Public Information

One day, I was in the backseat of a bus and traveling to development sites with a Fortune 500 CEO scouting possible locations for a $250MM investment in my county. The CEO says to me as we are chit-chatting “so, you have a fair amount of crime here, eh?” Flummoxed, as we do not, I answer “not really, what do you mean?” He goes on to mention that he has picked up the paper the last week and noticed the blotter, etc. Our Sheriff was on a transparency kick to post arrest information, including a full press release and mugshot on every felony arrest. Due to the county’s somewhat tepid press activity (generally), the crime news sort of overshadowed everything, good news and all. I vowed that day to never be in that position again, and we doubled down on efforts to increase messaging, engagement, social media activity and press releases. I encourage all the local governments I work with to treat Public Information as an office/department/division, as you likely do with Public Works and Public Safety. It is that important!