Sen. Doug Berger did something special Wednesday night. It’s unfortunate almost no one was there to see it.
The feat of the freshman legislator from Franklin County was something all too rare around here: He came to the people, or as many as could make it to the old courthouse on Young Street on church-meeting night, to explain what he is doing and open himself to questions about anything and everything.
We still have more to report from that meeting, but it’s worth commenting first on whether the Democrat’s experiment in representative democracy was a success. We think it was.
The problem was the attendance. It was low enough to name everyone there: County Manager Jerry Ayscue, Commissioner Deborah Brown, Marvis Henderson-Daye, The Daily Dispatch’s Jason Alston and HomeinHenderson.com’s Michael Jacobs.
The word didn’t get around town that Berger was coming. The only public notice was a calendar item on Page 2 of the Dispatch, which is how we learned about the event; apparently, most people don’t read that calendar every day. WIZS did not get notice, nor did the mayor’s office or, as far as we can tell, anyone else at the Municipal Building.
Ayscue made the old courthouse available for the meeting and spread the word to the county commissioners, but even he had to leave after an hour to go to church.
So the first lesson for Berger is to do a little more publicity for his public forums. There are more media outlets than the newspaper, and there are a lot of community organizations (the Vance County Coalition Against Violence, VOICE, the Clean Up Henderson Committee, etc.) that can spread the word quickly on important events.
The second lesson is that the worst night of the week to hold a public event in Vance County is Wednesday night. That night belongs to the churches.
But those are easy lessons to learn, and they don’t overshadow the promising start Berger made. Understand that he didn’t come to Henderson to campaign or hold a political pep rally or fire up the populace to back him on a particular issue. Instead, he was here to do what an elected official should do: Update his constituents and listen to them. He wasn’t trying to schmooze anyone; he was trying to answer every question thrown his way.
That isn’t the kind of thing we’re used to around here. When has state Rep. Jim Crawford held a nonpolitical forum to let people ask him anything about the goings-on in Raleigh? When did Stan Fox or Robert Holloman or Frank Ballance or A.B. Swindell or any of the others who have represented parts of our county in the legislature in recent years? (We’ll give a pass here to Rep. Michael Wray because he’s a freshman and because his weekly e-mail update from Raleigh is a great service to constituents.)
For that matter, our local elected officials don’t do nearly enough to encourage public participation in the process of government. A few people take advantage of the public-comment periods allowed at each meeting of the City Council, Board of Commissioners and Board of Education, but the great majority in Vance has learned to stay silent and take its lumps.
Mayor Clem Seifert has tried to change that attitude through his Speak Up Henderson forums, but attendance at the most recent of those sessions made Berger’s crowd look huge. That’s a missed opportunity, and it’s a shame.
We hope Berger will repeat his democratic experiment at least once more before the General Assembly completes its budget work for the fiscal year starting July 1, and we hope many more people will jump at the chance to look one of this state’s 50 senators in the eye, ask him anything and get a straight answer.
In the meantime, if you live in the city and have any problems or concerns, get to the Speak Up Henderson forums Seifert holds at least monthly. The next one is today at 6 p.m. at the Municipal Building.