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Improving Town Hall Meetings

Mon, October 5th, 2009 by Michael Cornfield | 0 comments

Sandy Heierbacher, Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, knows an opportunity when she sees it.  In the wake of the tumultuous Town Hall meetings during the August Congressional recess, she has put forth a variety of materials on the subject, the handiest of which contains five “Tips for Political Leaders.”  I like four of them.

First, she recommends co-hosting a town hall with a legislator from the opposite party.  Since most town halls don’t attract crowds like the August ones did, it’s not going to bust the fire code to draw from the population of two districts.  Pairing across the partisan divide simultaneously assures and contains disagreement, making for a livelier event.  It is a way for legislators (and advocates in the audience) to discover where policy compromises might be found, as well as what differences need to be taken to the voters.

But if two legislators are going to field questions, who will run the show?  Recommendation two calls for that role to be filled by a “facilitator,” someone who is “neutral and know[s] how to translate conflict and anger into specific interests, needs and concerns.”  Facilitators can catch flak for legislators, and insulate them against perceptions of bias in deciding who from the audience gets to speak and for how long.

Journalists can be facilitators, I suppose.  But their newsmaking [incentives] incline them to heighten, not dampen conflict.  They should host candidate debates, not constituent town halls.  Here’s an opening for public relations professionals to step forward to legislative offices and gain credit for an often-maligned line of work.  Harmonizing and conciliating interests through better communication are what PR pros do.

Tip three: establish and announce ground rules for everyone present.  “No guns” would be a good one.  So would asking anyone who speaks to state their name and place of residence, to verify that they are constituents.

Heierbacher’s fourth suggestion seeks “smaller groups to ensure each person gets the chance to speak and to make it unlikely that one person or interest group will dominate the meeting.”  This seems off to me.  Town halls should be unifying events, not a collection of break-out sessions.  If one faction dominates, maybe there’s a good reason for it, one the public needs to learn.  Whatever else you can say about the August town halls, they got an important message across about the intensity of one set of concerns about health care reform.  Small group meetings are valuable in their own right, and merit their own times and places.

Item last: “diligently record what citizens say, and be clear about how you plan to use their input.”  By “diligently,” I take it Heierbacher means provide a complete transcript, not just a highlight video of the legislators’ best moments as judged by their staffs.  It’s also a good idea to establish a process for following up and through.

On the whole, these are valuable recommendations.  They don’t ask legislators to sacrifice their never-ending focus on getting re-elected to the altar of good community dialogue.  Instead, they seek to harmonize the instinct for political self-preservation with the opportunity for democratic learning.

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