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The 81^st Legislative session convenes at noon on Tuesday, January 13^th. That means all of our State Representatives and Senators will be settling into Austin until session is over in early June. The Capitol will be teeming with lobbyists, reporters, and concerned citizens packing the hearing rooms to hear the latest legislative buzz. Men and women will rise to champion a cause or crush a movement to pass a bill.

So how can you keep up with this flurry of activity amidst a sea of diapers or whatever motherly duty monopolizes your time away from staying “up” on the political front? Well, I will be helping you out with posts explaining seemingly relevant information to Austin moms. However, if you want to take matters into your own hands, you should check out the Texas Legislature’s website: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/Home.aspx . Here you can find out information about both Houses of the Legislature, like the members and the bills they file.

Next, I suggest you click on “My TLO” to create a personalized bill tracking and alert system for yourself. TLO (Texas Legislature Online) offers many search and tracking options to anyone who can enter an email and create a password. Really, it is that easy. After you set up your account, you can come up with your own bill search and alert criteria to track lists of bills during the legislative session. That’s right! Just tell TLO what you want to know, and, among many other options, it will send you email alerts when a certain bill has moved or when a committee has convened.

You may also want to recall the basic steps involved in passing a bill into law. Click here for the Texas Legislature Online guide. http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/gtli/legproc/process.html

Posted by livemom on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am | 3 Comments » You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.