Letter to the Editor: Enormous contrast between coffee hours of Representative Walberg and Representative Lasinski

April 18, 2017

To the Editor:

Recently we attended Town Hall/Coffee Hour events held by two of our local legislators: United States Representative Tim Walberg on March 20 at the Chelsea American Legion Hall Post #31 and Michigan State Representative Donna Lasinski on March 29 at the Village Room, Manchester Village Offices.
Although we have hesitated to add fuel to our country’s political and cultural flames, as both national and state political events have continued in a deteriorating and downward spiral, we feel compelled to speak up about our experiences.

United States Representative Walberg:

• was accompanied by at least three uniformed Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputies, two of whom flanked him throughout the entire meeting and accompanied him to his vehicle with his aides immediately after the event.
• originally took only written questions submitted in advance on his formal form which were then reviewed and categorized by two of his aides for Mr. Walberg to reply to.
• Mr. Walberg’s replies were obviously prepared talking points that usually ignored the substance of even the pre-screened questions accepted by Mr. Walberg.
• as the capacity crowd, at first politely and then with increasing volume, objected to the above procedures, Mr. Walberg relented and took questions from the floor during the last ten minutes of the event. He answered these questions incompletely, evasively and with much less assurance than he displayed during the tightly controlled portion of this appearance.

Michigan State Representative Donna Lasinski:

• was accompanied by one staff aide and two student interns, all very young, friendly and non-threatening.
• Representative Lasinski, after asking if the small crowd in attendance was interested, gave a brief and clear over view of the state legislative and budgetary process and then took spoken questions directly from attendees.
• Ms. Lasinski’s replies were concise, clear and directly to the point of each question and were obviously not canned talking points. She took care to avoid partisan comments in her responses.
• Ms. Lasinski stayed after the event and spoke on an individual basis with any person desiring to do so.

It should be noted that at both the Federal (Walberg) and State (Lasinski) levels, there are many highly-charged legislative matters generating much publicity and controversy.

The contrast between these two constituent-based events was absolutely enormous. Representative Walberg’s event was an insult to his constituency, especially given his evasiveness and general air of condescension. Representative Lasinski’s event was respectful, informative and authentic.

Richard E. Finger and Eileen Parker
Village of Manchester

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.