Frank Hopkins TT Texas Govt

This item is essentially preparation and practice for your formal writing assignment with a peer review aspect. This will allow your peers to provide you with feedback on both content AND presentation and it will further your awareness of how important it is to pay attention to state and local government activities. State/Local government tends to be much more visible to citizens because it often has a more significant and frequent influence on daily life, in general.

For this assignment, you must utilize at least two sources from any media (web, book, etc.), cite your sources using MLA guidelines at least once in each of the three long paragraphs you post and place a properly developed works cited section at the end of your post. (This will resemble a mini-paper essentially). In addition, you must also respond to another student's post with two large paragraphs of input. Please also provide them with input on major aspects of presentation - good and bad. Select one of the following for this assignment:

1. Review the document located at: http://www.tml.org/p/RevenueCaps.pdf related to the legislative preemption of local governmental authority in Texas and its impact on local revenues. Identify a similar measure in recent news and advocate for or against the measure on behalf of either the state or an affected local government. Be sure to use the two resources, specifically, to demonstrate support for your conclusions.

2. Review one of the meeting videos of the Bell County Court at: http://www.bellcountytx.com/county_government/commissioners_court/live_commissioners_court_meeting.php (must be at least 10 minutes long) and the associated agenda and minutes. Discuss any issue related to local government functions, activities, resources, etc. that is represented in the meeting - this could include items such as the importance of transparency in conducting public business, revenue sources, appropriate levels of service. Always consider the impact and benefit to the tax payer as well as the resources/funding available to the local government. List the video in your works cited section, along with the two other works cited resources required (that section will include 2 that you have researched and 1 that I provided for you - 3 total). Use your works cited resources, specifically, to support any conclusions you make throughout.

3. Conduct a similar review of a state legislative committee meeting found at: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/avarchive/. View at least 10 minutes of relevant content from one Senate committee meeting.

4. You may personally attend a state, county or municipal legislative meeting and provide a similar review as instructed in items 2 & 3.