window with a fan duct taped in it,” she said.

In addition to isolation rooms, Lynn County’s health care system is due for a major electrical upgrade, Richburg said. The facility’s backup power generator doesn’t cover the MRI machine or the CAT scan. In the meantime, Richburg and her staff plan to do their best with what they have.

“We’re still here, the lights still come on every morning, and patients still come in for services,” Richburg said. “We’re not going away.”

One person detained after Crockett woman found dead

CROCKETT – One person was detained on Sunday night after a Crockett woman was found dead inside an apartment, according to our news partners at KETK. According to Crockett Police Department, around 8:45 p.m. officers responded to a medical call at an apartment in the 100 Block of Barnhill Drive and found a deceased female with injuries consistent with homicide. Officers identified the victim as Teresa Jasmine Murillo, 32 of Crockett. Officials said the person of interest was detained and no further information will be released at this time since it is an ongoing investigation. Anyone with any information can contact Detective Kerri Bell at 936-544-2021 or at bellk@crocketttexas.org. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Deep East Texas Crime Stoppers at 936-639-TIPS or through their website.

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