An interview with State Representative Eric Roe (R-158)
Do you prefer that constituents use your website to email you, or use snail mail?
A good public servant listens to his or her bosses. In my case, that’s the residents of Pennsylvania’s 158th Legislative District. Since I work for them (and not the other way around), they can communicate with me in whatever fashion they so choose, and it’s my responsibility to absorb that information however it arrives. With that said, elected officials are humans too; some methods of communication are slightly more effective than others. For me, an email is a better form of communication than snail mail. The reason is simple: in a fast-paced world where hundreds of people are vying for your attention, emails are instantaneous and easy to read from anywhere. Hard copy mail is effective too, but I can only read it when I have it in front of me. For example, when HB 2154 was being deliberated in the House, I received more emails about it than any other piece of legislation this session. When I’d get an email about it every half-hour, I’d know that it was important to my constituents. If the only mail I had received about it were snail mail, then I wouldn’t have had the constant reminder about its importance to my district. HB 2154 would have been bad for the environment, and I was proud to have voted against such a bad bill. Hearing from my constituents, even though we agreed about the demerits of the bill, was important for me as a legislator.
How long does mail sent through the postal system take to get to your office, and how long before someone is able to read it?
Mail sent to my district office from anywhere in Chester County typically arrives the very next business day. All mail is opened by a member of my staff on the same day it arrives. If it warrants a response from me, my staff will scan a copy of it and email it to me.
Is it best to be brief and assume that you will have a solid understanding of any issue we bring up, or would you prefer that we give some background on the issue we’re raising?
Legislators might have a few given areas of expertise, but they are not experts in all things. I never find it insulting to be told about something I already know. I would always prefer to fully understand what my constituents tell me, rather than have to guess. The stakes are too high, especially when discussing ways to make our environment cleaner for future generations. One pet peeve I have is when people use acronyms, assuming I know exactly what its letters stand for. Most of the time I will; some of the time I won’t. A little bit of background goes a long way. Too much background can eat away at valuable meeting time meant for addressing the issue at hand. It’s a fine balance, but it’s worth the risk of redundancy by offering some helpful background information.
Should we address only one issue at a time when writing/emailing you?
You don’t have to address only one issue at a time when emailing me. Like I said, as a public servant it is my job to answer to my bosses however they choose to make requests of me. Separate correspondence for separate issues helps me stay organized, however, and it helps my staff too.
Is there a staffer who handles all environmental issues, and is it best to communicate directly with that person?
Pennsylvania has the largest full-time legislature in the nation. There are advantages and disadvantages to this, but one of the disadvantages of it is that state legislators have a limited number of staff to help sort through particular issues. My staff and I deal with all the issues presented to me. If I had a larger staff, I could probably delegate certain issue types to certain staffers. Given the small number of staffers available to me as a House member, I don’t have that luxury.
What do you want us to know about the whole topic of communicating with your office?
The single most effective way to communicate to me about an important issue is to set up an in-person meeting with me in my district office – not Harrisburg. If you were to ask me about the meetings I remember the best over the past year and a half, each of them would be those meetings that took place in my district office. In Harrisburg, the craziness of a session day causes legislators’ attention spans to be stretched thin. The sheer amount of meeting requests at our Harrisburg offices also forces those meetings to be cut shorter than would be ideal. In our district offices, however, there is less competition for our time, and there are certainly fewer distractions.
Image courtesy of flickr user: elizabethstilwell.