Texas County Government

The local government is very important. Citizens are more likely to interact with local government and be directly affected by policies. As the state becomes more urbanized and as the population grows and becomes more diverse, the demands on local government will increase. There are three areas of the Texas Local Government. They are the County Government, City Government and Special Districts.
“The county is the oldest form of local government in America.”(Newell,350) With 254 counties Texas has the largest number of any state. The county was created so the citizens did not have to travel to the capital to take care of any state business they needed. The County Officials are an elected officials chosen by the people of that county. In rural Texas the county is …show more content…
The state constitution provides for the election of several county officials from the county judge to the justice of the peace. County government is highly decentralized and no one official is responsible for supervising the activies of all county officials.
Each County has four precinct. Each precinct a commissioner is elected into what is called the commissioners court. The County judge is the presiding officer. He or she gets elected in an at-large election. This mean everyone in the county can participate in this election.
The commissioners court is the chief policy making body for the county.(Flores,2)The major functions of the commissioners court include: passing a county budget and setting tax rates, maintain courthouses, jails, and other county building, maintaining county roads and other infrastructure, managing county helath and welfare programs, and running and funding elections. County government can provide any service authorized to them by the state, but those are very limited and not often enough to meet the demand of the