Disability Council to Take Up Its Sunset Review Nov. 6 With Staff Report Unpublished

The Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities will take up its own Sunset review Nov. 6, four weeks before the hearing on whether it should continue and without the staff recommendations it was told to expect in October.

Every state agency in Texas comes up for review on a schedule. Staff at the Sunset Advisory Commission write a report, the commission takes public testimony and votes, and the Legislature decides whether the agency carries on and on what terms. The council is one of 16 agencies in the cycle reporting to the Legislature that convenes in January. It filed its self-evaluation in September 2025.

Sunset staff told the council its report would publish in October 2026, and disability groups urging Texans to weigh in expected it by Oct. 5. As of Oct. 28 the commission’s page for the council showed nothing but the year-old self-evaluation. The hold-up does not appear to be about this council in particular — another agency in the same cycle is in the same position. The commission will hear public testimony on the council Dec. 2 and 3, pushed back from November, and report decisions Dec. 15 and 16. So the council will convene to discuss a review whose recommendations it has not seen.

The rest of the day is ordinary council business. Members look at four prospective projects under the five-year plan they adopted in February — inclusive recreation, rural employment for Texans with intellectual and developmental disabilities, statewide self-advocacy leadership and a peer ambassador program — and at the public policy priorities they will carry into the session. A Houston disability film and arts festival presents to the council, and the members pick someone for the nominating committee.

The council is a creature of federal law as much as state law. At least 60 percent of its members must be people with developmental disabilities, parents or guardians of children with them, or close relatives or guardians of adults with them, and those members may not work for a state agency that receives the council’s money. That is part of what gives the Sunset question its edge: the body under review is made up mostly of the people it exists to serve. Public comment is the second item on the agenda, before any of the reports.

Meeting at a glance

Council officers and members

• Andrew Crim — chair; Fort Worth; medical education association director.
• Barbara Knighton — vice chair; Spring; advocate for students with disabilities.
• Eric Shahid — Somerville; self-advocate member-at-large to the executive committee.
• Ashley Sattler — Beaumont; self-advocate.
• Scott McAvoy — Cedar Park; Marbridge Foundation.
• Robert Schier III — Elgin; residential program manager, Down Home Ranch.
• Roni Jo Frazier — Porter; consulting firm chief executive.
• Beatrice Degree — Missouri City; community educator, UTHealth Houston.
• Calvin Davis — Cedar Hill; volunteer and writer; appointed August 2026.
• Alicia Deal, Ph.D. — Grapeland; disability activist; appointed August 2026.

This is a selection, not the full council. Names and cities are from the council’s member directory, checked October 28, except Davis and Deal, who come from the governor’s August 13 appointment release and are not on the directory page. Crim was named chair in May 2024; Knighton was elected vice chair at the February council meeting. The directory lists two governor-appointed vacancies and one vacant state agency seat, but it has not caught up with the August appointments, so the Dispatch is not printing a current vacancy count. Meeting contact: Koren Vogel, (512) 948-2035.