Legislative Pathways in Kentucky Agriculture with State Representative, Steven Rudy

[00:00:00.750] - Chris Griffin 
Welcome to Back to your Roots, a podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you Back to your Roots. Thanks for joining us today on Back to your Roots. I'm your host, Chris Griffin.

[00:00:21.100] - Jordan Turnage
Hey, guys. I'm Jordan Turnage. As always, thank you so much for listening. Today, we have the Kentucky State Representative for the first district, Mr. Stephen Rudy with us, and we're just going to dive into how agriculture plays a role in its political career and much more. Welcome, Steven. Thank you so much for coming in this morning.

[00:00:36.840] - Steven Rudy
Chris Jordan, thank you very much. Been looking forward to this.

[00:00:39.570] - Chris Griffin 
From what I understand, you're a Ballard County native, right? Our esteemed. Yeah, esteemed. Then our esteemed CEO. Mr. Kyle Yancy, is a Ballard County native. I think the million-dollar question is, you guys grew up together, you guys went to high school together. Do you have any good stories on Kyle growing up with him? Stuff that we will, that will be able to air. There's other things you could tell us after we get off that you can tell me that I can use against them, but just for the show purposes.

[00:01:07.640] - Steven Rudy
There is a big, big problem because Kyle was a little bit younger than me. He is a little bit younger than me still, He's amazingly.

[00:01:15.490] - Chris Griffin 
It seems that how it works.

[00:01:18.690] - Jordan Turnage
But probably my best friend in the world growing up lived right next door to Kyle and his sister and their parents. The stuff that me and Pat did to Kyle that I don't even know Kyle knows about, I think today would be classified as bullying, and I'm not allowed to talk about it. But I just want you to know, in the '90s, that bullying was hilarious.

[00:01:43.950] - Chris Griffin 
I have no doubts. It So, yeah, it's funny.

[00:01:46.820] - Jordan Turnage
It was part of growing up.

[00:01:47.350] - Jordan Turnage
So we're going to dive into this. Stephen, you are the Kentucky State Representative for district One, for mainly what we call the River Counties here out in West Kentucky. And that's Ballard County, Carlisle County, Hickman, Fulton, and spills over in McCracken, right?

[00:02:01.140] - Steven Rudy
Right.

[00:02:01.690] - Jordan Turnage
We just want to talk about how things operate out here, our neck of the woods. I know some folks, you hear politicians when they come over from in our part of the world, they all think that the running joke is they think that Bowen Green is Western Kentucky. We just want to show that we play a big part in the site.

[00:02:19.030] - Steven Rudy
We do. The first house district consisting of those four counties that are small in population, so much so that to get the numbers to be one 100th of the state, which we divide the districts evenly, we had to get 22,000 people out of McCracken County, which is about 45% of the population of the district.

[00:02:38.740] - Chris Griffin 
I was going to say that's a decent amount out of McCracken.

[00:02:41.080] - Steven Rudy
We're the largest geographic district in the state. We're the furthest from Frankfort. We also, House district One, though, Commissioner Shell and the Department of Agriculture release ag statistics over here. It's the number one district for cash receipts for agriculture in the state as well. We're a long way away. There's parts of the first house district that are closer to Little Rock, Arkansas, than they are Frankfort, Kentucky. Get on a map and look. You get up into Covington, the top, the tip of the golden triangle, they're closer to Canada than they are us. We're down here, but yes, we are Kentuckyans. We're proud of that. We're very productive citizens. We're a great place to raise a family and start a business, run a farm. But we don't have a lot of dependency on state government because we're out here by ourselves. Yeah, Frankfort, they don't know the difference in Mayfield and Paducah. I'm quick to point out whenever somebody says from Paducah to Pikeville, when they describe the state, I say, Oh, well, by the way, you've left out 25,000 of my constituents who live beyond Paducah. You get into that, and geography is hard, but we hold our own.

[00:03:51.690] - Steven Rudy
I like to describe, when I start describing the state, I'm like, okay, Bowling green in Owensboro or Western Kentucky, that's fine. They, they can have that.

[00:04:00.520] - Jordan Turnage
They got the hill topper.

[00:04:01.300] - Steven Rudy
We'll just be West Kentucky. We'll drop the ERN, and we'll be like West Virginia, out there on our own.

[00:04:07.600] - Chris Griffin 
Yeah, no doubt.

[00:04:08.700] - Jordan Turnage
Just to note, I'm pretty sure you've been in politics for a while, but the big difference in Paducah and Mayfield, just for everyone out there, is the dependency on sun drop, right? Exactly. Okay. I just want to make sure we're clear on that.

[00:04:20.830] - Chris Griffin 
I didn't know where that was going, but that was nice. All right. I'm always actually interested in this. You look at politicians and how they got into politics. A lot of times What was the background and the road you took to get there? It's not like you just woke up one day and you got out of college. You're like, I'm going to get in politics. There's other things that came in that. They're business owners. There's other occupations that they have. So you got to tell us how you got into politics, what your background was before that, and what I think drove you and gave you the passion to be a leader for Western Kentucky.

[00:04:50.810] - Jordan Turnage
So politics have always been part of my life in the peripheral. And 46 years old, this is my 20th year in the General Assembly. So I actually got started in politics a little earlier than the average colleague that I serve with in Frankfort.

[00:05:08.300] - Chris Griffin 
You're a young whipper.

[00:05:09.280] - Steven Rudy
Yes.

[00:05:09.500] - Steven Rudy
As a matter of fact, next-

[00:05:10.250] - Jordan Turnage
You were literally cutting your teeth.

[00:05:11.190] - Steven Rudy
Next session, should the election go the way we hope, I'll be the second longest serving member of the Kentucky House of Representatives.

[00:05:16.850] - Jordan Turnage
That's great.

[00:05:17.790] - Steven Rudy
I can remember my family never really was running for office prior to me, but we were always aware of politics. The first memory I have in my life, going back to as a small child, was President Reagan getting shot and the attempted assassination on him. When I was in high school, I took social study classes, loved the history, loved government, how it's made up, and now have turned it into public policy setting and not just politics. I look at it now as a legislator, as we set the public policy for the state of Kentucky and the General Assembly, and I love to be part of that. When I got into politics, I wanted to lower taxes, and we've done that here for Kentucky. I wanted to make Kentucky a safer place. I wanted to make Kentucky a better place to raise a family, and I feel like we've done all that in the time that I've been there, and to be a small part of that has been very rewarding.

[00:06:15.130] - Jordan Turnage
Kinda going more individually on who you are, Mr. Rudy. I know your dad, Jack, and your whole family. I've got the opportunity to... Well, I guess some people say the blessing to move into Ballard County, and I definitely have had the blessing to serve as a loan officer for Ballard County in the past three years now. I've lived there for four and gotten to know your family real well there, Rudy's Farm Center. You are right across the road from us. We can get you with a rock. I just want to get in-depth, not too in-depth, but as much as you're willing to give us on how agriculture has affected you in your life and led you into where you are today.

[00:06:52.370] - Steven Rudy
Sure. My family's been in the farm supply business for decades. We never... Well, early in my life, up to the mid '80s, we had quite a large farm operation now that we were running, but now we do not have that anymore. We lease all our land and what little land we do have. But agriculture was always part of the background. I had always raised bottle calves growing up, worked at the family business, dealt with the farmers, understood the needs of farmers and agriculture in Kentucky, was an agriculture major at Murray State.

[00:07:25.030] - Jordan Turnage
Go Racers.

[00:07:25.610] - Steven Rudy
Go Racers was just very active in FFA, and I think we're going to talk about that a little bit later on in some of that background. But I appreciate the farming community, the values of West Kentucky, the fact that we're not afraid to pray before our meals, and thank God every day for the blessings that we have. It was important to me to be raised in that. We worked every day, Monday through Saturday. But Sunday, we didn't work, and we still not open. That was Lord's Day, and that's when we went to church. It was very important and I appreciate the fact that my parents raised me and my two brothers that way.

[00:08:04.730] - Steven Rudy
Now, some people would question the fact that one of their kids grew up to be a politician, and another one grew up to be a preacher. We're thinking about sending older brother to law school to get us both in trouble. Jack and Jeanette Rudy, I'm certainly blessed, and thank God every day that- You got some good stuff. I had great parents. And actually generations before that, my granddad, who actually helped shape my interest in politics, he never missed a Fancy Farm Picnic. We ate every Sunday dinner with him and my grandmother until they both passed. That was just what we did. The first Sunday in August was the one Sunday that granny didn't have to cook because he brought home Mutton. That's right. Fancy Farm Picnic.

[00:08:48.550] - Chris Griffin 
Are you talking about the farm center down there? I remember we owned some hunting property in Ballard and driving when I was a kid. It's always been there. I remember asking my dad, what is that place when I was a kid, 4:30 in the morning, driving on Highway 60 down to Ballard to go hunting. It's a staple of the community and a landmark at this point and just a huge asset. I know with your ag background and obviously being in politics, you bring probably a unique perspective, I think, to politics that maybe some other politicians don't have, right? Because you've got a little bit of that.

[00:09:23.720] - Steven Rudy
I would say I'm the only member of the 138 members of the General Assembly who would load a bag of feed.

[00:09:28.990] - Chris Griffin 
There we go.

[00:09:30.000] - Steven Rudy
In your car.

[00:09:31.140] - Chris Griffin 
I was on the right track.

[00:09:32.170] - Jordan Turnage
No real-turn road deal.

[00:09:33.430] - Chris Griffin 
What are some key agricultural policies you've championed during your tenure? I know, like you said, you've been there 20 years.

[00:09:42.930] - Steven Rudy
It's been 20 years.

[00:09:44.140] - Chris Griffin 
I keep thinking about when I was 20, you would have been 26. I keep thinking about what I was doing when I was 26.

[00:09:49.670] - Steven Rudy
Well, the Agriculture Committee is a very important committee. We shape a lot of ag policy, but typically, we spend more time in the agriculture area on defense trying to figure out, and most of it's been with burdensome federal regulations. Now, we can do a few things, but farmers typically need government to get out of the way, and that's what we look for. The first piece of legislation that I sponsored and made it all the way to the governor's desk and was later signed into law was an agriculture bill that a lot of people made fun of. But it was important to our district. It was important to the people of Hickman County, especially. I made it illegal to release a hog into the wild. Now, that seems, Fox News, that you're of dumb laws that take effect. I made the list, but it wasn't a dumb law in Hickman. You go have some hogs turned out in your backyard.

[00:10:39.120] - Jordan Turnage
Yeah, invasive species.

[00:10:40.300] - Steven Rudy
You will see what's going on. That was one of the first ones that I was involved in. But ever since, as I later became budget chair and really shaping and holding the line that half the master settlement agreement money would continue to be invested in agriculture, I have I've sponsored that bill several times to make sure that agriculture got its half of the money. I've been very involved in the last few years on trying to get a school of veterinary medicine at Murray State. We haven't gotten all the way through the hopper. We did get it all the way through the process.

[00:11:15.970] - Jordan Turnage
It's like Haley's comment. It's like every 30 years we get to bring that back up.

[00:11:19.120] - Steven Rudy
It passed the house this year overwhelmingly, and we fully anticipate the Senate. They wanted to be a little more deliberate and study. The study is out right now to make sure that Kentucky needs a School of Veterinary Medicine, which if the answer is not yes, I'll be like, why do we have three law schools? But whatever.

[00:11:39.370] - Jordan Turnage
Priorities.

[00:11:39.740] - Steven Rudy
Yes.

[00:11:42.510] - Steven Rudy
We're continuing to work on that and just keep agriculture at the focus and work with the farmers and know their needs. Now, I know Commissioner of Agriculture, Jonathan Shell, is going to be on with you in the coming weeks on this podcast, dear friend of mine, and we work with him and his team on helping shape and protect the farmers of Kentucky, shape the policy and protect those farmers.

[00:12:06.510] - Jordan Turnage
How do you see the future of agriculture in Kentucky evolving? What legislative measures are you going to be advocating to support the vision going forward?

[00:12:15.360] - Jordan Turnage
Well, there's a lot of buzz of preserving farmland and making it easier to stay in the family with the generational things and getting more people involved in it. But also, I think, and not to talk all about Commissioner or take his, his story away, but we're working with him right now on really refocusing economic development and making agriculture a key part of economic development. We can raise the best crops. We can raise the best cattle here in Kentucky, but we have got to develop more markets for those products. That can be tied in directly with economic development. I think you're going to see a major push over the next coming years to give the farmers the tools they need and then where we can alongside with helping get their products to market. Now, one of the things that we did this session for the first time ever was invest $15 million of the taxpayer's money into developing our public river ports that we already have in the state, the That was like desperately. Yeah. So they can now take that asset, and that's going to be huge for farmers to help get their products to market.

[00:13:23.170] - Chris Griffin 
Well, you answered a little bit of what my next question was, but talking about some of the biggest challenges for Kentucky's agricultural sector, talking about developing those markets. Is there anything else beside that? Maybe a smaller...

[00:13:36.890] - Steven Rudy
You're talking about issues and challenges.

[00:13:40.310] - Steven Rudy
One of the things is regulation is coming down, mostly from the federal government, and pushing back on that, where we can operate. That's part of the reason our family doesn't make feed anymore. Obama era regulations kicked in after Obama was already gone in 2019 and made it basically where they put independent feed meals out all over the nation with ridiculous standards that, I mean, even higher than what it be for human food. It's just silly things like that that goes on. Agriculture illiteracy is a big problem. 4-h and FFA are so important with that on teaching these kids that milk doesn't come from Kroger. It comes from a cow. Just have those kids experience agriculture any way they can, whether it be a field trip or whatnot, to out to the farm and see how it really works. I think ag education is important, and it doesn't seem to be the same priority because the fact of the matter is we got fewer farmers raising more food than ever.

[00:14:43.810] - Jordan Turnage
That's the point I would make. I feel like the issue that we're running into right now is we're having to make more with less, and they're making the regulations harder every day for us to try to pick your spots.

[00:14:57.360] - Steven Rudy
Look, we got less and less farmland, too. As population grows and people want to, quote, unquote, move out of the city into the country, but they might not want to embrace what really living in the country means. We dealt with this, particularly in the Southern part of the first district, when hogs started coming in and being a major, I don't like the smell.

[00:15:19.660] - Jordan Turnage
I don't want to smell.

[00:15:20.250] - Steven Rudy
Well, okay, go back to the city. I don't want my bacon coming from China.

[00:15:25.650] - Jordan Turnage
No.

[00:15:26.830] - Chris Griffin 
You're talking about the agricultural illiteracy. I think you get on Instagram, you get all these things, and these people, whether it's humanely raising animals and all these different things, the reality is, I think, just like anything else, sometimes the people making the regulations and setting the standards have never actually experienced any of it. I think that's part of the issue.

[00:15:52.840] - Steven Rudy
Look, agriculture is so good at so many things, but getting our message out, sometimes we're not the best at. Marketing or packaging our message for, for instance, genetically modified. Oh, we don't want GMOs. We want all that trial. Well, okay. What if we called it enhanced instead of genetically modified? Oh, yeah, that sounds good then.

[00:16:15.850] - Chris Griffin 
It's buzzword.

[00:16:17.180] - Chris Griffin 
It's just which word sounds best.

[00:16:18.260] - Steven Rudy
And one of my farmers and dear friends, it became so apparent to me. He's like, The same guy that wants me to farm like it's 1920 is the first one in line to get the new iPhone when it comes out.

[00:16:29.520] - Chris Griffin 
Yeah.

[00:16:30.890] - Steven Rudy
Just no sense, no reality. This whole organic way, that's fine. You can have organic. You're still going to have to fertilize it. And I know what organic fertilizer is. Give me synthetic, give me petroleum-based all day long. Yes, sir.

[00:16:46.000] - Jordan Turnage
My dad always joked and said for organic, he doesn't want to pay $6 for an apple. But then you show the picture you see online of the organic corn versus our GMO corn. And it's just, it's all buzzwords.

[00:17:01.040] - Chris Griffin 
I think when you really look at it, you still got to produce for the masses, right? And you've got to make it a food affordable, right?

[00:17:08.360] - Steven Rudy
Yes.

[00:17:09.420] - Chris Griffin 
It's always these influencers or whatever, they're like, well, I just spent $100 and got five items. I'm like, yeah, but the normal person, the average middle-class person can't spend $100 on four items. They got to feed their family. That's where farmers come in, and that's where not putting all these regulations on, making it more expensive for them and more It's so difficult for them is so important.

[00:17:32.110] - Jordan Turnage
When they don't know the price for a gallon of milk.

[00:17:33.830] - Chris Griffin 
That's my soapbox for the day. I'll get off of that.

[00:17:36.060] - Jordan Turnage
Don't get too political in here.

[00:17:37.370] - Steven Rudy
Preach on.

[00:17:39.280] - Jordan Turnage
We touched on ag education. I want to backpedal into that and talk about what programs or partnerships out there that we could promote for engaging young people to get involved in and something that we can push, something that you could maybe preach the word on to us as the boots on the ground for you out here to help out, too.

[00:18:03.380] - Steven Rudy
4-h and FFA, they do a great job for everything from public speaking to parliamentary procedure. Things that I learned in my experience at FFA, I use every day in Frankfort. The Speaker of the House and me both in Kentucky were former state FFA officers. There's probably no other youth organization that can say that they've trained the Speaker of the House and the majority floor leader of the house. Well, I know they can't in Kentucky because we I don't think we were in any other clubs that were the same. But those institutions are so vitally important for helping shape leadership through agriculture education, and they're two of the best.

[00:18:44.990] - Chris Griffin 
I think this wasn't even here on the list, but one thing I wanted to mention is we've got some Murray State grads. Can you go a little bit in-depth about what Murray State means to our community, especially on the ag side? I went to Murray, obviously, I wasn't an ag major, but I know it's a huge part of Murray State. Then where you see... I know your support of Murray State is huge, too. Where that's going, I know the School of Ag. I had the new dean that came to Rotary one day and spoke about the School of Ag and some of the challenges that he's had.

[00:19:16.800] - Steven Rudy
Well, Murray State has got the best ag program in the Commonwealth.

[00:19:22.680] - Jordan Turnage
I would say just about in the Southeast region. I would put them up against Mississippi State and everybody else.

[00:19:28.610] - Steven Rudy
So proud of all those. It's really quite a legacy of excellence that has come through that. It has constantly... And Murray State has ebbed and flowed in enrollment, but Murray State ag has always been on the uptake. I mean, there were years that if the ag program wasn't expanded, Murray State would have been in really bad trouble. But they do a great job. And really, it's a regional type thing. It's the Jackson Purchase and You get into Northwest Tennessee, too. A lot of Murray State graduates through there. But I'm excited about the future of an agriculture. I'm excited about the prospect of getting a School of Veterinary Medicine at Murray. But If that doesn't work out, we were able to make sure the funding's there where we could go in and invest in the vet tech program, too, which there's also a shortage of those, too. Then I think we will look at a policy of, do we want to make it vet techs? Like we've made physician assistants and nurse practitioners where they can go out and do those on-farm visits and write those prescriptions. That's another thing that agriculture's changed.

[00:20:40.180] - Steven Rudy
You used to have to have a prescription for antibiotics, but with regulations being what they are now, we don't sell antibiotics anymore at Rudy's Farm Center. If you got to have a on vet come to your livestock herd and sign off on all that, well, for every short to veterinarians, it's just going to exacerbate the problem even more rapidly.

[00:21:02.630] - Jordan Turnage
Dr. Parr, he's doing a great job there and the whole staff at Murray, and just super proud of him. I'm proud to be a... I always joke and say I love Murray so much. I stayed an extra year.

[00:21:13.820] - Chris Griffin 
The presentation he gave when he presented that about the school bag and the feasibility study was really impressive. I learned, I didn't know much about it at all. He got quite a few questions that day at Rotary. I'll be honest with you. It was very interesting and an exciting time for Murray, if they can get it for sure.

[00:21:33.100] - Jordan Turnage
You're right. As far as variety, I'm a member of Alpha Gamma Row, and we had brothers from all over Illinois, Indiana come in and take their, as someone once told me, my Kentucky purchased education back to Indiana and Illinois and spread that seed to have more folks come back. It's just great to see our little nuke of the world expand the way it is. One thing I'd like to talk about as we're getting things wrapped up here, I just want to highlight for yourself, what do you think was the biggest impact that you've made on the district since you've been in office and something that you really hang your hat on?

[00:22:10.810] - Steven Rudy
Well, since 2020, my colleagues have elected me to be the House Majority Leader, which sounds really great for me, and it's truly an honor to get to do it. But yes, we, as the General Assembly in a body, set public policy, but the Majority Leader gets to decide each day the agenda and set the agenda of what we are voting on, listening to the other leaders, the speaker, the whip, and all that, plus the members. But to be in that room and to help shape those things and be the one that sets the policy and sets the agenda of what we vote on. At the end of the day, also, where the state resources go. We had not had a member of majority leadership from the Jackson Purchase since Julian Carroll was speaker of the House.

[00:23:03.890] - Jordan Turnage
That goes back a ways.

[00:23:06.280] - Steven Rudy
That goes back a long time. Yeah, he was governor when I was born. To be there and to really educate the people in that room where all the big, big decisions are made and then brought to the membership to vote. It's not lost on me how important that is to our region as a whole.

[00:23:27.620] - Steven Rudy
It's beyond the five counties of the first house district. It's also Graves, Marshall, Calloway. Because I'm going to tell you, we have to think more regional. We've got a really good team of representatives in the House and in the Senate that our priorities are If it's good for Mayfield, it's good for Hickman. If it's good for Bardwell, it's good for Paducah. To have that impact and influence is so important. This year was a great, great session. We had about a billion dollars extra money that we wouldn't normally have. And politicians are really good at spending the taxpayers money, sometimes unwisely. But we held the line. We went in with West Kentucky values and we said, look, we're going to get our fair share. Everybody's going to get their fair share, but we're not going to start a bunch of new programs. We're going to do one-time expenditures, and we're not going to spend all this money. But we were able to secure a half a billion dollars to come into these eight counties. Money that we've never seen before. Plus, we didn't spend it all. We saved enough, and the state as a whole's financial footing is greater.

[00:24:38.610] - Steven Rudy
We have the healthiest budget reserve trust fund or rainy day fund in the country. Now, we don't have the most in it, but we don't have the biggest budget either in the country. But percentage of budget, we have the healthiest in the country. When I became budget chair in 2017, our budget reserve trust fund was zero. Now we have the healthiest one. When a tornado comes through Mayfield, we've got the cash there from the state that we can spend that money. Now, we did all that. We saved money, we invested in one-time money, and we paid down pension debt. We're talking about millions of dollars, billions since 2017, that we have dumped into paying down unfunded liability and pensions. You know what? We also budgeted to where we pass a trigger bill to eliminate the personal income tax in Kentucky. We're going to be able to hit those triggers. And next year, the personal income tax will drop to three and a half %. From four, it was six in 2017. So we're getting close to cutting that in half in just a very short period of time. But when you have extra money, what do we do in West Kentucky, in our households, in our businesses?

[00:25:48.520] - Steven Rudy
We pay down debt. We invest in things that we need. We don't start new subscriptions. And we save. And you know what? We took those values and I said, why don't we run the state like people run their households? It's different amounts of money. I mean, a billion dollars will change any of our lives here.

[00:26:10.670] - Chris Griffin 
Oh, yeah.

[00:26:11.250] - Steven Rudy
But it's $250 million dollars of rounding there in Frankfort when you look at the receipts that come in. To be able to do that and just extrapolate it out and run the state like we run our households in Kentucky, it just makes sense.

[00:26:28.250] - Chris Griffin 
That leads into a great I'll save the last question. We'll start wrapping it up is, for your next legislative session, what are your top priorities and what are you hoping to see?

[00:26:40.570] - Steven Rudy
I try to start a session with themes. We got 138 individuals that all have a lot of good ideas, and some of them are really good ideas, and some of them are like, Oh, man, Kentucky's made it since 1792 without that idea. Maybe we can make it another year. I think my theme for 25 will be lowering. We want to focus on things we can lower. We might have to lower some expectations of some irrational people. But one of the things we want to lower is the taxes, certainly. We hit the trigger. We're going to house Bill 1, in all likelihood, will be to take an affirmative action to lower the personal income tax in Kentucky again. And then the other thing, and this one's exciting and new, is we want to lower the driver's license age. Yeah, why would we do that? We're the only state in the south that doesn't allow you to get a driver's license until you're 16 and a half. I have no idea.

[00:27:28.150] - Chris Griffin 
That's a...

[00:27:28.520] - Steven Rudy
16 and a half. Why? You get your license at 16, right? No, you can't get your permit until you're 16 in Kentucky. Every other state in the south, you can get your permit at 15, and then you get your license when you turn 16. Now, some parents say, Well, I don't want my kids to do that. We're not going to say you have to. We're saying you can.

[00:27:45.630] - Chris Griffin 
It's still their choice.

[00:27:47.220] - Steven Rudy
It's still their choice. Interestingly enough, funny story behind the thing. When I got my permit, I had it for a month. That wasn't long enough. You turned 16, you had a permit for a month, and a month later, you were driving anywhere in America. Well, there was a state representative from over in East Kentucky, as I like to say, all Kentucky is East Kentucky to me. But this is far East, Kentucky. Kind of like Eastern versus West. He's on the Virginia board.

[00:28:17.630] - Chris Griffin 
He's way over there.

[00:28:18.010] - Steven Rudy
He had two kids, and one of them, the oldest one, had had a bunch of wrecks after a month long permit. He didn't think it was long enough. So he sponsored a bill before his son came along to make it six months instead of just a month. That son will tell you he was the most unpopular kid in school because his dad changed that law. And that son is now a state representative. He's following his daddy's footsteps steps, and he wants to undo dad's legacy and make his kids popular. That's hilarious. That's very interesting. He's working. A representative of Bouland from East Kentucky. That's a great story, actually. They're both working on that.

[00:28:54.440] - Chris Griffin 
He's like, I'm going to undo that law that my dad put me on.

[00:28:56.890] - Steven Rudy
We're actually not undoing it. We're going to-

[00:28:59.990] - Chris Griffin 
Modify.

[00:29:00.230] - Steven Rudy
That's what we're just modifying.

[00:29:01.190] - Chris Griffin 
That's exactly it. Just modifying. That's the good buzzword. Just modifying.

[00:29:05.210] - Steven Rudy
So lowering. Lowering is what we're looking at next year, and hopefully, lowering some regulations, if need be, that anybody brings us that they consider burdensome.

[00:29:14.080] - Jordan Turnage
That's great. Awesome. Well, Mr. Steven, thank you so much for coming in here today, giving us this time. I really appreciate it. You've given us some really great insight, and we thank you so much for being the voice for us out here, out West. I'm a transplant, but I'm a firm believer and plan on setting my roots here pretty deep and staying in Kentucky. I appreciate you and just being the voice of everybody out here at district one. We thank you so much for all that you do for us.

[00:29:39.540] - Steven Rudy
Thank you guys for what you do, and I appreciate River Valley Ag and what they mean to our community and agriculture as a whole. Thank you all.

[00:29:46.190] - Steven Rudy
Yes, sir. We got to be with you as you go into this next year and be with your family and everything else, too. For that, guys and gals, we thank you so much for listening to us here, the Back to your Roots podcast. For Chris, I'm Jordan. Thanks for listening.

[00:29:58.130] - Chris Griffin 
Thanks for tuning in to Back to your Roots, where we dish the dirt on all things ag. Be sure to never miss an episode by following and subscribing. While there, leave us a review about what you want to hear next. Stay in the know between episodes by following us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. For more resources, go to our website at rivervalleyagcredit.com.