Senator deploys the dreaded form letter in response to petition about GPB hiring Chip Rogers

• Joeff Davis/CL File
• Sen. Bill Heath is focused on the people’s bidness, not petitions

State Sen. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, does not want his inbox crammed with all those form letters from people who are angry about his former Senate colleague Chip Rogers landing a $150,000 salary at Georgia Public Broadcasting. He’s working on the people’s bidness!

So Heath has come up with a nifty form response to those pesky emails, which are sent by Better Georgia, a progressive advocacy group that launched the petition demanding Rogers’ ouster.

In it, Heath informs the recipient that they might have been “conned.” Signing Better Georgia’s petition doesn’t create a long list of signatures which is then delivered to lawmakers, he writes. It sends an email every single time. And he’s a busy man!

From: Bill Heath <redacted@BillHeath.net>
To: redacted
Sent: redacted
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 don’t share their email address in order to guard themselves from the very tactics they use.

Respectfully,
Bill

Heath hasn’t responded to an email asking for his opinion on Rogers’ hiring and about the above text, which a few CL readers have sent us.