When viewing the Texas Government at face value, one might find it chaotic, messy, a relic of an older era.  In all of those observations they would be correct, and yet there is a method to the madness.  The area that I would like to focus on is the Legislature and the positives, and negatives of our system.

         The Texas Legislature is in session every other year, and this does create some problems.  This holdover from the agricultural age no longer reflects the fast and furious urban lifestyle that many Texans live.  In the last one hundred years Texas has shifted from a primarily rural and agricultural community into a large, sprawling urban state.  With massive influxes of immigrants, job seekers, and other population shifts it seems that our current legislature cannot effectively govern our state with such rapid changes occurring.  One need only observe our legislature at the end of the session to observe the chaos and rushing that is required to do the job semi-correctly.  Some people take issue with house members and voting in place of their comrades, claiming that the representatives must cast their own vote.  They complain that it is undemocratic for our legislators to not be present for every vote, and yet all this is contradictory.  In order for our Legislature to function properly, it must become a full-time body, not a part-time body that barely makes up for the ever changing Texan situation. 

        In the place of a full time legislature, Texas seems to have more functional departments that operate more or less independently, however this is not the way it should be. While the department heads are more or less elected, they hold power much stronger than the legislature in the sense that they are accountable to almost no one.  Without a strong legislature providing strong guidance to these departments, the government becomes more and more of a sort of plutocratic-oligarchy.  Therefore the legislators should meet more often, and have increased power in order to more effectively govern the state.

       Essentially Texas is no longer an agricultural state, and this change should be reflected within out government.  While it is true that many of our departments operate very well within our state, making up for the legislature's short comings, it is a travesty that our primary legislative body does not operate to it's full efficiency and that state elected officials hold more clout.