FortBendNow.com

Fort Bend County Commissioners Court has turned to an Austin law firm for help in dealing with the U.S. Department of Justice over voting issues.

After an hour-long closed session on Tuesday, commissioners agreed to hire Allison Bass & Associates to assist in a matter involving a memorandum of understanding that DOJ officials asked the county to sign earlier this month.

Commissioners revealed no details of the memorandum, beyond saying it was presented as an alternative to litigation. The question is, litigation on what basis, and over what issues?

The county’s efforts to provide non-English-speaking citizens with an equal opportunity to vote are at the heart of the matter, according to people who’ve spoken recently to DOJ officials in Fort Bend County.

But to date, the Justice Department won’t comment for the record, and county officials contend they have no indication that there is any violation of, or compliance problem involving the Voting Rights Act or other laws.

“We’re not at the agreement stage” with the DOJ. We’re still developing the issues,” County Judge Robert Hebert said after Tuesday’s Commissioners Court meeting.

Hebert said the Allison law firm was hired “because of their expertise in dealing with the federal election code.” He said attorneys on staff with the county “are not dealing with the Justice Department on issues like this very frequently.”

Justice Department officials are expected to provide additional details to the county within the next several weeks, Hebert said. Other sources close to the matter have said DOJ officials are seeking sufficient anecdotal evidence to convince the county that a consent decree could be forthcoming if the memorandum of understanding isn’t signed.

A similar scenario played out in Harris County in March of 2004, when officials there signed a memorandum of understanding to “protect the rights of Vietnamese-speaking voters,” DOJ said. The memorandum and agreement “details the county’s responsibilities in providing qualified minority-language voters full access to the voting process.”

Steps Harris County was required to take under the agreement included hiring someone to coordinate a county Vietnamese language election program and providing all voter registration and election information and materials, including the voting machine ballots, in Vietnamese.

But “what Harris County does isn’t necessarily what Fort Bend County does,” Hebert said Tuesday.

He said Fort Bend County has a more diverse population than Harris County, with a statistically smaller Vietnamese population, and a larger Chinese population.

“You can’t say ‘lets just have a Chinese interpreter available.’ There are over 300 Chinese dialects,” Hebert said.

County commissioners have decided “we’re not going to wait for the Justice Department” before taking action if it’s possible to improve the county’s voting process, Hebert said.

To that end, Fort Bend County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn has been asked to see whether there are actions the county can take that it has not already taken, “and if there’s any way we can improve the process, we will,” Hebert said.

Raborn is scheduled to make his findings known to commissioners in two weeks.

After an hour-long closed session on Tuesday, commissioners agreed to hire Allison Bass & Associates to assist in a matter involving a memorandum of understanding that DOJ officials asked the county to sign earlier this month.

Commissioners revealed no details of the memorandum, beyond saying it was presented as an alternative to litigation. The question is, litigation on what basis, and over what issues?

The county’s efforts to provide non-English-speaking citizens with an equal opportunity to vote are at the heart of the matter, according to people who’ve spoken recently to DOJ officials in Fort Bend County.