On a recent Tuesday afternoon, State Rep. Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) plops down 140 characters about his work with the Obama Administration on health care. A few feet away, State Rep. Eugene DePasquale (D-York) is Tweeting about his efforts to curb distracted driving. Across the aisle, State Rep. Jim Christiana (R-Beaver) is using his 140 characters to tout his efforts to provide a more open government through his PennGAP bill.
Meanwhile, the always-entertaining State Rep. Mike Vereb (R-Montgomery) is on his Blackberry, firing off a Tweet excoriating the House Democratic leadership for its handling of gambling expansion legislation. And across the building, State Sen. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery) remains the King of PA Political Tweeting, posting sometimes five or six times a day.
Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have discovered the power of social media, and have begun to use Twitter as a way to reach their constituents, interest groups, and the media. The days of the cookie-cutter five paragraph press release (State Rep. So-and-So announced today…) are slowly being displaced by the quick and easy Tweet, or in an increasing number of cases, a Facebook posting. Communications between policy makers and constituents has never been easier, or faster.
And while all four legislative caucuses have been quick to use social media to drive their respective agendas, it was not until recently that lawmakers began to jump in with both feet (or, should we say, with both thumbs.) While the Leaders’ offices will Tweet about what time Session begins or how swell the latest bill or resolution is, lawmakers are actually giving Pennsylvanians a fairly unvarnished look at the sausage-making.
It is not uncommon to have representatives and senators Tweeting directly from the inner sanctum of the caucus room, or directly from the House or Senate Floors. Some lawmakers Tweet about specific amendments, votes, remarks and other legislative doings as they happen, things that Pennsylvanians have rarely, if ever, had access to.
In a very real way, social media has made it much easier to achieve what good-government advocates have struggled to do, and that is open up the doors to the smoke-filled rooms. We now have instant access to the committee meetings, the votes, the procedures and the real-time action, and no one needs to wait for a member of the Fourth Estate to give us the information. It took a half-century to update Pennsylvania’s Open Records Law, but one can easily make the case that social media has had a much bigger impact on the process.
Transparency has come to Pennsylvania government, and all you need is an Internet connection to access it.
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