| Vote Recommendation | Economic Freedom | Property Rights | Personal Responsibility | Limited Government | Individual Liberty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neutral | Neutral | Neutral | Neutral | Neutral | Neutral |
This bill would make the
Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) a standalone state agency
instead of remaining under the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC).
This effectively removes the HHSC executive director out of the chain of command
of DFPS. Significantly, the DFPS commissioner would now be appointed by
the governor and serve at the governor’s pleasure rather than being appointed
by and serving at the pleasure of the HHSC executive commissioner.
The bill sets for the
provisions for the structure and administration of DFPS as an independent state
agency and creates a nine-member Family and Protective Services Council to
advise the agency. Some current DFPS functions would remain with HHSC, however,
allegations of abuse and neglect at a child care facility, including a
residential child care facility, would remain within the purview of DFPS.
DFPS would be required
to contract with HHSC for the provision of administrative services. HHSC
already provides those services so in practice nothing in this area would
change except the nature of the relationship between the agencies.
DFPS is an agency in
crisis that has been widely acknowledged to be inadequate in fulfilling its
responsibilities. Bureaucratic rot that allows children in the foster system to
be placed in abusive situations, including some situations where children have
died, is inexcusable.
The entire reason for an
agency such as DFPS to exist is because as a society we agree that even though
children are almost always best reared by their own parents, there are unfortunate
and extreme circumstances that require state intervention up to and including
placing children in a foster home and terminating parental rights. In these
extreme situations, great caution must be taken to ensure that children are
placed with loving caregivers who will care and provide for them better than
the parents they were separated from. To the extent that DFPS has been
negligent in performing this basic duty consistently, it is clear that something
must change.
With that background
having been noted, we looked at this bill through the lens of our liberty
principles the same way we would look at any other bill and came to a
determination that HB 5 neither uplifts nor offends our liberty principles.
While this bill may help cut red tape and allow DFPS to operate more efficiently and perform its duties to a more acceptable level, that is speculative. It is possible that the net result of this bill could be nothing more than a reshuffling of responsibilities with no actual measurable increase in performance. Since there is no way for us to determine whether these changes will produce their desired effect we are unable to make a connection between this bill and our liberty principles. For these reasons we remain neutral.