I just called my Senators to comment on the Food Safety Modernization Act, and the possible extension of the Treasury 1603 program for renewable energy financing.
For Senator Brown, I was placed on hold for 10+ minutes on the DC line (I hung up), and had to leave a message at the Boston office.
When I called Senator Kerry’s DC line, I got to talk with a human immediately.
Just sayin.
Please share widely!
after the backlash from the Paycheck Fairness Act vote.
When I called the Boston office yesterday, the message service said they were unable to accept messages at this time. When I called the Washington D.C. office, the line was answered almost immediately.
Is this what you do because it is illegal to pull the fire alarm?
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p>If I was Senator, I’d tell my constituents to express themselves at the next election.
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p>Which says everything about why they are Senators and you are not.
Info on how many staffers work in the offices don’t seem to be available on-line.
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p>However, Kerry has four offices and Brown has two. Right there, a minimum of twice as many. Kerry is also Chair for a while of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has access to staff there. Brown has Greg Casey and a Kelly Girl (not that an advantage isn’t there…).
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p>Btw – the ‘human’ at Kerry’s office – you SURE about that?
Kerry obviously has more committee staff because he is on more committees and he is chair of SFRC and at least one subcommittee (the Commerce committee’s subcommittee on communications, technology, and internet.)
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p>However, the SFRC staff are not working on MA constituent serves – but on foreign policy. Same goes with the other committee staff – they are working on whatever the committee does.
It may have been really good AI.
Forgive the Brown people. They’re new to this and didn’t know a VIP was calling. And props for the vernacular… – just sayin.
I only noted this because I’ve generally not had a problem reaching live people at my elected officials’ offices.
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p>Maybe my experience was a one-off. Frankly, I didn’t expect the post to get promoted. It wasn’t ‘news’ as much as me venting publicly.
how embarrassingly defensive the Brownies are about this issue!
I’ve found both of them to be not as responsive as I’d like, though in different ways. I’ve actually usually reached a human pretty quickly at both Brown’s and Kerry’s DC offices.
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p>Brown’s office’s main responsiveness flaw is that they rarely have a clue about the issue I’m talking about, can’t give me an answer if they don’t have the Senator’s talking point printed out somewhere, and if they do have it, the answer doesn’t make sense or defies logic, and they can’t explain or defend it.
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p>Kerry’s office will actually sometimes get me to an aide who is familiar with an issue, who will speak intelligently about it. That’s great. Unfortunately, getting Kerry’s position on most things is often impossible, until after he’s voted. “The Senator hasn’t released a statement yet” is a phrase I’ve heard far more times than I would’ve liked, and it’s a brick wall.
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p>Sometimes they also try to tell me to send an email or a letter if I want an answer to my question, but I know better: When I email or fax or send paper mail to Kerry’s office, they do always respond (by email to an email, by postal mail to paper) – but the response merely thanks me for contacting the Senator, without any mention of what I contacted him about, let alone what Kerry thinks about it or is doing about it. It’s a completely generic response, the same one every time.
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p>I miss Senator Kennedy. That office was responsive, I was always able to get to someone knowledgeable about the issue, they knew Kennedy’s positions and would tell me, and email & postal responses from Kennedy addressed the issue I contacted them about and told me a bit about Kennedy’s views and actions on the subject.
I too miss Sen Kennedy from a constituent service standpoint.
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p>I too have been told to send Sen Kerry an email or letter except I made the mistake of actually doing so. It was on Health Care Reform, admittedly a very hot topic, but I received a response in May 2010 stating that he would read all the relevant parts of the bill before voting. Only problem was the vote had already occurred and not just the week before either, when I received the email.
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p>This was vastly different from the responses from Kennedy and his staff which were prompt and showed that they had actually read the email I had sent.
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p>I have not called or emailed Sen Brown’s office yet, but I am pretty certain he has not achieved the level of responsiveness that Kennedy provided. However, Kerry has had well more than a decade to develop and approach to constituents and he has failed, IMO, leaving only Brown as the MA Senator with the best chance of coming close to the man who was the best in constituent services, Sen Kennedy.
See post below, they were able to get thru to Sen Brown? You got some splaining to do…
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p>I called Senator Brown’s office (6.00 / 7)
I was told that the reason he voted no to this bill was because it would result in excessive and costly litigation costs for small businesses. Apparently he is going to introduce a bill that will protect smaller businesses from being ruined by excessive litigation. Perhaps the way to avoid litigation is to pay the right wage in the first place. Protection for small businesses means there will still be a block of women left behind. A lawyer is not going to take up a case where there is not a clear discrepancy in pay, so they should not even have to worry about it if they are practicing wage equality.
Sounds like a stall tactic to me. Senator Brown is the happy “NO” guy. NO NO NO.
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p>”Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
-President Lincoln
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p>by: liveandletlive @ Thu Nov 18, 2010 at 10:37:42 AM CST
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p>by: you @ soon
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p>Otherwise click cancel.
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p>You must enter a subject for your comment
From my last line of the post … (6.00 / 2)
Different experiences on different days. Hardly cause to accuse someone of lying. I suggest you retract that one.
I’m guessing that on Friday, some people got through to Brown’s offices (probably many people), and some people (maybe just a few) did not.
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p>I was in the latter category.
and got a human pick up the line at both offices. I hardly think one bad experience is enough to say Brown is not good at constituent services.
I realize that. I didn’t say that Brown was bad at constituent services, I just reported that I couldn’t get through to his office.
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p>Next time may be different.
I used Senator Brown’s online form to register my disappointment over his endorsement of Jeff Perry. What did I get in return? A lengthy letter about his stance on healthcare reform. Not impressed.