Government Resources

E-Mail Your Elected Officials!

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein

U.S. Representative Mike Thompson

U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey

CA Assembly Member Kerry Mazzoni is not on the Internet. Call (707) 576-2631.

CA Assembly Member Virginia Strom-Martin

CA Assembly Member Pat Wiggins is not on the Internet. Call (916) 319-2007

CA Senator Wes Chesbro

CA Senator John Burton is not on the Internet. Call (916) 445-1412.

Select the name of your elected federal or state representative to send e-mail to his or her office.

Ah, but do they actually read those messages? The answer is yes, as we reported in an Albion Monitor survey.

If you live outside Northern California, you can use this index to find your Congressional representatives listed alphabetically or by state.

Another way to reach your representatives in Washington is the Source for Interactive Democracy, which allows you to e-mail every member of Congress and the President, all with a single message. You can even just e-mail all Democratic Senators or all Republican House members. of a particular committee, for example.

There are also some excellent Internet resources to track Congressional performance.


Good clearinghouses on any political news are "All Politics," jointly produced by CNN and Time Magazine, and Politics1. For California political news, you can't beat Capitol Alert, published by the Sacramento Bee.


Federal

Thomas is the official source for any information about the legislature, including all laws currently under debate in Congress. You can also search the Congressional Record for the latest grand speeches by your elected officials through this link to the Government Printing Office:
GPO Gate

You must select one of these:
At the web sites for the House of Representatives and the Senate are Congressional directories, most valuable for showing who's on what committee. Many members have their own web pages, too. Visit the White House for an archive of Clinton speeches and papers, and children can follow Socks the cat in a nice "White House for Kids" section that introduces Presidential history.

Looking for a federal Department or Agency? The Library of Congress provides an index to all of them. A broader list of governmental organizations can be found at the Federal Web Locator.

But when researching a particular topic, it's often easier -- and better -- to use "GovBot," which searches about 600,000 government and military web pages. Type in "estuary," for example, and you'll find hundreds of references from different agencies (including some you might not expect). Also valuable is this search tool just from the Department of Defense, and the search options at FedWorld.

Another promising search program is the Government Information Locator Service (GILS), which will eventually contain records of all public government information, not just what is available on the Internet. At present, this system is far from complete.


State of California

The State of California's home page seems primarily aimed at tourists, but there's still valuable information to be found, including the state budget. More interesting is the California Electronic Government Information (CEGI) project, which provides access to some hard-to-find resources at the state, county, and municipal levels.

You can search these computers for state information or look up an an agency or commission in their directory. But a citizen's group in Sunnyvale offers a more complete list. (Did you know that there is a "California Cut Flower Commission?")

Both the Assembly and state Senate offer details on your elected officials, bill information, calendars, and more.

You can look up any law currently proposed by the state Assembly or Senate. Warning: This database sometimes returns errors or fails to find information. If your search returns empty or an error message, try again.

California Legislature

Last Edited: January 15, 2000

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