Texas Counties: The Rural Perspective

I would like to thank the WTCJCA for the opportunity to serve the members of this distinguished group. Why did I offer to serve? I surely don’t need additional work; but, as I’ve told our commissioners, the smaller counties need representation on various boards and committees so that we can stress the fact that smaller-populated counties can’t and don’t operate in the same fashion as the larger-populated counties. In other words, “We need help!”
My view as a rookie in county government, having completed my first term as county judge, is that we need to change the way our legislators define “metropolitan” and “rural” counties. WHY should a county with a population of 100,000 citizens and a county with a population of 3,500 citizens both be categorized as “rural” counties? Let’s try to rearrange our legislators’ thinking to redefine the population categories as “metropolitan,” “urban” and “rural.” Each entity has a special way to service our people.
I believe that local governments have performed very poorly in educating our people and our legislators in the ways that we operate. We really need to do a better job of cultivating a clearer and more definitive view of our function as a local government.
On educating our people: The general thought pattern seems to be, “If the people really know what we do, then they may want to run against us.” But