I'm new here

Howdy! I'm Ashley- Jak's younger sister. A quick bio: I'm 26 and live in Austin, TX. I love Jesus and my family. My favorite thing is to do is laugh with my siblings.

I get to work here every day:

Recently, Jak asked me to be a guest blogger. I was excited, but there was a problem: What to write?! What to write?!? Topics I considered:

- How to Vote: A Guide to determining which candidate deserves your support in 21st century America (For those of you who don't work in government)

- How to sleep under your desk at work: Surviving the 80+ hour work week

But I settled on something more topical: Update On Your State Government and Its Recent Actions

You've all probably heard about the significant budget issues our state is facing this year. Is this real? Yes. Is it going to affect you greatly? Depends.

A LOT of people are wondering how the budget issues, or more specifically, budget cuts will affect public education. The biggest impact you will probably notice at your school is increased class sizes, which means, there will be teacher lay-offs. How many layoffs? Too soon to tell and it depends on the school district size. While we receive a lot of phone calls daily from interested parties asking us to spare public education in our budget cutting process, it's not that simple. Education and health care services (services the federal government requires we provide) make up 2/3s of our entire state budget. So, there is not enough fiscal savings in cutting everything but education.

Now you're probably wondering, "how did we get into this situation?" Easy Answer: Our state budget is highly dependent on sales tax revenue. Due to the economic recession, people stopped buying goods, so the amount of sales taxes collected was significantly lower. Also, our state constitution requires that we balance our budget, so we can't pull a move like the feds and borrow money to balance it.

Are you going to be taxed more to off-set the revenue short falls? Probably not anytime soon. Tax increases are too risky right now for state politicians.

Other things you need to be aware of: Redistricting- occurs every 10 years and it is happening now. After each federal census, the boundaries lines for your state representative and state senator are redrawn to make sure each member represents an equal number of people. You can find out who your state representative and senator is here: http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/find-your-representative/ Although be sure to look again in January 2013 because the new map will go into effect by then.

Also of note, there are 181 members of your Texas Legislature. 31 Senators and 150 House Members. You and your neighbors elect them.

I took pictures of the House floor one day while watching the members debate legislation. Those big boards in the back are the voting boards, so you can watch how members vote on bills. I hope you enjoyed your civics lesson! Thanks for having me!