Talk:Government of Texas

Untitled
The Texas Building and Procurement Commission operates all of the state office buildings, which house state agencies: http://www.911.state.tx.us/files/pdfs/about/Res_Eff_Plan_012908.pdf WhisperToMe (talk) 16:01, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Mayor-Council Government in Texas
The article says that Houston is the only city in Texas with a mayor-council form of government. That sounded odd, and so I checked Dallas and Austin--both have both a mayor and council. Am I missing something, or do we have a factual error here? For that matter, the article also says that each county has four precints, but the article on Constables in Texas says two to eight precints.

Scott Orr Confused poli sci professor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.153.25.14 (talk) 04:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

this article needs a map of the atateIstanbuljohnm (talk) 01:48, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, the old confusion between county commissioner precincts and several other kinds of precincts in Texas counties. True there are four commission precincts in each county (we just finished redistricting Harris County based on the new Census data). But there are also usually more than four sheriff constable precincts, and hundreds of voter precincts! We need to be more specific about type of precinct I guess. Paulsuckow (talk) 00:00, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Inline citations
I am going to start working on these inline citations. If anyone wants to help me, try the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.Anneaholaward (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added references to all of the "citations needed" sections. Because they are now gone, I have removed the flag. Please discuss here if any further flagging is warranted. Anneaholaward (talk) 00:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Additional documents
WhisperToMe (talk) 05:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "TRAIL List of Texas State Agencies." Texas State Library and Archives Commission
 * "State & Local Government."
 * "Gobierno Estatal y Local."

Agency finder: WhisperToMe (talk) 06:24, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * English: http://www.texas.gov/en/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx
 * http://www.texas.gov/en/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Executive
 * http://www.texas.gov/en/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Legislative
 * http://www.texas.gov/en/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Judicial
 * Spanish: http://www.texas.gov/es/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx
 * http://www.texas.gov/es/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Executive
 * http://www.texas.gov/es/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Legislative
 * http://www.texas.gov/es/Discover/Pages/agency-finder.aspx?CommandArgument=Judicial

San Antonio may not have interpreted Texas Local Government Code correctly
When I read the section about limited purpose annexation it struck me as working differently in Houston. It's a particular headache for county government when home rule municipalities put an agreement in place with a utility district through which a limited annexation is to run to provide no additional municipal services, but to collect sales tax and split it between the utility district (which cannot otherwise levy sales taxes), the State and the municipality. It's an abberation that seems to hinge on sec. 43.0751q, wherein the rules of sec. f that are supposed to govern such agreements are crazily exempted from such agreements. I don't know when or why this loophole was placed into Texas legislation, but it is being exploited constantly in Houston to siphon away sales tax dollars from businesses without supporting many of the county services (police, fire, EMS) that must still be provided and duplicating support for utility district services (water and sewer) that are already supposedly being paid for. Eliminating sec. q would leave kind of a mess; I think that whole section at 43.751 may need revisiting by our citizen legislators...something ain't right.

The San Antonio planning document referenced interpreted the law as it seems originally intended, as it is working for general law municipalities, and I'd be quite happy if it were working for us as San Antonio describes. But it's not working that way in Harris or surrounding counties.

It's good that this article caught my attention tonight as I looked further into limited purpose annexation acts of the legislature such as at http://law.onecle.com/texas/local-government/43.0751.00.html It's kind of too complicated to get into any of this in such a general article as this one. But I thought contributors should know that there's a glitch in the Texas law about limited purpose annexation. Paulsuckow (talk) 23:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Dillon rule
The government of Texas operates under the Constitution of Texas and consists of a unitary democratic state government that uses the Dillon Rule, as well as governments at the county and municipal levels.

The Dillon rule says the state grants powers to municipalities. But in Texas, a municipality over 5000 people can adopt a "home rule" charter. This does the reverse of the Dillon rule. The municipalities have the power to do whatever they choose unless specifically "denied" that power by the state. Thus, with the huge majority of Texans living under home rule, I think this first statement in the article is misleading.

WithGLEE (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * What in the world is a "unitary democratic state government"? I thought Texas followed the Republic model, 3 branches - executive, judicial, legislative? 71.42.224.38 (talk) 16:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)