Public Safety Commission Weighs New DNA Collection Rules for Local Registration Agencies

The five-member commission that governs the Texas Department of Public Safety meets Oct. 15 to decide whether to put five rule packages out for public comment, among them the first set of rules telling local police agencies how to take DNA from the sex offenders and terrorist offenders who register with them.

The new sections would carry out a standing command in state law that the department write rules requiring a registrant’s primary registration authority — the city or county agency a sex offender or terrorist offender registers with — to collect a DNA specimen, preserve it and keep a record of the collection. The agency may send the department the specimen, a laboratory analysis, or a rapid DNA result if the department has authorized it to run one. That option arrived with a 2025 law that also ordered a two-county rapid DNA pilot. Anyone who has already given a specimen is exempt.

The other four are evidence and licensing housekeeping with real consequences. One would amend the rules on how police property rooms, prosecutors and clerks collect, store and retrieve biological evidence. One would amend the one-sentence rule governing evidence from sexual assaults that are never reported to police, a program under which a survivor can have a forensic exam and have the department hold the kit for five years without filing a report; that rule still points at a statute the Legislature has since renumbered. A third would amend the breath alcohol testing rules governing who may be certified to run an evidential breath test machine and who may teach the course. The last would change continuing education requirements for private security licensees.

The commission will also take final action on six contested license and permit cases referred from the State Office of Administrative Hearings, three arising from private security regulation and three from motor vehicle inspection. In each an administrative judge has sent up a proposal for decision the commission may adopt or change on the limited grounds state law allows. The outcomes on the table are suspensions, revocations, a denial and an administrative penalty. The commission has made no findings in any of the six, and the agenda states no allegations.

The rest is the department’s standing business: a briefing on the Texas Rangers’ special operations group, the colonel’s report, appointments to the advisory committee on vehicle inspection, and a consent agenda carrying nine special ranger and one special Texas ranger commissions — unpaid badges that may be used only to protect life and property, never for traffic enforcement, and that expire Jan. 1, 2027 under the statute’s odd-year rule. An intelligence threat briefing and two personnel and criminal investigation items are set for closed session.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Steven P. Mach — chairman; Houston; chief financial officer, industrial group.
• Nelda Luce Blair — The Woodlands; board-certified real estate attorney.
• W.D. “Dan” Hord III — Midland; investment company partner.
• Larry B. Long — Dallas; owner, capital management firm.
• Steven H. Stodghill — Dallas; law firm partner.

Names, cities and occupations are from the department’s commission page, checked October 6, cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases. All five statutory seats are filled; terms run to January 1 of 2028 for Mach and Long, 2030 for Hord and Stodghill and 2032 for Blair, following Blair’s reappointment in March 2026. One mismatch is reported as found: the governor’s June 2024 release names a different firm for Stodghill than the department’s current page does, which a move between firms would explain but which the Dispatch did not confirm. Posted minutes are scanned images with no searchable text, so roll calls could not be checked.