With at least 12 telephone town hall events scheduled in the upcoming days and months, members of Congress expressed concern during a Tuesday hearing that the Federal Communications Commission was limiting their ability to reach constituents with telephone town halls.
A misunderstanding about existing robocall restrictions to cell phones sparked questions from lawmakers Tuesday. LegiStorm has tracked 310 telephone town halls in the last year alone, which represented 11.4 percent of a total 2,718 events.
In-person town halls make up the vast majority of the events - 79 percent in the last year - though telephone town halls can be difficult to track when they are announced only by robocall to constituents. LegiStorm monitors thousands of sources - tweets, press releases, newsletters, legislator web sites and unofficial sources - to collect town hall data.
Roll Call reported after the hearing that telephone town halls were effectively banned. But at least one vendor, Tele-Town Hall LLC, clarified Wednesday that the rule against auto-dialing cell phone numbers is long-standing and the company dials cell numbers only if a constituent opts into the call.
FCC spokesman Will Wiquist said Wednesday the restrictions are not new and have been in place since 1991. Although Wiquist said the FCC can't speak to the practices of companies managing the calls, he said many likely scrub their lists to ensure they are calling only landlines.
"As long as vendors for tele-town halls continue to adhere to the decades-old rules, use of these services should pose no issue," he said by email.
