This episode was recorded April 29, 2023. All errors in transcription are the responsibility of Caleb O. Brown. Please inform us of transcription errors at shelbyvilleidea@icloud.com.
Caleb O. Brown: This is the Shelbyville idea. I'm Caleb O. Brown. In this episode I speak with seventh District State Senator Republican Adrienne Southworth. Given the fact that no one in Shelby County has ever voted for her, she calls herself a step senator. We talk about the 2023 and 2024 legislative session, school choice and housing policy amid big ticket economic development projects in Kentucky. You are the seventh Senate District Senator for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thank you for coming by.
Adrienne Southworth: Well, thanks so much for having me and doing this. I think it's fantastic. I've heard a few other communities, folks other places in other parts of the state doing similar ideas, and so as soon as I heard that this was getting going, I was like, yes.
COB: So I moved to Shelbyville in 2020, in June of 2020 In fact.
AS: Well, Welcome.
COB: Yes, thank you. You know, one of the questions that I have for local people is what can Shelbyville do to be more welcoming of new Shelby-villians? Not to be confused with Shelby-villains, which is a different group of people in terms of, you know, priorities at the state and but trying to make sure that your constituents are represented well. What are the things that you hear from constituents? These are the things that must be addressed at the state level
AS: Well, we do hear a lot of things from our folks, more out in the rural areas that are still behind in basic services. There's always, you know, sewer line issues. There's a lot of new development going on that creates its own firestorm. Particularly when I have a question from a residential area that has borrowed land from like three different counties out on the county line. And that was a big kind of tangle, you know, but I think that a lot of people that are coming into Shelbyville are coming from surrounding area. There are some that are obviously coming from far away, but we have a lot of people, particularly from Louisville 'cause Louisville's gotten to be really not a great place overall, when compared to nearby locations such as Shelby County. And so a lot of my constituents in Shelby County are either long since moved from Louisville or even very fresh from Louisville, but just a lot coming that direction. Shelby County's a very growing place and I think they're looking for a place they can be safe and live a more peaceful life. 'cause Louisville's kind of crazy.
COB: I hear that a lot from people. In fact, I know several people that I've just met in the last two years who also moved to Shelby County in 2020. I wonder, so Shelby County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state. One of my issues is housing. And I have noticed that in various parts of the state Mayfield, Shelby County is an example. It it's hard to create new housing. There are a lot of hurdles and hoops that you have to jump through in order to just get, there's a lot of discretion that local officials have when it comes to allowing certain construction. Where do you come down on issues of zoning and land use and housing?
AS: Well, I will start with the baseline of everything I start with, which is constitutional property rights. I really struggle with heavy zoning and planning property restrictions, permitting, that kind of thing. Because in the question of property rights, you're always trying to figure out how to protect this person's interest when it gets close to the fence of the other person's interest. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to make that realistic. I think this is definitely from the local perspective you just mentioned, discretion. Discretion is a very difficult subject to deal with in the law because you have to have it in so many ways. It's the only way and other times it is the problem. And so it's just a really weird thing to talk about. 'cause there's not really one principle I can just slather on and say, here's how it goes.
AS: But when we create state laws, and you know, of course what I do from the state law perspective, we give the parameters of what you can and can't do as far as you know, what you're gonna create for your local requirements and so forth. And I feel like we've set up a system that is not overly serving the people, really anybody, because there seems to be more focus on the red tape hoops rather than truly looking at the property rights of all of the people involved. So, you know, we are all familiar with zoning changes and notifying all the neighbors and so forth, but I've had cases where even all the neighbors are literally petitioning for something and they still can't get it through. You know, it's like, well now what in the world? And so I think you have to figure out always, ultimately how many rights could possibly be violated from all the parties involved. And then where is the best place to kind of be the safest, I suppose you could call it like a little sandbar in the middle of that ocean. You know, that's kind of where I focus on this kind of a high level look at it. But all these little nitty gritty issues always end up landing in that exact same spot.
COB: I hear from Andy Beshear, who's in a reelection year as a Democrat in a state that is trending red. I hear from him these massive job announcements of these large factories and other facilities to, you know, build EV batteries or various other industrial production. And I wonder where are these workers going to live in a lot of these places? Do you think there's a role for the state to sort of assert the property rights of local people to say, Hey, we're gonna build some housing here and please don't try and stop us.
AS: Well, that's a really interesting question and definitely one of the first things in my mind two summers ago when they wanted us to vote on that battery plant deal. And you've just loaded about three different issues in here. So I will talk about the housing rights, I'll talk about the governor's economic development, and then I'll talk about business in general. So the housing right. It's really interesting, particularly around that Ford battery plant. While I do live in Lawrenceburg now, my husband's originally from Frankfort. My home county in Kentucky is Larue County, which is next door to Glendale where that Ford battery plant is. And that has been a talk, I mean, ever since I was very young, that was all we talked about in that area was oh, such and such is getting ready to go into Glendale. Everybody knew there was all of these rumors about stuff that was going in Glendale and none of it ever transpired.
AS: So when I saw it come past me now in the Senate as a voting measure, I was like, oh my word, it's actually happening. But at the same time, I just felt really bad for all of my old community because I don't see how they're gonna pull something like that off. It's gonna be a disaster for the logistics, you know, traffic and so forth. Because these things aren't just growing. You know, typically businesses come in and they plop down like, you know, warehousing or a plant and then they kind of expand from there, right? This is a... We did $410 million just in state support. That's not including overall impact. And it's going to affect the community and it doesn't have all the other surrounding support around it. We put in money for like training for workers, but you're exactly right. We didn't put training or we didn't put money in for everything else that has to go around that.
AS: And granted it's a piecemeal deal, you'll end up seeing that. But for example, you know, my sister lives in a suburban area, not in this state who clearly can't plan their way out of a paper bag because you can't just put 5000 homes on a two-lane road with no new turn lanes or nothing, and expect to not have serious issues with traffic. And it's gotten so bad to where, you know, they just can't go places certain times of the day period. You know, that's just not the way we want this community to be. It's just not a good idea at all. And so that takes me to these governor's announcements on businesses you're mentioning. That really concerns me because I actually, of course used to work in an administration on the executive branch side with Lieutenant Governor Jenean Hampton. And so I was in all the weekly staff meetings with the governor's, high level staff, the cabinet and all that.
So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me.
AS: And you saw exactly what was being done. No doubt. The governor does work on some economic development initiatives and trying to work deals out with companies trying to talk them into, Kentucky's a great place, please come here. We could really use you. That kind of thing. But the majority of the projects that I saw were not governor, had put the time and effort blood, sweat, and tears into it. It was quick, let's catch this PR while it's here so we can stick our name on something in the newspaper again this week. And they're just always looking for PR. And I struggle with that 'cause people just don't really know how it all really works. But in particular around this project, and look, this project could have easily been a project that the governor worked on for a long time, not in this administration.
AS: So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me. because you're kind of putting a finger on the scale and creating an artificial situation where this business may not have normally come here now the community can't support it the way way you're mentioning with housing and the roads are gonna be the next issue. And that kind of stuff bothers me because I feel like the free enterprise system supports more organic growth better than these artificial big slam dunk type situations that then kind of puts us into weird spots. So I think generally in general, business would be better off if we could get back to a more free market system. And we're not paying people to be in business.
AS: 'cause I mean, at some point it's like, wait a second. How much are we actually getting out of this? And eventually, if you do the math, some of these projects, the break even point is like years even a decade away, or we're paying somebody a $100,000 per person to do workforce development. Well, why don't we just get them a job that pays and they could pay for their own way. I mean, like, there's just all kinds of solutions that we need to be looking at instead of just dumping in public funds all the time.
COB: Yeah. One of the comparisons that was probably appropriate to draw for some economic development is Foxconn in Wisconsin, which was a huge promise from then Governor Scott Walker to bring this massive company in, I don't know how many jobs, but many, many jobs. And it just, it was a huge investment that the state made and it just didn't work out. And so I question whether or not the state generally is a very good steward, when it comes to public money going for, you know, explicitly private benefit.
AS: Well, if you wanna go really deep in the weeds, you can always touch on... You missed probably most of the action on this one. You weren't around, but I don't know wherever you came from. But anyway, when I was in the administration, there was one, so-called Deal that was done. Everybody knows it as Braidy Industries. And of course they've had to change the name a couple of times because it turns out it's just a total like Ponzi scheme. And the last session we... I thought it wasn't gonna pass. And finally at the last second we were able to get it finally passed and tried... The whole bill this time was to claw back five years ago's money. They had said, Hey, we're under an NDA, we can't say what it is, but we need $15 million. And this is why I voted against the Ford Motor Plant money.
COB: That's a hell of a pitch from a private firm. I can't talk about it, but give us some money.
AS: Yeah. And so, you know, the governor said, let's go for it guys. And the whole thing started getting sketchy from the get go. But the more I got into it, the more it looked terrible. And finally, I think, and nobody's even really talking about it now, I mean, I think it's gonna probably blow up into the annals of criminal corruption, eventually, but we've at least gotten something passed to say, Hey, that 15 million, at least let's get that back. 'cause where did that go? I mean, it literally went to a lobbying firm and a CEO's bonus travel fund. I mean, it's what it was.
COB: Yeah. For listeners who are interested in learning more about, Brady Industries, I'll refer you to the reporting of Chris Otts and others at WDRB in Louisville. They provided a great deal of coverage on this. And that's where I was following a lot of the fallout from this, I don't know, boondoggle, you call it a boondoggle.
AS: It's a great word. Yeah.
COB: So on to the legislative session most recently there was some tax adjustments. Kentucky is on track to, at some point eliminate the personal income tax entirely. And by the end of the session, pretty much everybody had forgotten that that even occurred. But was... I think it was a generally positive move.
AS: It was, so let me, I guess I'll give a little history on that as well. So back in 2018, they had the first attempt to, I guess what people have been talking about tax reform since the beginning of time. But in the most modern era, they're talking about reducing the income tax and thereby they're looking at increasing the sales tax. Well, in 2018, they made a move that I totally disagreed with. And of course I wasn't a voting member at the time, but I was tracking this very carefully. They expanded the sales tax to services. A lot of things that a lot of us kind of disagree with on things that should be taxed, like car repairs. It really kind of hit in the wrong place, I felt like, and a number of people did feel like that, but nevertheless, it passed and it was all under the promise of we're gonna lower the income tax. Well, what happened at that time was that you had a gradiated income tax and they kind of flattened it out to sort of a single rate. So you had corporations that were getting a tax decrease while some very low income workers had a tax increase. And that really set some people off.
COB: Help me understand that this was an adjustment to both the personal and corporate income tax in the state.
AS: Yes. So it used to be like, and I'm gonna talk about the personal... The corporate kind of followed along, the same type of deal, but the personal income tax used to be like, you know, 6%, 5%, 4%, and we made it all five. So the 6 percenters, which you can imagine the big business people are gonna fall into that type of deal, right? I mean, so they were getting a relaxation of 1% down to 5. But people that are just your average, you know, minimum slightly over minimum wage worker with, you know, trying to pay all their regular bills that all of us pay, before they were probably paying 4%. Well now they're paying 5%. So I agree with having one percentage rate. I'm not a fan of different rates, but I thought that the right answer was 4 at that time because of that situation where we were in.
AS: And instead we made it 5 and expanded sales taxes at the same time. And they claimed we were saving everyone money and it was gonna bring $480 million into the state. Now how in the world do you save people money and bring more in like that? The math is not there. Well, last year we ended up doing this whole income tax thing that you mentioned, this plan to reduce the income tax further. Now, I am not a person who's gonna sit up here and say that we're on track, as you mentioned, we're on the path to reducing to zero. There may be a path written on paper, but if you ask anybody in this state, can you give me some specifics on exactly how that path is going and where we are on it and what the trajectory is. Nobody can give you that answer.
AS: 'Cause there really isn't a path. It's a paper path. And we had a path to 4%, which we did this year. You just mentioned that last year we had done it to 4.5. This next tax year will be 4%, but we're gonna be parked there for quite some time because, we don't have a path forward. But I do like, and I voted for the 4% this year because it really should have been in 2018. Honestly, it's come way too late. And this time, while there were some things I don't necessarily agree with, and we've actually reformed those, again, we keep tweaking on it, the list of things that are sales taxable and so forth. It's not a great list. But, you know, there's all kinds of stuff we don't like, but it was like Botox services and like stuff that you would expect people very optional type of purchases, you know.
COB: Luxury items.
AS: Yeah. If we're gonna tax things, we need to try to keep it in the zone of optionals and not things like groceries, like Tennessee taxes, groceries, 7.75%. I totally disagree with that.
COB: So Tennessee has no income tax, but they have a pretty high sales tax, is that what you're saying?
AS: High sales tax. They have nine point some seven something anyway in regular sales categories. And then they have 7.75 on groceries. I'm not sure, I can't sit here and quote you the Tennessee tax code, but it does concern me when a lot of people just say, well, look at Tennessee. They're growing. Well, I mean, they're also having traffic problems. I mean, that's what happens. I mean, you have to do something that makes sense for you. And adding 2 million people to Kentucky is not gonna make sense for our crumbling roads.
COB: In the legislative session, it should probably come as no surprise to people who know me, who may be listening, that I'm a big fan of school choice and I want to advance school choice. I was disheartened in the last couple of legislative sessions that there were these fights over CRT, that there were fights over trans issues and that sort of thing. And my thought was, look, school choice is right there. If these are, you wanna diffuse these culture war issues, school choice seems like the way forward to make people not hate each other quite as much, and give all parents the ability to send their kids to a school that comports with their values. And you know, if you are watching the legislative session closely this year, you saw a constitutional amendment that Josh Calloway, Representative Josh Calloway sponsored get two of its three required readings in the legislature and then nothing. So it was as close as a piece of legislation could get to getting out of the house and then it just didn't come up for a vote. Now, Jason Nemes, who I believe is the majority whip, is that right?
AS: Yes.
COB: In the house. And Damon Thayer in leadership in the Senate have both said this is the priority for 2024. What do you think of that? A constitutional amendment to empower the general assembly to engage in a broad range of school choice?
AS: I think that's the right move. If you look at the federal side of things it's already a constitutional right under the United States Constitution to use tax dollars for a variety of educational purposes, not restricted the same way as the Kentucky Constitution does. And I think there's a lot of smart case law that explains why that's a good idea. Because if you look back at the founding of this country, the whole reason why education is prioritized by the government and public funding in the first place is for the betterment of society. Because they believe that society is better as a whole when it's young people are educated. Why? We've done a lot of stuff around, you know children's labor, children's education, children in general. We just have a lot of space in the public for, for children. And so when you're looking at public priorities limiting children's access to education really doesn't fit in that framework.
AS: I mean, you would want to have children taken care of as best as possible, any which way you can get it. If that's really the goal, right? So the whole point of having the public school system is so that it's available and everybody can have the access and is not unequal access and all this stuff. But that's not the case. I mean, we have a one size fits all system and frankly, that's the only way it can work. If you're gonna have only one system, it just has to be a bell curve, middle of the road system, it will always leave the edges off. That's just what it, the nature of the beast. And so I think providing, and we actually do already provide private funding or public funding for private education on the far end of the bell curve for people who have special needs that are beyond the scope of what we can provide in public schools.
AS: The public funds go to private schools or child care type, whatever deals that we can come up with that will meet special needs, extreme special needs kids needs. And so I just don't see that this is much different as far as meeting that. But it is different in the sense that we're saying, well, instead of globing the middle 75% together, we're actually recognizing that there's more differences among kids than than people wanna say. And so every school's gonna have their opportunity to say, how wide of services are we offering? And if a large school can provide a wide variety of services, then that's great. But if they can't, then we need to also provide larger edges to this bell curve, I think of students and their needs. I mean, from having taught privately for 10 years, I really enjoyed seeing all the different learning styles of students.
AS: But I cannot imagine trying to manage the sizes of some of these classrooms with the discipline issues and everything else going on and really be able to get a whole lot into these kids. And honestly, as a student myself, I thought the same thing to myself. Are we learning that much? And I know that we did learn a lot of stuff, but there's a ton of extra time in the classroom that's just bogged down by the masses. And I feel like there's ways we could get creative and it's just not welcomed when there's such a strict guideline on how you can do all this. So yeah, I support the constitution freeing us up to where we can make those decisions more on a one-off basis. But also I would say as far as this year goes, I appreciate the bill that came out because I think that pushing the can down the road is never really the answer.
AS: But I also know that the ballot item, it's a ballot item and the ballot won't be until 2024. So it was kind of a question of do we wanna use the oxygen in the room this year or next year? And I can agree with the decision to make it a priority next year and not forth it this year. But I do like that Josh went ahead and got it out there so that people are talking about it. 'cause otherwise it would come last second and everyone would go, oh, what is this? Well, we're not, we don't know about it. You know, so we need to get things out there earlier.
COB: There's a realpolitik, I don't know, there are internal mechanisms within legislatures that somebody from the outside looking in would look at and say, why are they doing it this way? And of course, I looked at the school choice measure that way, and I guess I grudgingly understand the arguments for waiting instead of doing it right away. But in terms of doing things in the early part of a legislative session, it doesn't because there's a filing deadline, I believe at the end of January for people trying to run for office. It's at least my understanding that there's a reputation in Frankfort for not doing anything controversial in that 30 days. Because somebody could say, could get angry and file a run against you, and then suddenly you have a very animated opponent that you might not have otherwise had come November. And when that deadline passes at the end of January. So they, is that true first of all that the, the legislature sort of waits until filing deadline passes before they tackle things that might make people angry?
COB: That used to be true. A few years ago they changed the filing deadline to the first Friday in January so that people would think, I suppose instead of solving the problem, which is don't do stupid stuff it's, well, let's just make a cover for ourselves, right?
AS: In a sense. Now the rule is we don't have to wait as long to do stupid stuff.
COB: Exactly. That's pretty much what it is. And so, but here's the really the big disappointment for me I always felt like, and I think it's true 'cause they always would wait to the filing deadline and then get started. But in my experience, the whole time I've been in elected service, it's been under that first week January deadline. I think I was the first year or something like that. But anyway I've not experienced any kind of artificial barrier to when we're gonna actually get busy. What I have noticed is that they plan it out just like I'm gonna use an example from I was in the wedding industry. And so a wedding plan is the same as an event plan of any sort. You know, you have all these different markers, a project plan, any type of planner like that.
AS: They literally, I think they have a Gantt chart just about on when to start doing things so that they can push stuff forward and put pressure on people and layer up all this stuff at once to start pushing things through that wouldn't normally get pushed through if everyone actually had time to just breathe and actually make rational decisions. Because I mean, literally you can see an example of this. The very last day of session this year, there were four bills that the Senate passed, none of which were bills that we wanted to pass. And we all just were sitting around all day saying, are you gonna pass this or not? And I'm like, well, what else is on the agenda? Well, there wasn't anything else on the agenda.
AS: It was just a put pressure on you and make you think that you need to do something different than you were already gonna normally do. And people, some people were surprised at votes that ended up coming out. Votes got flipped that never flipped before for 10 years. I mean, that kind of stuff happens under pressure. And so I think that the pressure works in favor of the big money people that like to control all this stuff. And it does not work in favor of the regular constituents that I think are the most important priority.
COB: This is a weird question. I hope you don't take it the wrong way. No one in Shelby County's ever voted for you.
AS: Right. It is weird.
COB: And so to me, from the outside looking in without looking at the context, it looks like the legislature by virtue of the redistricting that it did following the delayed 2020 census we all remember that that was a difficult time. If you were to lay blame for the lateness of the redistricting that occurred in Kentucky. Do you say Census Bureau, it took a long time, pandemic, or did the legislature have plenty of time in your view to get this thing done and then just waited for whatever reason?
AS: No, there as far as the timing goes, that is just what it is. The census information came out in September, and so then we filed and changed everything in January. So the timeframe was correct. Sometimes you won't see you'll, there are census delays other years that just wasn't extra delayed this time. Sometimes a census supposedly is supposed to be out like June or July 1 or something like that of the year in which it is like 2020. So for example, in that case, you would've expected 2021 could have been aligned, but I was elected in 2020 and we would not have been able to draw the new lines. 'cause we're not in session in the fall, right? So I would've still been elected in the old lines even if we'd redrawn them a year earlier. So there's really no effect on the actual constituents based on whether you get to it hot out of the gate on the odd numbered year or whether and there's any delays whatsoever, and you don't get the information till six months delayed or whatever, then you can't get it together and it goes to the even year. So that's not really an issue. I think really the issue is.
COB: But they couldn't have waited and said this redistricting will be effective for the election of 2022.
AS: No because the constitutionality of redistricting is really based on the here and now. Now I personally think that this needs to be looked at because in Congress that's what they do. They have it take effect at the next election and in the state it takes effect immediately. I personally would like to see all of this, honestly, we need a constitutional amendment. 'cause believe it or not, we don't follow the Kentucky Constitution the way it reads now. The courts have said there's too many conflicting requirements in the constitution and all can't possibly be met, period. So therefore it's sort of a pick and choose. But the courts have said which ones we should pick over the others. That's the situation we're in for redistricting. So it really does need to be looked at. And I am a strong believer that it should go to the voters. Now here's the problem. I'm in a four year term, and 2022 was not an election year for me. So I was elected by my voters for a four year term. So you can't trample on the old voters by having the new voters vote someone else in. Like, this is just really convoluted. So there are always some fallouts where voters get step senators, like myself.
COB: Step senators. That's funny.
AS: My perspective is we should be, when we're redrawing the lines, there is a constitutional minimum requirement threshold like I just mentioned. But what I found in this redistricting process is you can actually go a lot deeper than that. The minimum threshold we met in the Senate barely but there were a lot of other factors we did not take into play that we could have and we could have drawn better lines by taking in, there's about eight or 10 other factors you can do. One of them is least adjustment to the current populace, least amount of intrusion on the current line. That's one map. I literally drew like 10 or 11 maps in this whole thing of if that was your criteria, here's what the map would look like. If your criteria was to have the most equal sizes of land masses.
AS: So you don't have like one giant huge one in Eastern Kentucky stuff we were struggling with. You know, there's a lot of land mass with light population on the edges of our state. You know, that was another map I drew. Another map I drew was without regard at all to any current sitting people. So they might end up living outside of their districts until their next elections. But we do have one... The one that they did do was let's keep all the senators living in their districts so that nobody's living outside of their district and therein would be ineligible for their next election. So that was like the only criteria they added on top of the constitution institution. Besides other things get added, like quick, who do we like and who do we not like? You know, that kind of.
COB: And obviously leadership has ideas about who they like and don't like. So two things. One, is there anything you want to tell to the people of Shelby County for whom you are a step senator for at least another year or so, a year and a half or so? And also, what would be your top priorities for the 2024 legislative session?
AS: Well, my top priorities in 2024 are almost playing catch up for all the other stuff that we've gotten started and haven't gotten all of the footballs past their all required downs to get them into the end zone. So typically every year I go into depth of research on a topic or two, even sometimes three. But last year I was focused on child abuse and the year before that elections and both of those have a lot still to go. Before that it was vaccine mandates. So all of that stuff there has been some little tiny, very tiny things done, but nowhere near the scale and scope that we need. Along with that, I have a number of bills that I have filed every year relating to privacy digital interaction with government. We have this whole cashless society question.
AS: And I got a lot of traction on that this year, whereas it's been sitting there for three years. All of a sudden this year people are starting to talk about it more. What I try to do is always solve problems before they happen. And a lot of people don't have that perspective. I think it's a certain I don't know what group of us brains that work ahead of time like that, but I look at problems that are coming down the pike and seek to avoid them instead of trying to clean up messes after fact. So I have a lot of bills like that that have been sitting out there for years and are now becoming talking points of more the mainstream particularly around my reconciliation for election ballots. And like I mentioned the the cashless thing people are actually starting to worry about that now.
I appreciate how welcoming Shelby County has been. I think my experience and may be a little bit different from some other senators in that I was not originally from the county in which I represent.
AS: And luckily we were able to see a little tiny bit of help there with these well, these awful driver license things. They have the popup centers and stuff. They weren't taking cash. People would get thrown at the end of the line if they had brought cash. I mean, it was just really bad stuff was going on. So all of that to say I have a lot of footballs to move down the field. I'm not focusing on any new research items this year. I'm going to go deeper into all the existing ones that I have so that we can get more of this work finished up. Because there's so much, you just think about there's 138 people and I need at least half of them to vote for everything, just sitting down with each of them for an hour and they're in Frankfort once a month. I mean, that'll kill a whole year of your schedule just working on one topic and, and we haven't even gotten much done. Right. So it's just, there's a lot that goes into putting a bill through. And so that's what I'll be focusing on, of course.
COB: And what do you want to tell the people of Shelby County for whom you will be, they will have their first opportunity potentially to vote for you next year, 2024?
AS: Well, I appreciate how welcoming Shelby County has been. I think my experience and may be a little bit different from some other senators in that I was not originally from the county in which I represent. So a lot of times people are like born and raised in an area and they're really locked into that local community. I'm married into my community that I live in now, so I have a very statewide type approach anyway. And of course, as a state decision maker we should take into consideration all of the pieces of the puzzle. And that's definitely more in the senate side of things as well, 'cause we have multiple counties have four that I currently represent. And so we look at a larger picture and how things fit in together, but we get to know our local communities and how things specifically affect them more so than maybe other areas of the state.
AS: And so I find that a lot of communities have similarities, but everyone is so different and I love the differences. I've enjoyed getting into Shelby County more. Like I said, my husband's originally from Frankfort, so it wasn't a foreign area, but it was definitely one we didn't spend as much time in. We usually ended up going the other direction, like Woodford and Lexington for whatever reason. But Louisville is the big city. That was my big city in my home county of La Rue County. So Shelby County is just that kind of middle space between my two, what I'd call my two homes in Kentucky. And it's been really fun to see how it's a mix of a lot of other cultures that I know. And then getting some of its specifics learned. It's, I had a really good friend that used to live in Shelby County years ago, so I already had a little bit of a handle on some of it, but I just like getting to know all the different people and I think a lot of our values are the same.
AS: When we don't live in the urban area, a lot of the, the more rural and particularly the growing areas, we have similar values kind of no matter where you are. And I'm a heavy fighter for a lot of these things that the, what I call the 118 counties, feel like in it's outside of Louisville and Lexington we're about half the rest of the state and Shelby County is a big piece of that. And of course coming from a Frankfort representation, it's the next door neighbor that's also a large piece kind of in a similar way, but totally different community, totally different culture. But I just really enjoy it.
AS: I look forward to seeing everybody more as we get going. One of the hardest things for me was when I was on the campaign in five counties, not all of which, I had driven every road, and you can live in a county for a long time and still never drive all the roads, but when you're campaigning, you do. And so I have not driven all the roads in Shelby County. I have driven several now, but I'm looking forward to being able to really get out at the granular level and catch up on these loose ends because it is weird being a step senator coming in, but I have really enjoyed the last two years serving here and certainly look forward to working with everybody in this next year and a half as I finish this term.
COB: Alright, Adrienne Southworth, thank you very much. Promise me that you will come back and chat with us again. I don't know, in a year. A little less than a year from now. How about that?
AS: Well, absolutely. You know, we can talk before that. There's always things going on. A lot of people don't keep up with what all's going on in Frankfort. There's always things percolating and we can talk about details as we move forward throughout the summer, even though we're not passing bills, we're hearing what's coming up next year and other things are always going on. So it'd be great to, great to have this podcast that people can keep up with local stuff. I love it.
COB: Wonderful. Thank you.
AS: Thanks.
COB: Thank you to state Senator Adrienne Southworth for joining us. I hope you'll share this episode of the Shelbyville Idea with your friends. Subscribe to our newsletter at shelbyvilleidea.com and give us your guest suggestions, comments, criticisms, feedback, news tips, unsubstantiated rumors, and anything else you want us to know. Email us directly at shelbyvilleidea-at-icloud.com. I'm Caleb Brown. Thank you for listening.
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