I received a letter from Governor Crist's office regarding my letter I sent a while back. As you may or may not remember, I wasn't too terribly thrilled with one of my representative's responses.

The Governor's office replied with the following.

Governor Charlie Crist received your e-mail and asked me to respnod.

The Concealed Weapon permit, as you may know, is issued by the Florida Department of Agriculture, a Cabinet Agency that is not under the direction of the Governor. I encourage you to contact the Department of Agriculture at 850-488-3022 and address your complaint with them. Their website address is http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/contacts/index.html.

I am sorry this office was not able to assist you. Please understand this is due to a lack of jurisdiction, not a lack of concern.

Peggy Kassees
Office of Citizen Services

My emphasis. This is what I expect from my officials when they are unable to help. Form letters piss me off to no extent because they indicate a lack of concern.

Now, to update the status, my wife informs me that Rich Glorioso's office did call the house because they heard I was unhappy with my letter. How they learned this is interesting as I get about 100-200 hits a day total, and that's usually boosted by some fluke popular post I crank out from time to time. But if the politicians are reading blogs, even small ones such as mine, then there's hope.

I think blogs are a much better indicator of public perceptions than polls are. Here, we write whatever we feel like and are unconstrained by poorly worded questions that might not show what we really feel. Do you think Representative Smith is doing a (a) Fantastic Job (b) Wonderful Job or (c) Stupendous Job?

My wife was given no contact information to call back Mr. Glorioso's office and I have received no follow up emails to address my concern so I don't know what happened there and cannot comment much more than I have, but for the record, the Governor's office's letter is adequate for me when asked to comment on a specific issue.