10:00am | As mentioned here, on Thursday March 18, Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster broke new ground in communicating with his constituents and other members of the public facilitated by a live and interactive web cast hosted by our own lbpost.com.
This particular live communications format was a first for any Long Beach Mayor –indeed, for any Long Beach public official- and it offered the community an excellent opportunity to not only hear from the Mayor, live on their PC’s, laptops and web-enabled smart phones, concerning various public policy issues the impact our City, but to ask direct questions and have them directly answered as well!
I say “this particular” format because I would be entirely remiss if I failed to recognize my good friend and Beer & Politics producer Michael Clements and his affiliation with InstantPresenter. B&P hosts live and lively monthly political forums in Long Beach and partners with IP to provide real-time, internet-based, “Webinars” of these sessions to the viewing audience. Those tuning in online have a chance right along with the in-person audience to submit questions to the guest speakers and receive direct responses. Mayor Foster is a B&P veteran of several appearances and has answered live web-based questions while also talking with those attending in person. B&P and IP have also been partnering with the Long Beach Press Club to cover and provide internet access to the series of local Candidate forums that the latter is in the process of hosting here in Long Beach.
But lbpost.com is the first to sit a local elected official down, on camera, in front of a computer and provide live interactive access to an exclusively online audience.
In my opinion, this unprecedented community video interview with our Mayor represents an excellent example of how we can begin to apply modern communications technologies directly to government in an effort to improve understanding and dialog between the electorate and those they have elected to represent them.
This initiative on the part of lbpost.com and the Mayor’s Office is so very important, on so many levels, to self-government as it applies at the local level – arguably the most significant level of self-government that exists.
No where can one exert more influence over, or successfully require more responsiveness from, his or her government than at the local level. Local populations are smaller and, as a result, individual votes have far greater impact in elections. Local politicians know this better than most because their success or failure in a campaign can often hinge on the slenderest of margins.
Case in point, according to the Long Beach City Clerk’s Elections webpage, in June 2006, current 5th District Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske defeated incumbent and write-in candidate Jackie Kell by a bare 166 votes or just a little over one half of one percent of the total registered voters in that Council District. A mere 40.5% of 3rd District registered voters participated in that extremely close election. Had just 1%, or 310, more 5th District registered voters bothered to cast a vote one way or the other in 2006, that election may well have had a different result.
A central premise of responsible self-government is that government exists solely by the consent of the governed. To retain that consent, elected officials must, always and in all things, by fully answerable and responsive to the people they were elected to serve. In a Constitutional Republic it is the people, and not government, who are sovereign. Wise is the citizen who remembers this important truth and, in remembering, requires that his or her elected officials hear their questions and comments clearly and then requires them to, at all times, provide direct, timely and factual responses.
I believe that live and interactive video interviews of local public officials like that which lbpost.com made available to our community on March 18 can only serve to help make our local government more accessible and more responsive to the People of Long Beach.
I think this, in turn, can have a lasting, positive and expansive effect upon our liberty.
What do you think?
I very much welcome your questions and your comments!
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