Blogging Mayors.

ORIGINALLY posted on a (now defunct) blog titled Life in Elgin

Round Lake’s Mayor Bill Gentes has a blog. And it’s great. If you know me at all you, you know what I’m thinking so I’ll just write it now: Maybe Elgin’s Mayor should have a blog?
Mayor Gentes uses his blog to update residents on local events such as walks and fundraisers as well as to discuss serious issues such as foreclosure, Section 8, and the Illinois capital bill.
He’s also pretty funny. Look back through the April 2008 archives:
*For April Fool’s Day he wrote a post about a fake road project that would involve tearing up Round Lake’s major streets and making them “warm,” which would save the trouble of snow plows in winter. Many of the commenters took it seriously.
*When the Illinois Hospital Facilities Planning Board decided against putting a hospital in Round Lake, he was quoted as calling them “pumpkinheads.” In response to the situation, he drove two paper pumpkins to the nearest ER, taking photos along the way and timing the drive. It took 28 minutes, illustrating the need for a closer hospital.
*On his 7 year anniversary as Mayor, his blog post was titled “7 Years in Jail errrrrr Office!”

Mayor Gentes receives quite a bit of attention for his blogging. He’s been featured by the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and in a government study commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government on the effects of blogging by public officials. He’s also spoken at many national blogging conferences, where he has “been treated like a celebrity by the blogosphere.”
Round Lake has a population of under 20,000. How do you think a blogging Mayor of a much larger municipality (cough, cough) would be handled by residents, the media, other Mayors? I think it could be very powerful if done well.