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From Manual to Modern: How Garland, TX Uses Tech to Transform Legislative Affairs

From Manual to Modern: How Garland, TX Uses Tech to Transform Legislative Affairs

Tracking 10,000 bills with a two-person team isn’t just possible — it’s being done. The City of Garland, Texas is proving that municipal government relations can be both strategic and scalable with the right tools and processes in place. At a recent Quorum webinar, Ariel Traub, Managing Director of Legislative and Public Affairs for Garland, shared how her team has reimagined legislative tracking, engagement, and reporting — using Quorum to lead the way.

This post unpacks Ariel’s approach and offers guidance for local government teams looking to modernize their public affairs operations.

The Challenge: Volume Without Visibility

Texas’ legislature meets every other year for 140 days, and in that time lawmakers file over 10,000 bills. For a city like Garland, identifying which bills matter and why is mission-critical.

Ariel’s team prioritizes legislation based on:

  • Authorship: The bill’s sponsor often signals influence and likelihood of movement.
  • Impact: Direct operational or fiscal consequences for Garland’s departments.

Each bill is categorized as:

  • Support
  • Oppose
  • Watch

As of the most recent legislative session, the team was actively tracking nearly 1,700 bills. With limited resources and rapidly shifting priorities, managing this volume without missing critical developments posed a constant challenge.

The Solution: Centralization and Automation with Quorum

Garland has built a process around Quorum’s functionality, replacing fragmented workflows with centralized, real-time collaboration. Here’s how:

🔄 Daily Legislative Scrapes

Every evening at 8 PM, Ariel’s team pulls the day’s bill filings from the Texas Legislature and cross-checks them against Quorum’s internal tracking. This double-verification ensures accuracy.

📊 Visual Oversight Through Dashboards and Sheets

Using Quorum Sheets, Ariel assigns bills to directors and managing directors. Each stakeholder receives an auto-updating report showing what’s been reviewed, flagged, or needs input. Dashboards visualize:

  • Bill volume by issue area
  • Support/oppose/watch status
  • Interaction counts with legislators
  • Time spent by department and policy area

✍️ Integrated Commenting and Redlining

With Quorum’s commenting feature, Ariel tags team members directly on bill pages to request input. Quorum’s redlining tool allows for in-platform bill markup — speeding up the feedback loop with legislators and avoiding version control headaches.

Making the Case: Reporting ROI

Government affairs work often lacks obvious metrics, but Ariel’s team has found ways to define and report impact meaningfully:

  • Engagement Metrics: Logged meetings, calls, and communications with legislative offices.
  • Touchpoints by Issue: Which policy areas consumed the most time and attention.
  • Legislative Outcomes: Bills amended, prevented, or successfully advocated for.
  • Stakeholder Communications: Weekly newsletters that include dashboards, upcoming hearing calendars, and summaries of internal and external impacts.

Success is measured not just by wins, but by how thoroughly the city stayed informed, involved, and influential throughout the session.

Staying Proactive, Not Reactive

When a threatening bill emerges, Ariel’s process is swift:

  1. Review bill text and compare with Quorum Copilot’s AI-generated summary.
  2. Tag internal stakeholders to confirm fiscal or operational impact.
  3. Redline directly in Quorum, outlining problematic language and potential amendments.
  4. Engage with the author’s office early — before the bill progresses.

This proactive approach has helped Garland shape policy outcomes while building credibility with lawmakers.

Maintaining Momentum in the Off-Season

Even when the legislature isn’t in session, Ariel’s team stays active:

  • Weekly stakeholder newsletters outline interim hearings and provide updates on legislative themes.
  • Contact intelligence is built year-round using Quorum’s Brief Builder and relationship mapping tools.
  • Trend analysis tracks how legislators’ priorities shift over time — and identifies future allies or detractors.

Garland even created a citizen-led legislative board to shape their legislative agenda with community input.

A Tale of Two Cities: Scaling With Need

In her previous role in Georgetown, Texas, Ariel managed legislative affairs with just five user licenses. Access was limited, and collaboration required frequent email and document sharing.

By contrast, Garland now has 20 active Quorum users, including city leadership and department directors. This expanded access allows for:

  • Precise tagging and delegation
  • Transparent communication
  • Faster turnaround times on bill review and analysis

Advice for Other Cities

Ariel’s closing advice was clear:

  • Start with internal alignment. Clarify what legislative affairs should and shouldn’t be responsible for.
  • Invest in relationships. Success depends on trust with legislators and stakeholders.
  • Use tech to scale, not just document. The right tools help small teams make big impacts — and keep you sane during peak legislative chaos.

Meet the Expert

Ariel Traub

Managing Director of Legislative and Public Affairs, City of Garland

Over a decade in government affairs spanning state and municipal government. Ariel is known for building scalable, high-impact legislative programs — and for helping her city navigate complex sessions with precision and transparency.

Watch the Full Webinar

Want to dive deeper? Click here to watch the full recording and see how Garland is transforming public affairs from manual to modern.