The Texas Tribune created a cool interactive map today, showing where the district of each Texas state senator, in each committee. Take a quick spin and you’ll see that the economic development committee consists solely of senators between Texarkana and San Antonio, in virtually a straight shot. The agriculture, rural affairs, and homeland security committee strangely doesn’t include anyone from the Panhandle, or even the Abilene-Midland-Odessa corridor, and the business and commerce committee includes folks from Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio…but not El Paso.
The most heavily-DFW committee is jurisprudence, which helps coordinate the state’s judicial system. (It also includes this tidbit, FWIW: “Study and make recommendations on the recent impact of foreign law, specifically Sharia law, in court decisions in cases arising under the Texas Family Code.”) Royce West, John Carona, Kelly Hancock, and Ken Paxton sit on the committee, joined by Austin-area senator Donna Campbell and El Paso senator José RodrÃguez.
