Bill McAuliffe wrote an article about "Local officials blogging for readers far and wide" in the Startribune on February 22. He describes as examples the blog of the Northfield police chief Gary G. Smith and the Eden Prairie city manager Scott Neal: "Around the metro area, some elected and appointed officials are blogging away, maintaining Internet diaries that often go well beyond the quarterly constituent newsletter".
Especially northfield.org in Minnesota is interesting: It's a community weblog where civil servants, associations and citizens post. The motivation behind: "We think it's good for democracy for citizens to be more than passive consumers of media. We see weblogs as a tool that can be used for 'conversational journalism' or 'citizen-driven journalism,' a unique way to have a dialogue among separate sources of information that's not otherwise easily done. We think it's possible that the collective wisdom of Northfield's Civic Blogosphere (citizens, community leaders, public officials, government staff) can help improve the effectiveness of local government".
Reference: Steven Clift in do-wire.