Countdown to a Response (Betty, will you ever answer?)

A Breakdown--of your record--is all I ever wanted

I have sent Betty Brown five letters asking for her position on the Trans-Texas Corridor, the CHIP program, and the 1/3 reduction in property taxes we were supposed to see. Since then (August 2007), I have gotten no response from her office. Recently, Betty has sent out campaign material reassuring us of how concerned she is for our opinions. For the last several years, she has sent out "Austin Updates" or "Legislative Updates" ending with the same thing--if you have a question or concern she is happy to hear from you. I have found that isn't the case, and many of you who have contacted me have said the same thing. Below is the last letter I sent to Betty Brown. Perhaps in the waning days of her political career, she will be desperate enough to answer your questions and mine.

Dear Rep. Brown:

I am a constituent. Six months ago, you failed to respond to my letter asking about your position on various issues. Since then, although I have sent several letters asking for the same answers, you have not bothered to reply. I have recently received campaign material from your campaign in which you stated, “Make sure your voice continues to be heard.” The implication there was that I should vote for you because you promise to hear my voice. I also saw a news article in which you stated, "I worked very hard at trying to come to the aid to the constituents that come to our office for help. They know they will have a listening ear there and someone that will go to the bat for them.”

You have never gone “to bat” for me or heard my voice, and your “listening ear” didn’t do much good, because it didn’t cause you to answer. You haven’t even found the time to reply to my extremely simple questions about your record. For you to say you are concerned about average citizens when you consistently refuse to respond to them is disingenuous. I use the term, because “disingenuous” means you are misleading voters—and I’m not saying that to be rude. I have steadfastly avoided the word “lying,” despite my personal conclusions on the issue. The way you have presented your record causes such conclusions, and “disingenuous” is about as nice a word as I can find without saying the word “lying.”

Perhaps there are some constituents for whom you have gone “to bat,” (I’m sure your contributors get a much quicker response than the rest of us do), but I don’t see any evidence that you have an interest in constituents who question your votes on the Trans-Texas Corridor (remember when you voted to pass it?) or your vote to increase CHIP funding (your campaign mailers say you voted to increase it, but they never mentioned you had voted to decrease it). I haven’t seen any evidence that you are willing to give a full report to constituents about those issues or their concerns about your hiring an ex-convict to give you campaign advice, or the appalling state of education in Texas since you have been in office, or the 1/3 property tax [reduction]* you promised and subsequently blamed on others after it failed to materialize. Nor have you notified anyone that because you are running for one more term, after you broke a promise not to run for more than four, you could earn a pension from taxpayers. There are other topics in which I believe you have misled us, but it would take too much time to delve into them right now.

My first letter was spawned because it occurred to me that you might have given constituents a partial description of your record. I didn’t know for sure, but something smelled funny, and it was my instinct to give you the chance to explain yourself. Since you refused, my subsequent research proved that you were indeed guilty of partial explanations of an offensive voting record. Now I see that your campaign material is doing the same thing. We are not stupid, Rep. Brown, and your disdain for our questions, not to mention our opinions, goes over like a lead balloon. Do you remember when you really wanted to serve us? Is that so far in the past that you cannot recall how important it is to listen to constituents—not voters every two years—regular constituents who rely upon their representative to help them deal with governmental bureaucracy even when that representative isn’t looking for re-election? Your failure to respond is an indictment of your lack of concern; combined with your campaign rhetoric, I am sorry to say you come across as a politician looking to get re-elected rather than a leader looking to serve.

You know about www.bettybrown.org. You may not like it, but you know about it. I am sending this letter to you on February 23, 2008. In the interests of fairness, I tell you the following: I am posting this letter on the website. I am sending an inquiry about your record once again through your state and campaign email, so you should get it quickly. I am posting the letter today, Feb. 23, and I will keep a tally of the days it takes for you to respond—both to my original letter and to this email. If this were the first piece of correspondence I had sent asking for your record, no such action would be necessary. Since it’s the fifth letter following four others that went unanswered, I think it important to let other voters know just how willing their representative is to listen to them.

As always, I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Elicia Sanders

*In my initial letter to Betty, I didn't include the word "reduction." In several legislative updates and news reports, Betty promised a 1/3 reduction in property taxes. You can visit the page entitled "2007 Property Tax Bills" at the upper left-hand side of this page. Few, if any, people have seen that decrease, but I should have included the full phrase in the letter, "1/3 property tax reduction." I have since sent Betty an email to her campaign and her state office clarifying the statement.

I will let you know if she sends a response.