Community Questions: How I Receive, Prioritize, and Respond
One of my commitments to the people of House District 3 is to be accessible, responsive, and willing to answer questions, including difficult ones.
Questions come to me in many different ways: through social media comments and messages, email, conversations at community events, and direct conversations with residents. Some have simple answers that I can provide quickly. Others deserve a more thoughtful response, additional research, or more context than can reasonably fit into a social media comment thread.
To help manage those questions and make my responses accessible to the broader community, I use my website and my Community Questions blog series as a place to collect, organize, and respond to questions that deserve a more complete answer.
How I Prioritize Questions
I want people to understand both what they can expect from me and how I make decisions about which questions to answer first. I use the following general standards:
Relevance to the office. My first priority is questions that relate to the responsibilities, authority, and jurisdiction of an Oregon State Representative. There are many important issues in our community and country, but a state legislator does not have authority over all of them. I believe candidates and elected officials should be particularly accountable for explaining what they would actually have the power and responsibility to influence.
House District 3 constituents. I will give priority to questions from people who appear to live, work, own a business, or otherwise have a meaningful connection to House District 3. When determining how to prioritize questions, I may consider information that a person or account has chosen to make publicly available, including information on a social media profile, previous public comments, or other visible indicators of a connection to House District 3. This is not intended as a residency verification process, but simply as one factor in helping me prioritize my limited time toward the people and communities I am seeking to represent.
Good-faith questions. I will prioritize questions that appear intended to understand my position, challenge an idea, raise a legitimate concern, or begin a productive conversation. Agreement with me is not a requirement. In fact, some of the most valuable questions may come from people who strongly disagree with me.
Respectful communication. Questions do not need to be polite in the sense of being easy or comfortable, but they do need to meet a basic standard of respectful communication. Criticism, disagreement, and tough questions are welcome. Personal attacks, threats, slurs, cursing, disrespect, harassment, or derogatory language are not.
Generally first come, first served. Within those priorities, I will generally work through questions in the order I receive them. I will also use reasonable flexibility. A question that can be answered accurately in a few sentences may receive a response before one that requires research, consultation, or a much more detailed explanation.
Response Time. I will strive to respond to most community questions within 3–5 business days. Some questions can be answered quickly, while others may require additional research, context, or a more thoughtful response. Depending on the complexity of the question, the volume of questions I am receiving, and other competing responsibilities and demands, some responses may take longer. The 3–5 business day timeframe is a goal rather than a guarantee, but I will always strive to be as responsive as possible and give each question the time and attention it deserves.
What May Not Be Prioritized
Not every comment, message, or question will receive a response, and choosing not to prioritize a question should not necessarily be interpreted as avoiding the subject.
Questions or interactions may receive lower priority when they:
- primarily concern matters outside the authority or responsibility of the Oregon Legislature;
- contain personal attacks, threats, slurs, cursing, disrespect, harassment, or derogatory language;
- appear primarily intended to provoke, insult, repeatedly disrupt, or misrepresent rather than seek an answer;
- come from anonymous, newly created, or otherwise unverifiable social media accounts with no apparent connection to House District 3; or
- substantially repeat a question I have already answered publicly, in which case I may simply direct the person to the existing response.
These standards are intended to be based on conduct, relevance, and constituency, not political viewpoint. A person will not receive lower priority simply because they are a Republican, Democrat, independent, nonaffiliated voter, supporter, critic, or someone who disagrees with me.
Why I Use Community Questions
Social media is useful for starting conversations, but it is not always a good place to finish them. Important policy questions can quickly become buried in comment threads, stripped of context, or reduced to answers that are shorter and simpler than the issue deserves.
Community Questions gives me a better format for providing thoughtful answers, including background information, links, sources, and additional context when appropriate. It also creates a public collection of questions and answers so that someone asking a similar question later does not have to search through social media comments to find my position.
My goal is not to answer every comment on the internet. My goal is to create a reasonable, transparent, and consistent way for the people I am asking to represent to understand where I stand and why.
I also reserve reasonable discretion in applying these priorities. No system can anticipate every circumstance, and sometimes current events, legislative developments, widespread community concern, or the urgency of a particular issue may justify answering something sooner.
Ultimately, I believe accessibility goes both ways. People should be able to ask their representatives difficult questions, and representatives should be willing to answer them. I welcome respectful disagreement, thoughtful criticism, and genuine questions from across the political spectrum. You do not have to agree with me to deserve a thoughtful response.