The council that gathers public comment for Texas’s health and human services agencies meets Oct. 15 on rules governing a 30-bed center for foster teenagers that opened east of Dallas on Sept. 1. Anyone wanting to speak by video had to register by 5 p.m. Oct. 13; people who come in person can still sign up at the door.
The center is the Terrell Center for Youth, built on the Terrell State Hospital campus with $35 million the Legislature appropriated in 2025 and authorized by a 2025 law letting the state designate facilities beyond the one in Waco. It is meant for 13- to 17-year-olds in state conservatorship whose mental health, substance use or developmental needs outrun an ordinary foster placement but fall short of a psychiatric hospital. The Health and Human Services Commission held a ribbon-cutting Aug. 20 for a Sept. 1 opening. Whether any residents have yet been admitted could not be established from public records.
The rules spelling out who qualifies reached the Texas Register on Oct. 2, a month after the center opened, and cannot take effect before November. A teenager must be in the managing conservatorship of the Department of Family and Protective Services and must not be there involuntarily. The commission and that department must agree the teenager does not need inpatient psychiatric care, and the rule bars anyone whose medical condition is unstable or needs immediate surgery. The department, working with the center, decides whether it is the least restrictive setting that fits; the commission’s deputy executive commissioner for the health and specialty care system may clear an admission case by case. The center must discharge a resident no later than the day before the eighteenth birthday. Comments close 31 days after the issue date.
Four other proposals follow. One would move the governing rule for the state’s radiation advisory board out of the radiation chapter of the code; the agenda calls it a consolidation, and the text is not yet published. The others cover labeling imported shrimp, bulk milk hauling and industrial radiation machines. None of it comes to a vote. State law says the council has no authority to make administrative or policy decisions; it hears the proposals, questions staff and takes comment, and the executive commissioner adopts rules alone.
The briefings before the rules may matter more. One covers private duty nursing, the in-home skilled care that keeps medically fragile children out of institutions; the other covers provider revalidation, the Medicaid paperwork cycle that the state has twice extended by blanket order and that forced it to reinstate providers dropped for missing a deadline. All three agencies at the table are themselves under Sunset review this cycle.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM, Thursday, October 15, 2026. TRD 2026005936 was filed October 7 at 11:37 a.m.
- Where
- John H. Winters Building, Public Hearing Room 125, 701 West 51st St., Austin. The notice says the meeting will also run by videoconference, with the presiding member present at that address.
- Governing body & chair
- HHSC Executive Council — the executive commissioner, who chairs it, the commission’s division directors, the family services and a health agency commissioner, and members the executive commissioner appoints. Chair Stephanie Muth.
- Format
- A six-item meeting: commissioner and inspector general updates, two agency briefings, five rule proposals, an advisory committee report and public comment.
- Live video
- Streamed at texashhsmeetings.org/HHSWebcast under the Winters Live tab. The notice bars artificial intelligence bots and other autonomous agents from the videoconference.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission rule comment page
Council members
- Stephanie Muth — executive commissioner and chair; appointed December 2025.
- Jordan Dixon — chief policy and regulatory officer.
- Maurice McCreary Jr. — chief operating officer.
- Emily Zalkovsky — chief Medicaid and CHIP services officer.
- Imelda Garcia — interim commissioner, Department of State Health Services.
- Audrey O’Neill — commissioner, Department of Family and Protective Services.
- Raymond Charles Winter — inspector general; term listed as expired February 2026.
Members hold their seats by office or at the executive commissioner’s pleasure, not by gubernatorial appointment to a numbered seat, so no term dates are published for most of them. Names are from the roll call at the council’s March 19, 2026 meeting, with later changes checked against the governor’s appointment releases; the commission’s own council page is out of date, still naming a previous executive commissioner, and was not relied on. Two public members that page lists, Dipen Parikh of Southlake and Toya White of McKinney, were not called at the February or March 2026 roll calls, and whether those seats are filled was not established. Imelda Garcia was named interim commissioner of the state health department effective June 9, 2026 after Jennifer Shuford left for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; no permanent successor was found as of October 8. No reappointment of Winter after his term expired February 1, 2026 was found.