El Paso city staff recommended cutting ties with WestStar Bank Holding Company and barring it and its subsidiaries from municipal contracts for three years, citing violations tied to a title services agreement. City Council pulled the recommendation from its consent agenda before voting, leaving the matter in limbo pending further administrative review.
The dispute centers on Contract No. 2024-0095R, a title search and report services agreement that City Council approved in October 2024, according to KTSM 9 News. The contract carried an initial three-year term with two optional renewal years and a $300,000 initial-term award, and it was designed to set up on-call agreements meant to speed up title searches and closing services for city real estate transactions. The award was actually split between two vendors — WestStar Title, LLC and Lone Star Title Company of El Paso, Inc. — under the same October 2024 solicitation, according to official El Paso City Council meeting records, meaning the city already has a second local title vendor in place for real estate work.
Per the city presentation cited in the station's report, the city's Real Estate Department found that WestStar violated its contract terms and conditions, identifying multiple instances in which the contractor acted beyond the scope of services and authority granted under the agreement. City rules give El Paso the right to immediately terminate a contract for default if a contractor violates applicable laws, rules or regulations tied to the agreement, and staff leaned on that provision in recommending the city sever ties with WestStar altogether.
Purchasing Staff Cited a Specific Default Clause
An August 18, 2026 agenda document reviewed by Legigram shows Purchasing & Strategic Sourcing staff cited Attribute 21, Article 8, Section B of the contract to support default termination, recommending an effective termination date of the same day due to contractor performance violations. That recommendation would have also imposed the three-year debarment on WestStar Bank Holding Company and its subsidiaries, which include WestStar Title, LLC.
City Council ultimately removed the item from its agenda rather than voting on the ban. A city spokeswoman said the item was postponed for additional administrative review, and the city said it would not share further information until that review is complete. City of El Paso procurement rules require formal reviews by the Purchasing & Strategic Sourcing Department and city legal staff before Council can finalize a multi-year vendor debarment, which explains why the recommendation stalled rather than reaching a final vote.
WestStar Declines Comment as Bank's Local Profile Looms Large
A WestStar spokeswoman said the bank was not in a position to comment and had no additional information to share. The silence comes as WestStar Bank maintains an outsized footprint in the region: industry banking reports compiled by Bank Data Insights show the bank holds roughly $3.28 billion in total assets and operates 14 branches across El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Its parent holding company reported $282.5 million in total stockholders' equity against total assets exceeding $2.6 billion in consolidated financial disclosures.
WestStar Bank is headquartered in the 20-story, 313-foot WestStar Tower in downtown El Paso, which opened in 2021 as the city's tallest skyscraper and the first downtown commercial high-rise built in 40 years, according to Hunt Companies. WestStar Bank Holding Company Chairman and CEO L. Frederick “Rick” Francis served on the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents from 2003 to 2019, including two terms as chairman. In March 2022, Francis and his wife Ginger donated $10 million to endow the L. Frederick Francis Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, as reported by Bankers Digest.
Political Ties Add Another Layer
Official municipal notices from the October 2024 City Council agenda also recorded a $2,500 campaign contribution from Francis to then-District 5 council candidate Ivan Niño, a detail that adds local political context to the same meeting where Council approved the original title services contract. It remains unclear whether that contribution has any bearing on the current debarment review, and the dossier does not indicate any connection has been alleged.
For now, the fate of the three-year ban rests with the ongoing administrative review, and El Paso officials have given no timeline for when the item might return to the council agenda. Until then, the specific operational actions that triggered the default finding, and whether Council will ultimately accept staff's recommendation or pursue a different resolution, remain open questions.
