Local Government In Texas Case Study

Structure and Role of Local Governments in Texas

The local governments in Texas are smaller units that form part of the larger state government. These local government extensions act as the administrative branch of the state government. The state of Texas relies mainly on its constitution of 1876 to establish the various local government jurisdictions. Currently, there are 254 counties, 50 cities, 1,100 education districts and 2,393 special districts in the state serving a population of 26 million people (Collier et al.). Each of these branches of the local government has specific roles, which they are supposed to play.

The counties are the largest forms of local government in Texas. The role of the counties is mainly to provide health and welfare services to the county

This helps to ensure that the residents get the services they need in a more effective way since they can make the local leaders accountable. This would be more difficult if the local leaders were handling large counties with many residents. However, in the case of Texas, it has too many branches of local government. This brings about more challenges to service delivery than benefits. One of the ways this happens is through increasing the bureaucratic processes. The addition of an extra layer of government such as through local governments only increases the hurdles the citizens have between them and service delivery. Another problem arises with regards to the ability of the many branches to handle specialized services. Some of the commonly needed services by residents include water provision, garbage collection, sewage management, flood prevention, among others (Flores et al.). These require resources that may not be available to the smaller branches of the local government. Therefore, consolidation of some of these local governments would help to improve efficiency in the service