The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts began distributing payments to local governments and public hospital districts in 2023. Local governments may use their discretion to spend their payments, as long as the funds are used to address opioid-related harms in their communities.<\/p>\n
The three El Paso entities have spent about $1 million combined, with nearly half going to companies involved with the construction of the county\u2019s yet-to-be-built wellness center. About 12% went directly to recovery services and medication. There appears to be little to no collaboration between the city, county and hospital to make a unified effort in opioid harm reduction strategies.<\/p>\n
Policy researchers<\/a> have called for transparency and accountability in how jurisdictions use their funds, but found most local governments in Texas have not made that information easily accessible. One outlier is the city of Fort Worth<\/a>, which created an online summary page with information about its funds. Neither the city or county of El Paso have similar pages online.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the largest recipients of settlement compensation, public entities in Texas and across the U.S. have a duty to use these funds responsibly and to report their expenditure decisions clearly to the public,\u201d reads a report from Rice University\u2019s Baker Institute for Public Policy.<\/p>\n This year, the state required UMC, which received the biggest share of the three El Paso government entities, to submit a report summarizing its opioid harm reduction projects in 2024. The hospital submitted a blank report with zero projects on it.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the city has not spent or proposed how to use any of its settlement funds \u2013 though the El Paso City Council passed an opioid harm reduction resolution<\/a> more than two years ago outlining specific ways to use that funding.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s heartbreaking because we could certainly use it,\u201d said Adan Dominguez, programs director for Project Punto Project de Partida, a recovery services organization in El Paso.<\/p>\n Since passing the resolution, the city has not reached out to Punto de Partida to discuss the strategies listed, despite being named as a partner organization, Dominguez said. Punto de Partida has a more communicative relationship with the county, he said.<\/p>\n While El Paso County has spent some funds on direct recovery services, about half of its expenditures have gone to demolishing the old Naked Harem strip club building<\/a> and designing the site for the Corbin Sambrano Wellness Center, according to summaries provided by the County Auditor\u2019s Office. The wellness center is delayed, however, after voters last year rejected a bond<\/a> that would have funded its construction..<\/p>\n The surrounding municipalities of Anthony, Clint, San Elizario, Horizon City, Socorro and Vinton also claimed settlement allocations in smaller amounts.<\/p>\n Nearly 170 people in El Paso County died from opioid overdose in 2023 and 2024, according to an El Paso Matters analysis of data from the El Paso County Medical Examiner. Fentanyl, a painkiller stronger and more addictive than heroin, was involved in the majority of cases.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how much opioid settlement funds the city, county and hospital district have each claimed and what they\u2019ve planned so far:<\/p>\n City of El Paso \u2013 about $824,000 received<\/p>\n The state has dispersed three payments to the city of El Paso:<\/p>\n $384,356 on March 1, 2023<\/p>\n $74,774 on April 16, 2024<\/p>\n $364,785 on March 31, 2025<\/p>\n El Paso Matters requested invoices and receipts for all expenditures made with opioid settlement funds.<\/p>\n \u201cShould be easy, I don\u2019t think FD (Fire Department), PD (Police Department) and Health have spent a dime yet,\u201d wrote former Fire Chief and Deputy City Manager Mario D\u2019Agostino in a May 30 email to the city\u2019s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n El Paso Matters obtained emails through a public records request.<\/p>\n The three departments barely agreed on what the long-term strategy will consist of, D\u2019Agostino wrote in the email. Dr. Hector Ocaranza, city-county health authority, said the city appointed the Fire Department to administer the opioid settlement funds and confirmed they have not spent any funds as of Nov. 12.<\/p>\n El Paso Matters requested comments from D\u2019Agostino and Dr. Vinny Taneja, the public health director, in June and again in November. City spokesperson Soraya Ayub provided statements from Ocaranza.<\/p>\n The public health, fire and police departments are collaborating on a plan and working with the Paso del Norte Health Information Exchange, also known as PHIX, on a dataset that will be available to the community as a dashboard, Ocaranza said in November.<\/p>\n He did not provide a timeline for the city\u2019s plan. A public records request from El Paso Matters shows there was confusion this year among city departments over how the opioid settlement would be divided up \u2013 or what the plan was for those funds.<\/p>\n \u201cTo my knowledge, DPH (Department of Public Health) did not receive any of those funds,\u201d wrote Juan Saenz, grant project manager for the public health department, in an June 2 email to the department\u2019s compliance officer<\/p>\n \u201cDo we have an update to the program?\u201d D\u2019Agostino asked March 27 in a separate email thread with Ocaranza, police Chief Peter Pacillas and fire Chief Jonathan Killings. The email thread did not include the city\u2019s public health director.<\/p>\n Killings replied that the Fire Department did not capture any of the 2024 opioid settlement funds awarded to the city, but will pursue part of the 2025 allocation for its naloxone distribution program.<\/p>\n \u201cYou all are included in the funding that\u2019s why I have been asking for a plan,\u201d D\u2019Agostino responded.<\/p>\n Ocaranza said Taneja was not looped into initial conversations about the opioid settlement because he was not the public health director yet. Taneja had been the health director for more than seven months<\/a> at the time of the email communication, however. The health director had since been briefed and he designated Ocaranza to continue working with the fire and police departments, Ocaranza said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the city\u2019s momentum for opioid risk mitigation<\/a> appears to have slowed down since the departure of city Rep. Alexsandra Annello<\/a>, who left office in January 2024 when her term expired, Dominguez said.<\/p>\n During her term, Annello pushed for the El Paso Police Department to increase the availability of Narcan<\/a> for police officers. The City Council also approved in May 2023 a resolution from Annello and city Rep. Chris Canales directing the city to invest in opioid risk mitigation strategies.<\/p>\n The broad list of strategies include working with community partners such as the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance to expand the distribution of naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose; increase access to medicated-assisted treatment; and facilitate rapid screening and referral to harm reduction services.<\/p>\n Canales said there was initial conversation about using some of the opioid settlement funds to expand the fire department\u2019s Mobile Integrated Health program, which would include increasing deployment of naloxone across the community, as well as improving education and access to care.<\/p>\n \u201cI was confident that this year we would be able to move towards some of the more difficult to implement action items such as a needle exchange, but a significant loss of federal funding for the City\u2019s Public Health Department<\/a> has made that much more difficult,\u201d Canales said. \u201cIt has been a struggle to even sustain the programs that we already have.\u201d<\/p>\n Canales said the opioid settlement funds do not put a patch on federal funding loss.<\/p>\n At the time of the resolution, D\u2019Agostino discussed creating a task force to discuss how to use the opioid settlement funds, said Jamie Bailey, an organizer for the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance. The group is eager to work with the city on implementing these interventions, particularly at this time when many local harm reduction and recovery programs have experienced funding cuts, Bailey said.<\/p>\n \u201cI expect that City staff will bring funding recommendations based on that collective work to the City Council for consideration in the coming few months,\u201d Canales told El Paso Matters in a November email.<\/p>\n El Paso Matters asked the city if it had created that task force. A spokesperson responded that the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance was leading it. But Bailey said as of November, the city had not asked her group to form or lead a task force, and that the city has yet to reach out to her about opioid risk mitigation projects.<\/p>\n El Paso County \u2013 about $1.74 million received<\/p>\n The state has dispersed three payments to El Paso County:<\/p>\n $813,721.16 on March 1, 2023<\/p>\n $158,303.50 on April 16, 2024<\/p>\n $158,303.50 on March 31, 2025<\/p>\n The county has spent more than two-thirds of what it\u2019s claimed from the opioid settlement.<\/p>\n Contracts show the county awarded $50,000 to the Recovery Alliance of El Paso to purchase and distribute naloxone.<\/p>\n The county awarded Aliviane, an addiction treatment center, $25,000 for naloxone and $50,000 to support 20 clients with comprehensive treatment services.<\/p>\n The county is also using its opioid settlement claim to pay the full-time salary and employee benefits of senior justice and rehabilitation services manager, who\u2019s received $114,500 in wages so far this year.<\/p>\n Roughly $411,000 of the opioid settlement claim went to two companies, MNK Architects and JSR Construction and Remodeling, to tear down the former Naked Harem strip club in the Lower Valley and plan the Corbin Sambrano Wellness Center.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CB_AdanDominguez-6.jpg\")
Adan Dominguez, program administrator for Punto de Partida, explains the organization\u2019s mission and processes for serving clients, July 1, 2025. Punto de Partida offers support for people with substance abuse disorder by focusing on harm reduction and connecting people with resources for housing, legal aid, health services and more. (Corrie Boudreaux\/El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CB_FireStation10-0032.jpg\")
El Paso city-county health authority Dr. Hector Ocaranza said the fire department will manage distribution of the city\u2019s opioid settlement funds. (Corrie Boudreaux\/El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PXL_20251122_224248598.jpg\")
Naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose, seen at El Paso Public Library, Richard Burges branch Nov. 22, 2025. (Priscilla Totiyapungprasert \/ El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Corbin-Sambrano-Wellness-Center-rendering.png\")
A rendering of the El Paso County Corbin Sambrano Wellness Center taken from a 2024 county document.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CB_OverdoseAwareness-1.jpg\")
Demonstrators lie on the ground to represent the 12 people who die each hour from drug overdose during the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance\u2019s event to mark International Overdose Awareness Day, Aug. 31, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux\/El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n