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Updated 16 hours ago

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey held a town hall meeting by phone and online at 2:05 p.m. Thursday — an event his office didn't announce publicly until about 90 minutes before its scheduled start.

A vendor for Toomey's office planned to randomly call about 100,000 phone numbers across the state to attract participants, the office said.

Listeners online and on the phone submitted questions, and a team of screeners selected questions for Toomey to answer.

About an hour after Toomey's office notified people of the event on Facebook, more than 250 people posted comments to the social-media account – many of them complaining about the late notice or that Toomey wasn't holding in-person town hall events across the state.

Toomey spokesman Steve Kelly said no in-person town halls are scheduled. Toomey participated in 14 such events during his first term, typically during the summer months, along with 47 previous tele-town halls over the past three years.

As for the late notice, Kelly said, “We were able to clear the time on the senator's schedule, so that's why there was the late notice. ... We needed to make sure that the schedule held up.”

Some constituents have complained in recent weeks that they have not been able to get through to Toomey's office on the phone.

For the last several weeks, a group dubbed Tuesdays with Toomey has marched to Toomey's office in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and elsewhere to request to see the senator, to no avail.

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