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Sen. Bill Heath doesn’t want to hear from taxpayers

Sen. Bill Heath is a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. His job on that committee includes overseeing how the state uses taxpayer dollars. This includes looking over the Georgia Public Broadcasting budget and making sure Chip Rogers’ $150,000 salary is in line with industry standards.

But Sen. Heath would rather not worry about that.

After more than 3,200 people signed a petition (and sent him an email) asking him to fire Chip Rogers, he sent a note to every one of them. But he didn’t even mention Chip Rogers’ $150,000 salary.

Below is the email State Sen. Bill Heath sent to 3,200 Georgia voters. Below that the response from Better Georgia.

—–Original Message—–
From: Bill Heath
Sent: 2013-01-28 23:00:16 +0000
Subject: Re: Fire Chip Rogers now. GA can’t afford Deal’s cronyism.

It appears that you may have been conned into signing an online petition
concerning the hiring of Chip Rogers.  I doubt that you even knew what you
were allowing your contact information to be used for.

You may have been lured into signing a petition by Better Georgia, an
organization headed by Bryan Long, thinking that a petition containing a
list of all the signers would be provided to legislators.  Instead, after
obtaining your contact information the organization sends an email to every
legislator each time someone enters their information.  This poorly designed
tactic wastes the limited time and resources that legislators have to
conduct their jobs.

These childish tactics of Bryan Long and Don Weigel probably have the same
effect with other legislators as it does with me, that is to view the emails
as annoying, filter them out and credit Better Georgia as an irresponsible
organization rather than considering them as having some benefit.

In order to serve the citizens of the 31st Senate District, all emails of
this nature will receive an automated response so as to minimize the abuse
of my limited resources and time by Better Georgia.

That being said, if you are a citizen of the 31st Senate District I want to
hear from you.  Please call my office so I can serve you to the best of my
ability.

If you wish to share your thoughts on the tactics of Better Georgia, they
can be reached at 706-410-1867.  They don¹t share their email address in
order to guard themselves from the very tactics they use.

Respectfully,
Bill

———————-

It’s working.

Tonight, Sen. Bill Heath sent an email telling you how he feels about voters reaching out to him with important concerns: ‘Don’t bother!’

He considers your important action of signing a petition to be “childish.”

We don’t.

And we know you don’t either.

Sen. Heath is a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee that oversees the state budget. It is his job responsibility to listen to the citizens of Georgia.

Accepting an appointment to this committee makes him responsible to every single tax paying Georgian. Period.

Instead of complaining about his job, or making fun of you for signing an online petition, he could ask questions about why Gov. Nathan Deal secured a job for Chip Rogers that pays $150,000 per year in tax dollars more than twice that of any other executive producer.

He could vote against the proposed budget and stop Gov. Deal and GPB in their tracks.

But instead, he used his time, power and influence to write you and say your involvement in Georgia government is a “waste of time.”

It’s not. In fact, it’s working. You’ve gotten under his skin. And you’re joining more than 3,200 citizens from across the Georgia who share your beliefs.

Thank you for your time, your support and your signature. Rest assured we will not be intimidated by Sen. Heath into silence. In fact, we’re going to turn up the heat.

OK- we’re going to get back to work now.

Sincerely,

Executive Director
Better Georgia

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