After threatened lawsuit, agency changes voter registration policy

Responding to a threatened lawsuit, the Texas Workforce Commission has agreed to offer voter registration help to Texans with disabilities who receive job training help from the agency.

Disability rights advocates had accused state officials of violating the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires state agencies that help people with disabilities to also offer help with registering to vote or updating voter registration information. That registration aid was no longer offered when job training duties were transferred from the state Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, which was phased out in 2016, to the workforce commission, lawyers for the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities said in a warning letter, sent Feb. 12, that threatened a lawsuit if the policy was not changed.

In a reply letter dated Wednesday and signed by Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos and Larry Temple, executive director of the workforce commission, the officials said work had begun toward offering voter-registration services as part of the agency’s job-training mission.

“Both TWC and SOS share your commitment to ensuring that disabled individuals and all eligible Texans have all the resources they need to exercise their rights to vote at the polls,” the letter concluded.

State figures indicated that at least 74,000 voting-age Texans with disabilities were not being offered voter registration help annually, accord- ing to lawyers with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Disability Rights Texas and the Austin law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright.

Beth Stevens, the voting rights program director with the Texas Civil Rights Project, applauded the action.

“By implementing voter registration services in its vocational rehabilitation program, TWC will more closely live up to our society’s promise of democratic participation for everyone, regardless of the disabilities they may have,” Stevens said. to the original charge of intoxication manslaughter and kept Zapalac from facing possible prison time. It also meant she could keep her license to teach elementary English.

But two months into the probation, Bastrop County state District Judge Christopher Duggan issued an order for Zapalac’s arrest for violating an unspecified condition of the probation. She entered a plea of true to the probation violation Feb. 8, court records show. The 20-year sentence Duggan handed down Wednesday is the stiffest allowed for a second-degree felony.

Travis County court records show Zapalac was charged with a felony DWI in 2013 with Victoria in the vehicle. She had lethargic movements and speech after being stopped for drifting over the centerline on South Lamar Boulevard, records show.

With the case pending, court records show Zapalac showed up drunk to a June 2015 DWI court assessment, registering a blood alcohol level of 0.215.

The charge was dismissed in May 2016 in what Assistant District Attorney Andrea Austin called “a strategic decision in order to help Bastrop County effectively prosecute their case.”

A third drunken driving offense from 2012 was dismissed when Zapalac completed a pretrial court program in Bastrop County.