TCAN

In this site’s Resources section, we’ll from time to time let you know about some great sources of help, information, or tools. In this first post we’re featuring a remarkably useful and FREE site that has a wealth of easy-to-use research tools for anyone interested in tracking Texas Legislation. It’s called Texas Legislature Online, and here at TCAN we don’t know what we’d do without it.

You can look up bills by number or key words in the text. You can look up members of the House or Senate to see where they’re from, what committees they serve on, what bills they’ve authored, co-authored, or sponsored, and more. You can look up agenda postings for each upcoming committee hearing and get the minutes afterward. You can study up on all the details of the legislative process. You can sign up to “My TLO” to get email alerts whenever there’s any kind of action on a bill you’re watching. You can even watch video of proceedings on the floor.

Though it ought to be clear that TCAN thinks Texas government can do better on a lot of fronts, our hats are off to the smart Texas officials who had the good judgment to invest in TLO, an excellent set of tools for participatory government.