Williamson County commissioners approved an agreement with the Texas Department of Public Safety to speed up felony and misdemeanor controlled substance and blood alcohol evidence testing.

The agreement was approved Oct. 28 at the regular meeting. Commissioners postponed the agreementafter discussionin court Oct. 7 to work out the details.

The Crime Laboratory Service of DPS will hire the employees to perform an analysis of controlled substances, marijuana and blood alcohol evidence submitted by the countys law enforcement.

The contract holds DPS to a 30 calendardaysorless turn-around time for the controlled substance testing and 10 calendar days or less turn-around for blood alcohol testing.

County Attorney Dee Hobbs saidthe turn-around time for drug testing is currently about six months.

What we did was we worked with every one of our law enforcement agencies, Hobbs said. Agencies can send it, but it will not get priority testing unless prosecutors recommend it.

The three-yearcontract goes into effect Nov. 1, and will berenewed annually.

There may be some things before signing the next one that we may tweak, but I think this a good way of moving forward, Hobbs said.

Williamson County will spend $112,525.52 in the agreement, which was approved as part of the 2015fiscal year budget.