From: Sherrie Mitchell
Morgantown
I’ve often heard that if you don’t like the law, change it. The first step in accomplishing this is talking to your legislator.
Legislators are elected to:
- Create good public policy on behalf of their constituents and the citizens of the state.
- Serve as a liaison between government and citizens.
- Give attention to concerns of constituents and create opportunities for citizens to participate in the legislative process.
Citizens are to participate to influence public decisions about laws. This is representative democracy. Sounds good, right? Didn’t happen that way.
For four weeks, I went to the Statehouse to find representative democracy. On three separate occasions I reached out to Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford. Three times he disregarded my concerns, twice in the Statehouse and once in a town hall meeting. He did not ask how he could help me. He did not sit down with me to discuss my concerns. He gave me one sentence responses that let me know he was not interested. I found no representative democracy.
Is this really what we voted for? I was, ultimately, able to find representative democracy outside of my district and had an amendment introduced on the floor of the Senate.
But with Sen. Koch, let me just say, “Thanks for nothing.”
