Texas Municipal Government

The state bureaucracy administers/implements the laws of Texas. It is run by executives whose job is to see that the laws of the state are implemented according to the will and intent of the Legislature. Ideally, these executive branch officials or bureaucrats are to administer their duties and implement the laws in a neutral manner, uninfluenced by politics. In reality, state bureaucrats are important players in not just implementation, but also policy making. In Texas, there is no overall central governing or controlling authority. Government authority in Texas is very decentralized, and rests within many independent state agencies.

Although this may be true, the reality may not be so easy. Due to difficulty with agreements on the role of government or a good public policy, they’ve moved on to political cultures in which they affect how Texas lives with sharing attitudes, habits, and other general behavior patterns. These political cultures have been moved into three groups: moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic. Texas has historically two dominant political cultures, individualistic and traditionalistic culture. In short, individualistic cultures are people who have a strong opinion in opposition to a big government, such as having the government stay away from people lives as much as possible, and having their own individual work, such as businesses or farming. Traditionalistic

There are many different opinions on how much power the governor of Texas should have than other states. Some people debate on whether Texas government should have a singular executive instead of plural executive. There are pros and cons of having a plural executive model and at times they believe that it can be more democratic than the single executive model. The governor’s power is debated about whether or not they have not enough or too much power with governing the state of Texas.

This constitution of United Mexican States provided for a very weak national government and the powers of the government and its states are not defined which caused increasing tension between each state.

The City of Bend, Oregon Government consists of approximately 500 employees across thirteen different divisions. These divisions are Police, Fire, Community Development, Public Works, etc and are all coordinated under the City Manager’s office. Bend’s government style is called a “weak mayor” form of city government, in that the citizens elect a city council, which then elects a mayor from among the council members. The city council and mayor, then hire a City Manager to run the day to day operations of the city. In doing this form of government, the City Manager is not directly accountable to the citizens and can focus on the needs of the city and its employees. At the same time, the City Council can only provide direction to the city manager and is accountable to the citizens. The city employees in this case are led by the city manager as directed by city council. The community leadership environment in this case is established by council to provide direction to the city manager.

In the executive branch of Texas, the top official is the Governor. Texas has what is called a plural executive, where the power is distributed among several elected officials as well as various boards and commissions. The plural executive consists of the Governor; lieutenant governor; secretary of state, who is appointed by the governor; attorney general; comptroller of public accounts; commissioner of the general land office; commissioner of agriculture and railroad commissioners, which include three

On Monday, April 13th, 2009, I visited the Culver City city council meeting, and found that they operate using a council-manager form of government. For a city with a population of about 38,000, this type of governmental structure is fairly common, and I was not surprised to see it in action in a community where the median household income is around $56,000 a year. Culver City is also a culturally rich community with a 60 percent Caucasian population, and a quarter of the residents are either of African American or Asian decent. The mayor, D. Scott Malsin, is one of five members on the council, and his term as mayor is on a rotating basis. Having been to a Hermosa Beach city council meeting with a similar council-manager structure, I knew

One major cutback in power for the governor in Texas is the fact that the governor, and lieutenant governor, must share their power with four department heads. These department heads are elected officials. Another way the governor’s power is limited is by a need for a two-thirds majority from each house of the legislature to remove a judge. It is almost like the framers of the 1876 Constitution did not trust the previous governor to run government with righteous intent. They made the chief executive work within and out of government to accomplish agendas. Moving on to the legislative branch, this branch of government was reduced in power and authority in ways similar to the governor. Salaries were lowered and terms were reduced, at least for Representatives. However, even Senators must randomly choose at least half of their members to receive only a two-year term. Perhaps the reason for this is to give legislators some time to get experience about the legislative process and yet also have fresh ideas and agendas. Most likely the most prominent way the legislature is leashed back is the biennial legislative sessions. This allows government to be slower when dealing with issues and was conceived for that express purpose by the framers of the 1876 Constitution. In the individualistic tradition, people should take care of themselves and not relay on legislators to make new laws to try to fix whatever problems people have. Lastly, the judicial branch. The judicial

The governing core of South San Francisco is the city council, which creates municipal laws and the overall policy, decides how to expend treasury, assigns members to all consultative local businesses and represents the city officially. The city council`s members are Richard A. Garbarino as a mayor, Mark N. Addiego as a vice mayor, Pradeep Gupta, Karyl Matsumoto and Liza Normandy.

Over the course of United States history, Texas has always been a peculiar state. It has had it's fair share of triumphs and downfalls, some of which were the Battle of The Alamo, the defeat of the Spanish army, and its acquisition by the United States. Although the history of Texas might seem to dominate the opinions of many, the governmental component is no different. In fact, some have debated if the very foundation of our government is a democracy or a republic. In response, and through thorough research, I have concluded that Texas is, in fact, a democracy, because there is a multitude of electoral systems, an array of elected positions that citizens can run for, and a myriad of court systems to which justice can be served.

Texas is the second most populous state as well as the second largest state in the United States of America (Brown, Langenegger, Garcia, Lewis, & Biles, 2014). With a huge number of people currently calling Texas their home, it would make sense to draw the conclusion that the Texas government must make this state a great place to live by serving its citizens to the best of its abilities. However, it is best not to make assumptions and in order to ascertain whether the local government actually fulfills this role we must look at multiple aspects of the government.

Our government here in Texas has three major parts that play a significant part in our decision making process. These levels

In my analysis of the Texas Constitution I will assess the three branches of our State Government, the Legislative Branch, Executive Branch and finally the Judicial Branch. Our State Government resembles our National Government in various ways but also in very different ways which we will review in this essay. I will identify a handful of criticisms and problems associated with the provisions in each of these branches of our State Government and identify suggested reforms that many feel are needed.

Our government here in Texas has three major parts that play a significant part in our decision making process. These levels

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively compare and contrast the implementation of two types of mayor-council government systems which are that of the weak-mayor type of the mayor council system and the strong-mayor type of the mayor council system. The premise of the analysis which has been conducted in this paper is based upon assessing the local governments of two cities within the United States – Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Minneapolis, Minnesota which follow the adoption of a strong-mayor system and weak-mayor system respectively.