In early 2025, as measles began to tear through West Texas, Katherine Wells knew she needed money. Though the outbreak was concentrated in Gaines County, a community an hour away, Wells, who heads Lubbock’s public health department, needed more staff to respond to numerous exposures at local pediatricians’ offices, urgent care centers, restaurants and day cares. “We were really relying on staff that aren’t hourly, because I can work them for 80 hours if I have to, which is horrible,” Wells said. In emergency planning meetings with the Texas Department of State Health Services, she pleaded for roughly $100,000 to hire temporary workers to help her exhausted staff. “I was like, can I just have money so that if I need a few hours of work from a retired school nurse who we’ve worked with before, I can just pay them?” Wells said. The answer, she said, was consistently “no.” The state did send a few travel nurses from other areas to help, but no extra funding.…