Ron Sims is using Twitter and I’ve been following him for about one month.  I think it’s really cool that he’s embracing technology as way to communicate with people.  Back when Governor Locke was King County Executive, I volunteered in his campaign office while he ran Governor.  I never really had that close a look into what a King County Executive does day-in and day-out.  By being on Twitter, Ron is providing me and anyone else that wants to follow him a level of transparency into his position as King County Executive.
I was just reading a blog post by Monica Guzman titled “Ron Sims on Twitter? You bet – and he loves it“.  The post was dated September 8, 2008.  He seems to have come a long way in one month.  A politician can have a blog or a Facebook account (Ron Sims has both), but, Twitter takes communication to a different level.  I think that makes it real and personal is that he actually follows people back that follow him.  He even takes the time to respond back to people.
When I was telling a friend that Ron Sim’s uses Twitter, they responded saying you really want your tax dollars being spent on him doing that?  I said, yes, I enjoy reading his tweets and it’s providing me a peek inside what he does as King County Executive.  It doesn’t take much effort to write a 140 character tweet, but, for someone in public office, it can have a big impact.  He’s not wasting time by tweeting about “doing the laundry” or “feeding the dog”.  From one of his tweet’s I read that he was cutting staff and moving out of his Seattle office space in the Columbia Tower to the Chinook and Yesler Buildings.  While he’s not going to be the most popular person after announcing layoffs at King County, his effort to be more transparent is much better than being silent.