Government is not a building in a distant capital. It is the structure of the place you live. Seven layers of it reach the ground you stand on, and most of them are invisible until one of them does something you notice.
This section walks them in order, from the furthest away to the closest in. Each ring is a real government with real powers and real limits. Knowing which ring decides a thing is most of knowing what to do about it.
They are ordered by distance from your front door, not by importance. The ones nearest the bottom of this list touch your daily life most and are written about least.
The government furthest from your door
Texas writes the rules your town runs under
Harris County, and the office that values your home
The governments most people never learn they have
Deer Park — the closest general-purpose government
A private government with public force
The innermost ring, and the only one you are inside of
Every ring page states plainly what that ring is and what it can do. Where the Council has built a record for a ring — the city ledger, the county portfolio, the state and national surfaces — the ring page hands you to it.
Where a ring's record is still being built, the page says so in plain terms rather than guessing. A page here will never present an unverified claim as a fact.
Legal information, not legal advice. The Council records what the law and the documents say; it does not tell you what to do about your situation.
The Council on Local Relations does one thing: it establishes the record and keeps it honest. We do not organize, campaign, or tell you what to do about any of it — the moment we did, every fact above would be worth less.
Want to do something about it? That is Think and Act Locally — a separate organization, where residents meet about what the record shows.