New Thing 33, New Thing Every Day -- Attend a Columbia Chamber Government Affairs Committee Meeting

I have attended an awfil lot of Columbia Chamber meetings over the the course of my life, dating back to about 1994, but today was my very first Government Affairs meeting. It was co-chaired by Heather Hargrove and Jerry Dowell and I thought they did a really good job.

I like the mission of the committee, which is basically to educate chamber members about issues that are important to them. For several years, they endorsed candidates, but it turned out they were pretty bad at that, and endorsed lots and lots of people who lost. So they angered huge portions of chamber membership -- those who did not agree with the endorsements -- and got basically nothing back to show for it. The education mission is definitely serving them better, and I think it will continue to.

My guess is that I will not be going to many future meetings because I have plenty of things to do, but I may go back from time to time, if something interesting is going on.