At the Congressional Youth Advisory Council Meeting Held October 27Th, 2007 at the North

Meeting Recap

By: Erika Cooper

At the Congressional Youth Advisory Council meeting held October 27th, 2007 at the North Richland Hills City Hall, a group of young students including myself were brought together to represent our fellow peers. We learned how each elected official works with each other in our state and federal government.

Our government is set up into two different divisions, state and federal. Federal government has a representative in the House that represents our state. The federal elected official for the 26th District of Texas is U.S. Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D. State government has representatives that meet at the capitol, and each representative represents a certain district. The state elected official for District 91 is Kelly Hancock. Then of course under the state division there are County and Municipal elected officials.

U.S. Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D. showed us into the life of a federal elected official. It is important to bring your home to the office in which his case Washington is his office, but Texas will always be his home. When elected into office you are from then on the protector of the context of the U.S. Constitution. By which being the protector of the context you are to protect the people the Constitution represents. Being a U.S. Congressman and working up in Washington, many may think Dr. Burgess is not very in tune with what is happening locally in our state, but in fact he is very close to what is happening locally.

Sitting in at this meeting I learned information I never knew about how our government worked. Such as; how closely the elected officials are to each other and their counties or cities they represent. How even though Dr. Burgess works in Washington and represents the whole 26th District of Texas, he still can call Mayor Trevino and ask him how everything is in his city and what needs to be done.