That insight was a surprise to me. I didn't begin this blog thinking that. I began my city council blog years ago sort of naively approaching my content as a former newspaper reporter. "People would appreciate a window into the decision-making process," I thought. "People would participate in the decision-making process," I thought, and appreciate the chance to do so.
There's no question people do want to participate in their democracy through town halls, committees, even blog forums on news sites. But they don't necessarily want their elected officials involved. They just want to know whether they disagree or agree with the elected official.
What I found over time was that after I described how I was making up my mind, and asked for feedback, people said I was being wishy-washy or indecisive. Sure - if you asked people in the abstract, they'd say they want their politicians to be open and thoughtful. What people have been trained to expect is for politicians to manipulate and deceive them. So it's a pretty long road to take if you try to involve the public in your decision-making process.
This comes to mind after reading a fascinating exchange on the blog of a fairly new city council member from Massachusetts, Ari Herzog. He's clearly a bit frustrated, and titles his blog "This Blog is for You, Not for Me." I'm not familiar with the specific issue referenced in the post, but it sounds like Ari had to vote on something where he had not heard from citizens. Apparently some citizens did not approve of his vote, and contacted him. He writes:
If you don’t share your thoughts with me before votes occur, it’s harder for me to appreciate a complaint after the fact ... if you don’t tell me what you think I need to know until after a vote occurs, how should I respond?"
His point in the blog post is, If you want an elected official to know something, tell them. The idea of a blog is to have one more way of exchanging information.
If you read down the page a bit, you see one of the comments to the blog perfectly summarizes what I've heard from a lot of citizens here on the other side of the United State:
In the end, we voted Councilors into office to make decisions even in the absence of our input. We don’t expect you to vote for each item based on a poll. We want you to make a conscious decision based on fact and then if/when appropriate explain your reasons. We reserve the right to disagree and obviously we’ll let you know! If we agree more than we disagree by the end of your term, maybe you can stay 
Isn’t that how this works?
The citizen is right. That's how this works. Citizens have been trained to think that a politician asking for feedback is taking a poll - not honestly asking for help or collaboration.That's how this works. Those of us who blog often wish there was another way.
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2 comments:
This must be incredibly frustrating. To be able to perceive a different way of interacting with constituents and yet to find that the constituents are not yet ready for it.
It reminds of a phrase I heard recently: You can tell the true pioneers because they have the arrows in them.
I believe that your perspective is the future of elected leadership, the difficulty is getting from today to that future. That makes your job twice as difficult because to stay in office, you have to play the current game while creating the rules for the future.
If I understand properly, you're not actually looking to the public for polling statistics, but instead to share information with them while educating yourself on issues. I suppose for now, the group of citizens that takes advantage of this will be small. I would expect that they will also be a dedicated and growing group.
Keep up the good work!
This behavior by citizens is something I have thought a lot about over the years. I believe a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that most people don't even think of local govt until something affects them in their "front yard." But I also believe the root of the cause is a total lack of education in our schools about local government and the responsibilities we have a citizens of that local government.
This is why I have heard people make comments like, "Why not give this new guy a chance?" This happens even when the the incumbent does an outstanding job and even though the "new guy" has no skills for the position and runs solely for the "ego trip." People, due to a lack of understanding, truly believe anyone can do it just as well as anyone else. So if someone is younger or seems to want it bad, they figure, what can it hurt, let's try the new guy.
If they truly understood how local government worked and the damage that can be done in just a few short years, they would not be so ready to give anyone a chance. Companies don't hire CEOs like this so why do we elect government officials who make multi-million dollar decisions like this?
Then when things fall apart or break down, citizens just attribute it to "government is bad." When the real reason is they "hired" an incompetent person.
I had hoped the opengov and transparency efforts would help. But all the information doesn't help someone who doesn't understand what they are looking at. So I believe this non-participation, nonchalant voting in elections, and complaining after the fact will not begin to stop unless we start teaching students about local government, its impact on their lives, and their responsibility as a citizen of that government.
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