County Commissioners approve toxicology services agreement for Medical Examiner’s Office

For the second week in a row, questions about the Procurement Review Panel continue to arise.

The PRP was created to look at contracts that would cost El Paso County anything above $50,000.

On Monday a three year agreement with National Medical Services was brought before Commissioners Court. The deal is expected to net roughly $100K per year for National Medical Services, which would offer toxicology services to the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Commissioner Haggerty questioned why no one from the Medical Examiner’s Office bothered to show up to the meeting, and why the deal wasn’t reviewed by the new panel. When one of the members of the panel discussed that the panel is still a work in progress, Haggerty questioned what the committe was doing.

“Do you need direction, or do you all need to figure out what it is that you’re doing?” asked Haggerty.

According to County employees, there are between nine and 12 items that are “in the pipeline,” that will likely cost the county more than $50,000. Some of those items haven’t been looked at because the PRP is hoping to tackle the millions of dollars worth of investments El Paso County is making with the 2013 bond initiative that was approved earlier this year.

Haggerty questioned whether the county could wait a few more weeks to allow the review of the deal, however, no one seemed to latch onto the idea.

County Judge Veronica Escobar, and members of the County Attorney’s Office, expressed there could be issue with turning back now because the deal was so far along. According to Escobar, the issue was that the toxicology bid was awarded before the PRP was created. Today was simply approving the contract now that it has been written up.

Commissioners voted 3-to-1 to approve the contract. Commissioner Haggerty represented the only vote against the contract.

As for the PRP, between three and five contracts are being reviewed a week according to it’s members. However, guidelines are still being built. Members of the panel have told Commissioners Court that they are looking for direction on how they should deal with projects that are already in the pipeline.

“The challenge with the PRP is that as things come through the pipeline, we’re trying to focus on the bigger things,” said County Judge Veronica Escobar.