Latest / The County Line / The County Line Podcast: Ep. 18

Transcript

The County Line Podcast: Ep. 18 · The County Line

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to the County Line Podcast, production of the Tulsa County Board of County Commissioners.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Kelly Dunkerly, County Commissioner.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another edition of County Line Podcast, where we're talking to audience out there, Tulsa County, and other people who want to know what's going on in our county, what's going on in county government.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And today I have the distinct honor of welcoming a United States senator who's in Tulsa and spending some time in Tulsa and also around the state.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just an honor to have you, to have you carve out some of your time to come visit us and speak to our audience.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we'll get into a couple of issues here, but again, I think you're the highest ranking official that we've ever had at Tulsa County at our broadcast studio.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for carving out.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, glad to be here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, glad to be able to be here in the conversation.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful place and great setup, very useful for the county.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we want to get our news out, things about our county, but we also want to bring guests who can talk about the broader world.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And again, who better than the United States Senator to talk about some of the issues that are happening?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get into that, you know, I'd really like to give the opportunity to tell our audience a little bit about yourself, you know, kind of your background and, you know, a little bit about your family, because I want people to know who you are as a person before we get into the issues in the United States Senate.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny people know you by the title of senator or commissioner or whatever it is, but there's a real person in the background on that.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the same for me as well.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I have been married 34 years, which is not long enough.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we are still adding to that every year and very excited to be able to do that.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have two daughters, Hannah and Jordan.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Hannah is 29 and is on a church staff and loves just loving on people and sharing the truth of Christ uh with them.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my youngest daughter, Jordan, uh, is 26, is married, and has uh a job working with uh behavioral health uh juveniles, actually, and trying to be able to help kids that are having a really hard time.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so she serves them as a therapist and uh and loves getting a chance to be able to love on some kids and to be able to help those, especially those kids that are really, really struggling.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's kind of family, no dog, no anything else.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our dog passed away several years ago.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's just us and um we we really do enjoy getting a chance to be able to serve the state.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh many people know I was a youth pastor for 22 years, served as the director of False Creek in the past, and um, we just enjoy getting a chance to be able to both serve God, serve our neighbor, and figure out what we can do to be able to help some pretty complicated issues we're facing as a nation.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's so good to hear that background, you know, and understand, you know, you do you're a real person, you come from a real family, you you have a real family, and you have a background in ministry and uh the camp you mentioned, and you know, there's a there's a background there of of experience uh that you bring to service to our country.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I would mention that you were first elected to Congress in, I believe, 2011.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Later on, uh you moved to the US the United States Senate on in 2014.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you've you've been in Washington for a while and you've seen a few things, you've seen a few presidents come and go and one come back.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, that's a that's an environment that's very different from Oklahoma.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Could you tell us just a little bit about serving in the in Washington, DC and what's that like representing Oklahomans in Washington?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to tell you uh D DC is a very different place than any place in Oklahoma.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it is it is a weird place.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, they don't have Brahms there.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody's in a bad mood because there's no Brahms.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: If we had Brahms there, everybody'd be in a better mood.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it's just the challenge of trying to be able to put people together from all different perspectives around the country into one tight place and to have to figure out how do you solve these hard problems.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I joke with people all the time, but it's really true.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pick the people I work with.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Other people pick the people I have to work with.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to figure out how to be able to work with them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they come with a perspective just like I do, and just like we have a perspective as a state, they walk into their with their perspective of their state, and then we have to figure out how to be able to solve national problems.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's that's the nature of the task.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So some of that is just conversation, getting into know each other, uh, pushing past just the obvious and to say, okay, but what do you really care about?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those are things where you have to figure out how do we solve some of the hard things?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, give you an example, permitting right now.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we we we are very slow as a nation to be able to actually permit new things.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're short on energy refining, we're short on hard rock mining.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our roads take way too long and are very expensive to be able to build a county road, uh, the exact same mile on a county road versus a federal road, maybe four or five times as much as on a federal road.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference is the permitting costs on it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we've got to be able to figure that out.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: That just requires people that disagree in different areas to sit down and say, okay, we all agree this is a problem.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: This shouldn't be this way.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do we solve this?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's issues like that that just force you to be able to talk to people that you would normally disagree with and say, I don't want to be with them, but that's not your choice when you're in Gars.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you got to sit down with people you disagree with and figure it out.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a great life learning because you know, in some of the work background that I've had a similar way, I think you say it very well.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: You you we don't often get to choose who we work with.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's true in the work environment for most people, and we have to find a way to work with people that normally maybe we wouldn't associate with, but we have a common goal.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, as United States Senator, I you know I want to just move into you have very weighty responsibilities when it comes to finance, when it comes to international affairs, intelligence, and all you know, we we want to take an opportunity to talk to the senator to talk about some of these bigger global issues, and there might be a few things that uh you can share that we may not know that you can share and let us know what those perspectives are like.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it is uh it is challenging because every day when you're in the Senate, you're dealing with education and environment, you're dealing with transportation issues, you're dealing with international policy, you're dealing with homeland security threats, you all all those things are everyday.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it's just a wide variety of issues to take on.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um just about everybody wants to talk to me about gas prices now and the price of diesel, which rightfully so.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's terrible what we're facing right now.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's really a a challenge that we have on the amount of refining capacity that we have.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of this is a loss of capacity in the United States because we're not permitting new places.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh California, for instance, doesn't want to fossil fuels at all, so they've shut down two refineries uh just in the past 12 months.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we're losing refining capacity here in the United States.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the three places that produce the most diesel in the world is the United States, Russia, and the Persian Gulf countries.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've got a war in two of those, uh, and the United States is closing down refineries in some places, and so we we're struggling with the price issues.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so this this is an issue that we have to be able to work on.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very complicated.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't want to just put up a refinery anywhere and any place, but we are gonna need energy and we do truck things, and we do have buses and planes, and we need jet fuel and all those things, and we're gonna need that for a very, very long time.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so this challenge of how do you do new construction, what do you need to do, and how do you balance that out with global conflicts that are also happening?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, no one I talk to says it's a good idea for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody agrees that's a bad idea.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's a regime that abuses its own people and attacks the countries all around it and threatens the United States all the time.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a bad idea for them to have a nuclear weapon because they're crazy enough to use it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But saying that, it's a lot more complicated than it is.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you stop somebody that's actually researching and work towards having a nuclear weapon that is a real threat to you?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do you stop a country without getting us into a full-scale war, which we don't want to have?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: No one wants to have.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so a lot of the work that I do in the intelligence is how do we actually get the information to be able to make good decisions so that we can have their perspective?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do we know more about the threat that we're actually facing and how advanced they are in their nuclear program?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we do spend a lot of time in those areas trying to be able to figure out how do we get in front of policymakers the right kind of information to be able to make good, strong decisions so we don't drift into a conflict that we shouldn't be in, uh, or to be able to um uh ignore an issue that we wish we would have paid attention to if Iran creates a nuclear weapon, puts it on a ship, and drives it right into New York Harbor and detonates it.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's eight million people that died that day.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we we can't have that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what what do you do and try to be able to bounce that out?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I think we've seen this for months now, and everybody's grappling with this, and I'm glad to know that you're in there talking about that with all the different experts and and knowing that, and you know, knowing that we didn't want that nuclear capability to happen with around, but tough tough to work on it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's tough to balance it out.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: The consequences that were happening doing this in an election year, there's just all kinds of implications that make it interesting.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, to to kind of summarize that, are you optimistic that we might get to a point where you know we'll get to the other side of those those challenges in the next 12 months?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we have to.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that that's our part.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just keep working on it and you have to.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: You we're we're we're talking.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you go back um three years ago, we weren't talking to the Iranians at all.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a regime that's been around for 50 years.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: They've oppressed their own people, they've murdered their own people, left their bodies in the street, they intimidate their own folks.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our issue is not with the Iranian people.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not our problem.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the regime that dominates them and tries to attack all of us as well.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're trying to figure out how to be able to manage.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So for 45 years or so, they were just screaming death to America.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: They took hostages.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody remembers in 1979 that was around during that time period.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: They've attacked our troops in the region.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've had hundreds of attacks against Americans that were from Iran and its proxies towards us.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: They've been picking at us for a long time, but now they're building towards having a nuclear weapon to say, now we're not going to pick at you anymore.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're really going to go after you.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's what's really changed in the last two or three years is their movement from we're considering a nuclear weapon to actually the work to build it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's changed everything and how we have to deal with a regime that's no longer picking at us.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're planning to kill us in large numbers.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And once you come to those, that reality, it it explains what happened.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it gets harder to where we are and why it's such a difficult situation.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for your service on those issues.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: These are big issues at the international stage, and um it takes smart people to find the right path, uh the wisdom, and people of faith.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: We we appreciate that.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'll take it kind of a little bit full circle there is that that's the international stage, and you've got to work on that, but also you do a good job of touring our state, paying attention to our state, visiting our state, coming back here often when you can.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you're all over the state.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And one project I want to just highlight, you know, you helped so tremendously with us getting a grant uh through through the FEMA uh organization, almost$9 million to redo a garden at 101st.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the example of you know local, on-the-ground, transformational uh projects that really help people in their daily life.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the other spectrum of serving in the city.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I represent four million people, and we all have ideas about international policy, but we think first about home.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we think about.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: We think about our own families, we think about how to get to school.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that particular intersection is one of those intersections like I can't get my kids to school.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not safe.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to drive all the way around.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are challenges that are there on it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So for us to be able to find a way to be able to get a competitive grant that's a federal grant to come match what the county's already doing and to be able to get things done, that's I think it's what people expect government to do.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, people expect us to have good roads.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: They expect us to be able to have the lights on, they expect us to be able to uh get the trash picked up and all those basic things that have law enforcement.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those are key aspects that everybody's looking for.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you miss one of those, people notice it right away.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's a bridge in Southern Oklahoma that we're working on right now.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a grant for as well, called the Roosevelt Bridge.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody's been down to Lake Texoma and been through that area around Medill, they know it's a very dangerous bridge.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Roosevelt Bridge because it was built during the Roosevelt administration.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's a very old, very long, very dangerous bridge that we're finally replacing that thing.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so there's some of those things.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: We I I'm working a lot right now on water.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Every single community that I talk to, it's the single biggest issue is how are we going to deal with future needs for water, especially when they're cleaning the water and trying to deliver it to the house and realize the pipes between the purification of the water to the delivery are so leaky.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really big expensive issue that has to be resolved.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent a lot of time with local officials and state officials saying, how are we actually going to get a plan to make sure we don't have these leaky pipes all over the place?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it that says it all, you know, from water, just drinking water, uh, wastewater, all those types of things, local level streets, they're all in critical uh need.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are people that use them every day, but also recognizing we have all these levels of government sometimes that are involved in in the case of this intersection 100 First and Garden.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: We had local, city, federal, all coming together, all doing their piece.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, when it comes to water, so much of that is federal, federal or state.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's local.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, thank you for your understanding of those levels, uh, what the federal government can and can't do, and what it should and shouldn't do, but also that local match needs to be there, that local leadership needs to be there in order for the federal government to come in.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because if they don't don't work together, it really doesn't work.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, your opinion, your attention to detail and your staff, the your research's grants, that's so important to us and very useful to the local leaders.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you've been been there for a while, your staff's been there for a while.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh hats off to you all and what you're doing and how you do it and how accessible you are to local leaders so we can find those best solutions.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, appreciate that.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is just trying to be able to serve people as you are as well, uh, because there are a lot of roles that are the county's responsibility, and there's also a federal responsibility, but there's also at times a connection between the two where you got to be able to actually have good communication to be able to get things resolved.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I know you have a tight schedule, you know, you're spanning the entire state, you're spanning from our state to Washington, and I know you travel internationally because of your responsibility.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a big deal.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's a it's a it's a heavy responsibility, but you take it on, you take it on with cheer, you take it on with good faith, and your family supports you.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we pray for you.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: We we want you to have the strength in your family to do well, and thank you for you know making time for us locally to explain a few things, talking to our audience.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's so important for us to have that type of interaction.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I do appreciate that very much and do continue to be able to pray for the nation.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of needs and issues there.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are folks that just want to complain about the problems, and there are folks that say, let's engage and see if we can figure out how to fix it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I always like hanging out with the people that want to fix the problem, not just gripe about it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to gripe about it, much harder work to fix it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's dig in and fix it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Pull together.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you again, Senator Lankford.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Kelly Dunkerly, Tulsa County Commissioner, uh, signing off for another edition of the Tulsa County Podcast, or you know, that we've been doing for some time now.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you for joining us, and you can follow us on all our social media channels.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.