Charter chatter

So BuffaloGeek and BuffaloPundit have been discussing the county charter and the review meetings that were recently held. I did not attend any of the meetings. I did review the recommendations and generally I agree with them, and frankly didn’t feel I could offer much in the way of informed criticism of them. That and I have a lot of landscaping to do and couldn’t afford to not use the good weather to my advantage.

What I do take issue with is not something that’s going to be fixed in any charter update – it’s the fact that other than one legislator (Cindy Locklear) the entire county government seems completely unable to communicate using today’s technologies. And by “today’s” I mean the last ten or fifteen years. Sure, most of the legislators list an email address, but as far as my legislators go, I never got Kuwik to even acknowledge an email and Kozub has yet to be any better. The only conversation I’ve ever had with a legislator has been with Ms. Locklear on SpeakupWNY.com.

You hear the complaints all the time that young people just aren’t interested in what’s going on in their community, but government does nothing to reach out to the current generation of young voters. I shouldn’t need to rely on local blog commentary to know what my legislator has voted on recently. This sorry-ass waste of bandwidth shouldn’t be my only online connection to my representative. I don’t accept that there is no “funding” to make any of this happen. As Geek mentioned, pick up some interns from one of our abundant local colleges to update a blog or answer emails if’s beyond the individual’s capabilities to do it themselves. It’s time the government start following Lindy Ruff’s advice and not make excuses. Make it happen.