Progressing on legislative contact list

At some point, I suppose that my struggles with the legislative contact lists could get boring if all you're interested in is getting your hands on the lists and then using them. It's that latter part that is, of course, my goal in all of this activity. Once the contact lists are completed, you will be able to use them to find contact information for your elected representatives and then start sending letters and faxes, making calls and visits--to tell them about the need for increased funding for HIV and to support good policy for HIV prevention.

Until then, however, I'm busily working away on those lists. A couple of points related to the lists arise.

• For Texas House and Senate members, I will eventually list the room number for their offices at the capitol. This room number is not needed for sending mail to them but rather will matter only if you plan to come to Austin for a legislative visit. I have started adding this room number for re-elected incumbents (new legislators won't have an office until later on), but it should not be "trusted" come January and the new legislative session. After every general election, Texas legislators play a sort of "fruit basket turn over" game with offices at the capitol. As "good" offices are vacated by retiring (or defeated) members, others scramble to take over their office space. This means that a lot of legislators will be moving around in the next few weeks--and, of course, that room number will change. Phone numbers will mostly stay the same, but some fax numbers will also change. I will make these "corrections" as the information becomes available.
• Email addresses should be pretty standard for most state legislators. The pattern is (firstname).(lastname)@house(or senate).state.tx.us. The problem is with that first name, since many legislators have nicknames. Sometimes they use the nickname for their email, sometimes not. Robby Cook, for example, uses his nickname for most purposes, but his email is robert.cook. As my good friend, Gollum, would say: "Tricksy!" If you want to send email to your representative before the list is completed, there are two possibilities. One, take a chance on your legislator following the pattern for creating an email address without any variation. Two, go to the legislator's official web site to send a message via the online email form. To do the latter, start at www.house.state.tx.us or www.senate.state.tx.us to find those official web pages.

Find the lists at Texas Congressional Delegation: 2007-2008 and Texas State Government: 2007-2008. Fee; free to volunteer to help complete these lists. :)