Even though the bureaucracy is part of the executive branch, it is more responsive to the legislature, since the governor in Texas does not enjoy as much direct command of the various agencies as do chief executives in many other states. In all state governments and the federal government, the legislative branch wields perhaps the most important tool of both power and control over the bureaucracy: the power of the purse. Legislatures' constitutional authority to determine the budget for state government fundamentally affects the bureaucracy.

Bureaucratic agencies have powerful incentives to be attentive to the wishes and concerns of legislators who may have an interest in their turf, of committees charged with jurisdiction over their policy area, and of the Speaker of the House and the Lieutenant Governor in his or her guise as leader of the Senate. Absent other outside factors (such as overall budget shortages), legislative satisfaction with an agency's performance can be expected to result in the rewards of sufficient resources to fund ongoing programs and maybe even some new programs. An agency engaged in activities deemed undesirable by key legislative decision makers risks losing funding for those activities.

The legislature can also pass laws that create, alter or eliminate programs. The committee system within the legislature is particularly oriented toward this sort of control. For example, should a legislative committee with policy control over a particular area of the bureaucracy decide that a particular program is ineffective or poorly administered, it can recommend budget provisions that reduce funding, perhaps even to zero. In most cases, the House and the Senate defer to committee recommendations in such specific matters. Employees in the bureaucracy whose career success or even employment may depend on such programs can be expected to be very interested in such legislative decision making. They have powerful incentives to make sure legislators with jurisdiction over their policy areas remain satisfied with their agencies and its programs.

There is nothing inherently nefarious about this sort of oversight. This is actually the way things should operate in a democracy. The people's elected representatives in the government's most democratic branch ought to be able to monitor the activities of the executive branch agencies. But as with any political process, the results are not always rational or efficient. Both bureaucrats and legislators become personally invested in their own vision of good policy, which can sometimes become indistinguishable from their self-interest. In a system that consciously invites political actors to pursue their own interest, and assumes that these interests will balance each other out in the long run, gray areas are inevitable. As the next section explains, by the 1970s, worries about the process of legislative oversight led to a major effort to improve efforts to maintain the accountability of the bureaucracy.