comptroller\u2019s office<\/a>.<\/p>\nDuring the hearing, Carly French suggested that lawmakers focus more on the organization; she encouraged them to keep their focus on the community it serves. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe county that I serve, Gaines County, is 15 hundred square miles,\u201d French said. \u201cSeminole EMS covers 11 hundred square miles, and a service northeast of me covers the remaining four. Because of the rule in the grant application, my judge was tasked with choosing one of us to receive these funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
French emphasized to the committee that there are several established providers, with stations and fleets, across multiple counties in their region. However, because one county received this grant, the others don\u2019t get the same benefits. That\u2019s because, under grant rules, that ambulance does not belong to the provider but to the county for the next decade. <\/p>\n
French explains that a lot of the time, purchases like this require a lien time of years rather than months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important to realize that when an EMS service signs for an ambulance, we do not make payment upfront,\u201d French says. \u201cOkay, we are signing an agreement; we\u2019re locking in that price in order to know that we have it coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
She told lawmakers that Gaines County is still waiting on two ambulances that she signed for in 2023. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut because I signed a piece of paper back in 2023,\u201d French said, \u201cthat ambulance is now ineligible to be paid for with this grant funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell Gallahan, manager for the Texas Comptroller, argues that\u2019s not what the program is for. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficulty you have there,\u201d Gallahan says, \u201cis that this is an incentive to have more ambulances, and incentivizing paying for ambulances that were previously purchased would seem to be maybe in conflict with what the intent is to have more ambulances, not fund current ambulances that were on order.\u201d<\/p>\n
French emphasized to lawmakers that not everyone needs a new ambulance, and stressed it would be better to let the county decide how that money is used. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of us have cardiac monitors that are no longer serviceable, and those are $50k a piece,\u201d French said. \u201cI mean, your stretchers, your auto lights- these are big-ticket items that you know sometimes you get a new ambulance, but you don\u2019t have the updated equipment to take care of our patients. Everybody\u2019s different, nobody\u2019s the same, but I think if the commissioner\u2019s court had the flexibility and they were tasked with the responsibility of getting it out to their services, we could do better for our patients.\u201c<\/p>\n
Gallahan explains that once the grant money is issued, there will be a deadline to submit compliance reports to prove the purchase has been made.<\/p>\n
Watch the hearing here<\/a>. <\/p>\nCopyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The director of Seminole EMS testified before the Texas House Committee on Public Health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[55159,116506,5615,4843,116505,27,29,28,116507],"class_list":["post-325760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-ambulance","tag-carly-french","tag-ems","tag-rural","tag-seminole-ems","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325760","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=325760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}