Constituents of the 9th Legislative District will have an opportunity to talk with their elected officials in the state House of Representatives during a telephone town hall on beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.

The 9th Legislative District includes Adams, Asotin, Franklin, Garfield, and Whitman counties, as well as parts of Spokane County. It is represented in the House by Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, and Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy.

If residents do not receive a phone call inviting them to the event, those wishing to participate can listen and ask questions over the phone by calling 509-724-2970 during the town hall. Listeners can press the star key on their telephones to ask a question.

Legislators in the district have conducted telephone town halls for the better part of a decade due to the difficulty of finding a location accessible to everyone in the district.

“In a district the same size as Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, there’s no perfect place where everyone has a good shot at going to a town hall,” Schmick said. “It’s been a pretty effective way of visiting with our constituents, and they can do it from the comfort of their own home.”

Schmick said that he is looking forward to catching voters up on the legislative session on a wide range of topics, including property taxes and recent positive revenue forecasts.

“The question always will be, ‘if you have this much money coming in, why do you need more taxes?’” Schmick said, “And yet we’re still talking about them over here.”

Schmick said that he expected the conversation to focus far more on rural issues than might be the case in other districts, including how changes in K-12 funding after the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision will affect smaller schools.

“With a bill this big, we just want to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and that these schools get properly funded,” Schmick said.

With budget proposals expected from Democrats in both the Senate and the House this week and less than one-third of the legislative session left, constituents will see the pace in Olympia increase dramatically as the legislature scrambles to finish on time, Schmick said.