Elected Officials, Post Your Schedule
I want to introduce a simple idea: elected officials should post their official schedules online — who they're meeting with, when, in their capacity as our representative. Not because I suspect wrongdoing anywhere in particular, but because "who has my representative's ear this week" seems like a basic question a constituent could ask.
As it turns out, I wasn't the first to think of it. As we all know, there are no new ideas — only the work of finding out who else has already tried. In this case, that's U.S. Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT), who first introduced the Transparency in Congress Resolution in March 2022 (S.Con.Res.31, 117th Congress), then reintroduced it in the 118th Congress (S.Con.Res.17, 2023). The resolution would require every member of the House and Senate to publish their official schedule online monthly — every meeting, hearing, and event attended in an official capacity, in person or virtual — starting 180 days after passage. Sen. Tester, who already posts his own daily schedule, put it plainly: "Folks should know what their elected officials are up to."
Two things stand out about this history. First: the need is real enough that two sitting senators tried to codify it, twice, three years apart. Second: it hasn't passed. Both versions were referred to committee and went no further, and I found no evidence it's been reintroduced in the current 119th Congress.
So why the reluctance? I don't have inside access to why any specific office has slow-walked this, and so what follows is only speculation. But a few reasons that might be considered:
It can be weaponized. Published voting records and floor activity can be used to manufacture "gotcha" moments. A public meeting log could invite the same treatment: a routine constituent meeting, stripped of context, can become a headline.
It's an administrative burden. Every entry that goes public arguably needs a second look before posting to assess whether this meeting is sensitive and whether it involves a constituent's personal situation. That review costs staff time smaller offices may not have.
Some meetings are genuinely sensitive. A constituent seeking help with a domestic violence case, an immigration matter, or a health crisis has a legitimate interest in that meeting not becoming a public record, even in outline form.
None of that is disqualifying; it's an argument for doing this well, with sensible handling of sensitive constituent matters, not for not doing it. And notably, none of it is about federal procedure specifically. It applies just as easily, or as little, to a state senator, a state delegate, a county councilmember, or a member of Congress simply choosing, on their own, to publish a calendar the way Sen. Tester already does.
The actual proposal is this: rather than wait for Congress to pass a resolution about itself—something it has now twice declined to do—make this a standard we hold our own representatives to. None of them need a resolution, a statute, or anyone's permission. They need only decide to.
This isn't a new addition to Community-Based Representation. Transparent Decision-Making, one of CBR's four core commitments, calls for exactly this: publicly posting schedules, reporting donations and expenditures, and explaining how public input shaped a decision, even when constituents disagree with the outcome. Finding the Kelly-Tester resolution didn't hand this newsletter a new idea so much as a live example of the gap between a principle and its practice.
Read the full Community Based Representation framework — including all four commitments — at thomascanavan.org/community-based-representation.