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SALT LAKE CITY -- People in Utah's 2nd Congressional District won't be seeing any town hall meetings on health care during the August break.
Congressman Jim Matheson's spokeswoman Allison Heyrend said the congressman has opted instead to continue to use a telephone town-meeting approach.
She said they've had five such meetings since the first of the year. "We had about 46,000 Utahns participate, and I would say 90 percent of the questions and the discussion was about health care," she said.
Heyrend said the call-outs for the telephone meetings were based on voter registrations and involved members of all parties.
"There's been an opportunity for the congressman, definitely, to take the pulse of Utahns on health care reform," Heyrend said.
Matheson, as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was among a handful of Democrats who did not support the House version of a health care reform bill.
In the 3rd Congressional District, Congressman Jason Chaffetz has a number of general town meetings scheduled in coming weeks, but none specific to health care reform. But Chaffetz expects that will be the main topic, even though he doesn't anticipate much in the way of protest. "I'm on the right side on this issue," he said.
He said he still prefers the in-person approach to town meetings and anticipates a lively crowd.
A staffer at 1st District Congressman Rob Bishop's office said he will hold town meetings as well. Some of those dates have now been posted on his website.
E-mail: mgiauque@ksl.com
