State Auditor Brian Sonntag is going to hold a televised, teleconference with Washington State citizens. So says the first commenter at the Olympian on this:
How brave of this bureaucRAT . . . “Randomly chosen” participants. How ’bout a few town meetings across the state at your expense, Mr. Sonntag? If you have any balls to do it…
Seemingly pointing to the difference between an event where the participants choose themselves (by choosing to attend) and an event where the participants are chosen at random. Sonntag’s version is more interesting to me.
Daryl over at Hominid Views had a similar experience with Jay Inslee and enjoyed it.
Gov. Gregoire recently finished a series of forums that the Olympian commenter would have approved of (which also included a random panel at another level), but when your main group of participants is self-chosen, I’m wondering if your just getting a room full of axe-grinders.
The difference with Sonntag’s version is that it will be televised, apparently broadening the reach of the project. It would be interesting if they did this twice a year, just for consistency.
Interesting note is that Elway Research is behind this projects as well as the governor’s recent tour.
This is an effort to contact citizens and hear directly from them. We have been doing town hall forums all across the state with attendance usually around 50 folks. This telephone town hall on TVW had about 500 people participate.