Capitol Corner 3.0: Lets Take it Back to Square One

During the election of 2012, our team started this blog to communicate directly with you about the latest in campaign events and issues, and our staff explained why we have supported Spencer since the beginning.  After the election, we used the blog as our primary tool for reporting the news under the Gold Dome.  We have also found other ways to use the blog as a platform to celebrate the work of community organizations in our Profiles in Service and to discuss our views on some of our most pressing policy challenges in our Issues in Focus.  Today is the beginning of another step forward as we continue to learn and try new things in an effort to communicate with you.

Over our time in this position, Spencer and our team have come to fully understand the impact policymakers have on average Georgians.  Whether it’s an Athens Tech student working towards a degree and a new career, a Clarke County teacher leading a crowded classroom on limited resources, or a school bus driver struggling financially to make it through school breaks, the decisions of policymakers at the state level can help or hurt the outcomes for Georgians.  All too often, these discussions are cast in a zero-sum political game, overshadowing the impact on our neighbors and friends.  Square One is meant to cut through the political noise to engage in complicated but important conversations about public policy and how it impacts each of us.

The key word there is complicated, because if it were easy it would have been solved by now.  Square One recognizes this by starting at the beginning with a list of basic questions to shed light on an issue.  These questions might be “How are our schools funded?” or “What role does the state play in health care?”  We will do our best to answer these questions and point you in the direction of further resources.

Square One posts will be located on their own page with a new tab at the top of the website (coming soon).  So you wont have to scroll through Capitol Corner or our Facebook Timeline to find the basics on our education, transportation or health care systems.  These will be updated as we learn more through further research and conversations with you.

Square One is a ribbon cutting for our staff on the creation of a new policy community to which you are invited!  To give you an avenue to communicate with us, we have set up a new email that will be linked in each of our posts.  (It is comments@spencerfrye.com if you want to bookmark it).  So feel free to drop us a note when you have thoughts, criticisms, news tips, or just want to say hi.

If you have liked Profiles in Service, Issues in Focus or our legislative reporting, those posts aren’t going away.  Issues in Focus and our legislative reporting will build on and link back to Square Ones.  Profiles in Service will be back soon as we prepare a new team of interns to spend time with these great organizations across Athens.

Our mission through this new tool is to build a policy community by starting with the basics and focusing on the impact decision makers have everyday Georgians.  So no matter where you come from, we hope you will meet us at Square One.

You can see our first Square One post on Georgia’s transportation and infrastructure here and our second post on health care in Georgia here.