Lawmaker touts town hall twist

EXPERIMENT: Phone conference popular, cost-effective, Williams says

BRAD SHANNON; The Olympian | • Published July 19, 2009

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OLYMPIA – State Rep. Brendan Williams says his experiment with a telephone town hall meeting Tuesday night was a success, drawing a peak audience of 336 listeners at one point in the hourlong event.

That beat out any of his “physical town hall” events, which have drawn no more than 100, he said.

Los Angeles-based iConstituent provided the phone-teleconferencing service for $2,500, and 29,213 households were invited to participate, House Democratic Caucus spokesman James Paribello said.

Williams, an Olympia Democrat who calls himself a progressive and often is at odds with the game plan of his less liberal House caucus leaders, took about 13 questions. They dealt with cuts to the state work force in South Sound, increases in medical costs for state government retirees, the threat of property tax increases and waste in government.

A Tumwater resident questioned how a state agency could cut 16 people from its financial recovery office without seeing a large dip in money its staff otherwise would have hoped to recover with those people on board.

“I think the general angst over cuts to state government was a prevalent message, which one would expect from this district,” Williams said.

Paribello served as host, directing listeners’ questions to Williams. On Wednesday, he sent an e-mail that compared the $2,500 cost with the $8,072 cost for a newsletter Williams put out in February, as well as another that cost $9,469 in April 2008.

Williams said he might do the town hall again instead of mailing newsletters, citing lower costs and higher participation. His postage and printing costs last year for discretionary purposes, including the newsletter, was $24,203.83.

“This might be the way to go. It seems to me you get a pretty good bang for the buck,” he said.

Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688

bshannon@theolympian.com

www.theolympian.com/politicsblog