Manassas delegate holds tele-town-hall meeting

Friday, February 06, 2009 - Go to External Article

Keith Walker, News & Messenger
www.insidenova.com

Tele-town-hall meetings could turn into the latest craze for elected officials.

Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas,  recently held one that drew roughly 1,400 participants.

He was pleased at the results.

"I enjoyed doing it. I got a great response form the community. I've been getting e-mails and calls since from people saying, ' This is a great idea. I had no idea what you do in Richmond,'" Miller said.

People also like being involved, he said.

"It allows people to actually participate like they were at a town hall meeting," Miller said.

To get the giant telephone conference call going, Miller sent out automated calls to a list of registered voters telling them that he was about to hold the tele-town-hall meeting.

People who were interested stayed on the line.

Miller said the telephonic forum gives him a rare chance to get in touch with large numbers of his constituents, and those numbers far surpass what a regular, in-person, town hall style meeting would draw.

"The best I've had is probably 15 or 20," Miller said of the regular meetings he's held.

Miller said it's hard to get his message out in the Washington area, where national news dominates.

"We're right under the shadow of the federal government," Miller said. "When you come from our area, it's so hard to communicate what's going on at the state level."

The telephone meetings get around that and go directly to the voters, Miller said.

"It's a good way for me to reach out to my constituents to let them know what's going on in Richmond," he said.

Miller said illegal immigration, tobacco, smoking in restaurants, education, insurance, health care and gun control were among the topics people raised during his recent tele-town-hall meeting,  which lasted slightly more than an hour.

Still, Miller doesn't think that   telephone calls, no matter how many he does at one time, can ever take the place of face-to-face contact with constituents.

He said he'll soon hit the streets of the district.

"I'll be starting to knock on doors as soon as the session is over. Probably mid- to late-March, I'll be knocking on doors again," he said.