Committee hearings in the Texas legislature are open to the public and, in most instances, any member of the public may offer testimony regarding a bill. Witnesses must sign an affidavit stating their position on the bill in question (either for, against, or on) and the organization they represent, if any.
These limitations make it difficult for civic-minded people and political scientists to understand and analyze the data.
Jason Brunelle is the creator and maintainer of this website. He is a web developer engaged in civic tech. He wrote the scripts to scrape the data, organize it, format it, and put it in the database. Finally he implemented this public-facing website. The database itself was part of a school project at the University of Houston – Downtown.
Daniel Williams proposed this project and contributed to its structure. He is a former legislative strategist in the Texas Legislature and a Political Science PhD student at the University of Illinois – Chicago.
Debora Obeng is a Master's of Data Analytics student at the University of Houston – Downtown. She had the role of project manager and handled all planning and documentation to ensure timely completion when this was part of a school project at the University of Houston – Downtown.