Dick Spady

WHO: Dick Spady, Seattle, Wash.

WHAT: Authored a public forum initiative recently passed by the King County (Wash.) Council that is designed to enhance citizen participation, civic engagement, and citizenship education in government.

HOW: Spady, a Seattle fixture for the last 50 years as both a successful restaurant entrepreneur and a civic leader, has long labored to empower the local citizenry. On the side, the 83-year-old co-founder of Dick's Drive-In Restaurants has authored several textbooks on management theory that have won him international recognition.

Spady's "Easy Citizen Involvement" initiative (I-24) looks to create a "citizen councilor network" of thousands of small discussion groups that will share opinions on topics of public interest. These opinions will be tabulated and shared with participants, interested public officials, news media, and the general public. The forums are "open to everyone" and are planned to be held "at convenient times and places."

Says Spady on the Easy Citizen Involvement website: "This process will not tell anyone what is 'right or wrong,' but it will tell what the people who are participating perceive is right or wrong at that point in time."

Spady has committed to funding the first two years of the program with voluntary donations and thus provide the citizens of King County with the opportunity to have an expanded public hearing effort without new taxes.

The city council's passage of I-24 caps a decades-long quest by Spady to make it easier for average citizens to talk to local government officials and offer their input. Spady noted that more than 80,000 people signed petitions in support of the initiative, "reflecting a growing consensus that the doors of local government should open wider to the ideas and opinions of average citizens."