Blog Stage Three

This commentary is about the budget cuts that have occurred on our state parks. The editor is stating just how much the state parks are a part of our natural heritage, as well as our daily lives. Only a few years ago the Texas Legislature cut the Texas Parks and Wildlife budget by $113 million. Over 100 rangers and wildlife staff were laid off and each park was neglected in one way or another, some parks even stopped building due to lack of funds. Oddly enough, our sports sales tax is supposed to be allocated to keep the parks well maintained, but of course, the Legislature has used those funds for other resources. The end result, if things don't change soon, parks will begin to close for good. The intended audience is most likely anyone that enjoys the great outdoors, and can't imagine our state without them. This message is straight forward, you understand that this is a bad thing, if you care about parks at least. This is not a subject that many people take the time to listen about, and it is easy to see how you can feel useless to the cause. We are in such a large state that if we tried to gauge just how much help our state parks need, we would definitely be overwhelmed. I think that the author needed to be a little more pushy in the text, asking others to wake up and take control of the possibilities that could save our parks of Texas. This article had statistics and evidence that support their claim that this never had to happen. There are a few state officials that are fighting to correct this money train arriving at the wrong station, but apparently nothing has made a difference. I am an Environmental major and I see the benefits of our state parks. Some days I wonder why money drives us more than our own well being.


http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Budget-cuts-bad-for-state-parks-4279870.php

Stage Two: Legislators filing Bills

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/legislators-filing-fewer-bills/nWHnt/

This article, published just yesterday February 6th, gives a few perspectives from our lovely state officials about the amount of bills being filed within the House and Senate at this time. The author made note of the much smaller number of bills filed from 2011 (1819) to 2013 (1448). The main purpose of this article was to make aware the very small number of bills being filed, but I managed to find more information between the lines than the very message itself. I really do not know very much about Texas Government or pay attention to politics because it is something that doesn't interest me. The benefit of this article was more informative on a basic level. I was able to find out the names of two Senators from Texas, Judith Zaffirini and Kel Seliger (Democrat and Republican respectively). I also found out two Representatives in the House, Donna Howard and Larry Phillips (same respective order as last). I learned that there are 44 new faces in the House who they like to call Freshmen, and could be the reason so few bills have been filed. Also, the very large amount of filing that occurred back in 2009 was really amazing. Can you imagine over 7,500 bills compared to only the 1448 we have at the same time each year? March eighth is the filing deadline, so of course there is still time for the amount of bills filed to go up and the Reps and Senators all thought that the race to the finish line would create a buzz, but still they seemed to have the inner workings down to an art. Donna Howard suggested that they were paying more attention to the budget this session, which makes me a little less lonely when I sit budgeting daily for the goals I have set for myself. In the end this is an informative article for me, since I was able to learn a little bit about the inner workings of the Legislature itself and some of the people from our state.