Mayor on Blogging: The Smartest Thing I've Ever Done

billgentes.jpg I've been trading e-mails with Bill Gentes, the "Blogging Mayor of Round Lake" in Illinois. Hizzoner has been keeping a blog for about two years. And unlike a few blogging pols we've speared here in the past, Gentes writes pretty much every day and fairly candidly at that.

I thought the mayor's reasons for blogging were pretty interesting. He says:

I know of a few mayors who blog regularly and by regularly I mean 3 times a week. I know of no one as crazy as me to do it every single day. The comments are hysterical, you have to live here to get some of it, but I allow uncensored comments so I get the negatives, positives and the inane!

It is the single smartest thing I have ever done as Mayor, it allows me to control the dialog, it gives me the ability to answer my 18,000 residents questions in depth and gives me a way of going over the top of every naysayer and right to the general public.