As we reported last week , city council member Mike O'Brien plans to introduce new rules making it easier for Seattle residents to opt out of receiving phone books at their homes. Seattle already has an opt-out system, but---as O'Brien himself has discovered---opting out doesn't necessarily mean you don't receive a phone book. O'Brien's legislation would require all phone book companies to obtain a license to distribute yellow pages and register with the city and impose a fee for phone companies to retrieve unwanted phone books from resident. It would also create a citywide registry of residents who don't want to receive phone books, and would create penalties (in addition to recovery fees) on companies that ignore the opt-out list.

A group of phone-book company lobbyists, working with a local consulting firm led by former deputy mayor Tim Ceis , plans to travel to Seattle, in time for a meeting of the city's public utilities committee, headed by O'Brien, at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon.

O'Brien was initially interested in a stronger "opt-in" system, in which phone-book companies only deliver books to customers who request them.

Footnote (and, OK, the real reason I'm writing this post): O'Brien's crusade against phone-book waste hasn't stopped phone books from showing up at City Hall. In addition to the hundreds of books brought to O'Brien's office by constituents, there's now a pile of several dozen phone books delivered to council members by the phone company itself. In recent weeks, the pile, situated just outside council members' offices, has grown to several dozen; this afternoon, O'Brien's staffers appended a sign, which reads, "'UNWANTED' PHONE BOOKS per Councilmember O'Brien," to the pile.