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Texas Open Meetings Act
The Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA) is an act in the Chapter 551 of the Government Code whereby meetings held by governmental bodies in the state of Texas, be they at the state or local level, must be open to the public (except for executive sessions). Moreover, the act says, "a person in attendance may record all or any part of an open meeting of a governmental body by means of a recorder, video camera, or other means of aural or visual reproduction.” On March 22, 2017, an activist from Waxahachie was arrested at the Texas State Capitol for attempting to film a governmental meeting. She was asked to leave by Representative Byron Cook and charged with trespass Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally (or, in Australia, negligently) interfered with ...ing. References Politics of Texas Transparency (behavior) ...
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Chapter 551
Chapter or Chapters may refer to: Books * Chapter (books), a main division of a piece of writing or document * Chapter book, a story book intended for intermediate readers, generally age 7–10 * Chapters (bookstore), Canadian big box bookstore banner Buildings and divisions * Chapter (religion), an assembly of members in a religious order * Chapter house, a building attached to a cathedral or collegiate church * Chapter house (Navajo Nation), an administrative division on the Navajo Nation * Chapter (Navajo Nation), the most local form of government on the Navajo Nation * Chapter Arts Centre, a cultural centre in Cardiff, Wales * Every fraternity and sorority has a membership, the meeting of which is known as a chapter Music * Chapter Music, a record label *''Chapters'' (Cheryl Pepsii Riley album), a 1991 album by Cheryl Pepsii Riley * ''Chapters'' (Amorphis album), a 2003 album by Amorphis * ''Chapters'' (Anekdoten album), a 2009 album by Anekdoten * ''Chapters'' (Fo ...
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Government Code
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance, the term ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations. The major types of political systems in the modern era are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed go ...
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Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both List of U.S. states and territories by area, area (after Alaska) and List of U.S. states and territories by population, population (after California). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Houston is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas and the List of United States cities by population, fourth-largest in the U.S., while San Antonio is the second most pop ...
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Executive Session
An executive session is a term for any block within an otherwise open meeting (often of a board of directors or other deliberative assembly) in which minutes are taken separately or not at all, outsiders are not present, and the contents of the discussion are treated as confidential (see ''in camera''). In a deliberative assembly, an executive session has come to mean that the proceedings are secret and members could be punished for violating the secrecy. Depending on the organization or governmental body involved, business that is conducted in executive session could include legal issues, discussion on contracts (such as to purchase land, or offer tax incentives to a corporation moving to an area), and personnel issues (such as hiring and firing). Use in the United States Senate An executive session is a portion of the United States Senate's daily session in which it considers nominations and treaties, or other items introduced by the President of the United States. These item ...
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Waxahachie, Texas
Waxahachie ( ) is the seat of government of Ellis County, Texas, United States. Its population was 41,140 in 2020. Etymology Some sources state that the name means "cow" or "buffalo" in an unspecified Native American language. One possible Native American origin is the Alabama language, originally spoken in the area of Alabama around Waxahatchee Creek by the Alabama-Coushatta people, who had migrated by the 1850s to eastern Texas. In the Alabama language, ''waakasi hachi'' means "calf's tail" (the Alabama word ''waaka'' being a loan from Spanish ''vaca''). That there is a Waxahatchee Creek near present-day Shelby, Alabama, suggests that Waxahachie shares the same name etymology. Many place names in Texas and Oklahoma have their origins in the Southeastern United States, largely due to forced removal of various southeastern Indian tribes. The area in central Alabama that includes Waxahatchee Creek was for hundreds of years the home of the Upper Creek moiety of the Musco ...
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Texas State Capitol
The Texas State Capitol is the capitol and seat of government of the American state of Texas. Located in Downtown Austin, downtown Austin, Texas, the structure houses the offices and chambers of the Texas Legislature and of the Governor of Texas. Designed in 1881 by architect Elijah E. Myers, it was constructed from 1882 to 1888 under the direction of civil engineer Reuben Lindsay Walker. A $75 million underground extension was completed in 1993. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and recognized as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. and   The Texas State Capitol is tall, making it the sixth-tallest state capitol and one of several taller than the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The capitol was ranked 92nd in the 2007 "America's Favorite Architecture" poll commissioned by the American Institute of Architects. History The current Texas State Capitol is the third building to serve that purpose. The first was a wooden struct ...
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Byron Cook (politician)
Byron Cook is an American businessman, rancher, and Republican politician from his native Corsicana in east central Texas, who is a former state representative for District 8, which encompasses the counties of Anderson, Freestone, Hill, and Navarro. In October 2017, Cook announced that he would not seek re-election in 2018. Early life and education Cook graduated from Navarro College, a community college, with an associate degree in 1974. Cook's father, the late Leland P. Cook, was the former circulation manager for the ''Corsicana Daily Sun''. Leland left the newspaper to start a family business. In 1986, he and Cook founded Tradewest, a now-defunct video game company and licensee of several Nintendo games, including Double Dragon, Battletoads, and Super Off Road. Texas House of Representatives Cook served as the chairman of the Texas House State Affairs Committee and as a member of the Texas House Calendars Committee. He is also a member of the Texas House Republican Caucu ...
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Trespass
Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally (or, in Australia, negligently) interfered with another person's lawful possession of a chattel (movable personal property). The interference can be any physical cont ..., and trespass to land. Trespass to the person historically involved six separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem (or maiming), and false imprisonment. Through the evolution of the common law in various jurisdictions, and the codification of common law torts, most jurisdictions now broadly recognize three trespasses to the person: assault, which is "any act of such a nature as to excite an apprehension of battery";''Johnson v. Glick'', battery, "any intentional and unpermitted contact with the plaintiff's person or anything attached to it and practically identified with it"; and false imprisonm ...
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Politics Of Texas
For about a hundred years, from after Reconstruction until the 1990s, the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics. In a reversal of alignments, since the late 1960s the Republican Party has grown more prominent. By the 1990s, it became the state's dominant political party and remains so to this day. Texas remains a majority Republican state as of 2022, with Republicans controlling every statewide office, Republican majorities in the State House and Senate, an entirely Republican Texas Supreme Court, and having two Republican Senators in US Congress. Despite this, the state is slowly becoming more competitive, as in 2020 Joe Biden came within 5.5 percentage points of winning the state. Cultural background The 19th-century culture of the state was heavily influenced by the plantation culture of the ''Old South,'' dependent on African-American slave labor, as well as the ''patron'' system once prevalent (and still somewhat present) in northern Mexico and South Texas. In these soc ...
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