Legislative phones ring off the hook
BOISE – The number of Idahoans who called their legislators this year skyrocketed, eclipsing the volume from any previous legislative session in the past decade.
Nearly 25,000 calls came in during this year’s three-month legislative session, up from about 15,000 in last year’s record-long session and roughly 7,400 the year before.
Sue Burwell, director of the Legislative Information Center, said in a report to lawmakers late last week that the huge call volume could be attributed in part to five issues:
• A successful anti-smoking bill.
• A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
• An unsuccessful contractor-licensing bill.
• A controversial anti-truancy bill that alarmed home-schoolers and was later withdrawn.
• The charter school issue.
The news, which comes just a week after a primary election that drew the lowest voter turnout in 16 years – just 26 percent statewide – is a hopeful sign, said Boise State University political scientist Jim Weatherby.
“It tells you more about our electorate, which I think is positive,” Weatherby said. “We always focus on voting as an indicator of citizen interest, and that is an important indicator, but also important … is the role people play in trying to affect public policy throughout the year.”
Some of the increase could be explained by “the work of certain effective lobbying groups getting their people out,” Weatherby said, but it’s still large enough to be a positive sign.
“For whatever reason, I think it is encouraging that there is more contact with legislators. It means people believe the system can work, and that not all legislators are bought off by special interests.”
Carl Bianchi, director of legislative services, said he was surprised, especially because legislators these days also receive lots of e-mail. “We’re not tracking e-mail any more, because people are sending directly to legislators, but it was increasing just about every year,” he said.
Bianchi said individual legislators had commented that they were getting lots of calls this year – but the report is the first sign of how large the overall increase really was.
This year’s call total was up 58 percent from last year, though the session was a month and a half shorter.
Burwell reported that some legislators also received so many e-mails that they sought help from legislative staff to manage them. One received more than 2,000 e-mails on the gay marriage issue alone.
The last time calls to lawmakers topped the 20,000 mark was in 1997, when they hit 21,518. That fell to 18,790 in 1998, 14,268 in 1999, 9,538 in 2000, 8,101 in 2001 and 7,396 in 2002. The extra-long session last year drew 15,389 calls, while this year’s total was 24,283.