April 7, 1987 TO: Governor Clements and the Legislative Steering Committee FROM: Richard Land RE: H.B. 2020 I have met on several occasions with Wiley Cameron of the Roloff homes and Rep. Roberts concerning H.B. 2020. I also have had meetings with representatives of the Texas Association of Licensed Residential Care group, including Nub Donaldson, who is their lobbyist, and Bob Barker, who is their current president. I have proposed the compromise of having the licensed private residential care homes provide a licensing process for those like the Roloff home that have religious convictions about accepting a license from the state to conduct what they consider to be a ministry of their church. Under this compromise, current law would be revised to specify that a residential care facility must either be licensed by the state or by this specifically identified private licensing group. This would effectively defuse the constitutional issue and would shift the focus to the question of the standards themselves and whether those standards ought to,or need to, apply to all resi- dential care facilities. Monday, April 6 I had a meeting in Rep. Berlanga's office with Rep. Roberts, Nub Donaldson, Senator Brooks and Wiley Cameron. At this meeting Senator Brooks revealed that there had been a religious exemption in the 1975 legislation which was later removed before the bill became law. He then volunteered the information that he had wished on numerous occasions since then that it had not been removed. He made it clear that he was very desirous that there be a way found to accommodate the religious convictions of people like Brother Cameron and the Roloff homes. At this point Mr. Donaldson decided that it would be perhaps wise to have the presi- dent of the group, who happened to be in town, to come visit with Erother Cameron and me. This meeting took place at 2:30 Monday, April 6 in my office. At the conclusion of the meeting-Mr. Barker agreed to consider in principle the compromise proposal and asked Brother Cameron to provide him as soon as possible with a written statement of which, if any, of the current standards would be ob- jectionable and why (if they were monitored by a private group). That is where the issue now stands. Mr. Barker and his colleagues informed me that they have urged Mr. Angelo and Dr. Banowsky to contact the Governor to express their opposition to H.B. 2020. As is known from previous discussion, Mr. Jimmy Adair has expressed to the staff and to the Governor his vigorous and complete support for H.B. 2020. To my knowledge, neither Mr. Angelo nor Dr. Banowsky are aware of the compromise proposal that I have put forward. It is my considered opinion that if Senator Brooks and Senator Parker were not expressing support for Rep. Roberts' bill (and leaning toward sponsoring it in the Senate) and if there were not the added pressure of at least potential gubernatorial support for Roberts' bill there would be little if any support or incentive for the licensed private residential care homes to work toward developing a licensing procedure, which would enable the Roloff homes to operate in Texas.