Latest / CrossPolitic Show / How To Reclaim Local Politics
Transcript
- Hey, all welcome to Cross Balls at Quarantone with the Water Boy. It's good to be with you this Monday. Make sure you guys go to FightLabFace.com, sign up for our conference. It is October 1 through the third FightLabFace.com topic this year's Holy Wars. We got Joe Rigny, Joe Boo, Pastor Wilson, Pastor Toby, Pastor George Grant. We have a whole host of, obviously, FightLabFace activities going on. We are very excited for the conference. We will have in our pre-visits makers conference. It will be that Thursday afternoon before the conference starts and everything. So make sure you sign up for that. The sponsor for our show today is Patriot Mobile. Now, normally I have an ad for Patriot Mobile to read. And I do, but I'm actually not going to do it because what I want to do is encourage you guys to switch yourself over to Patriot Mobile and go to patreonmobile.com forward slash Cross-Politik or if you just call them, tell them Cross-Politik, send you. And I've been switching our cell phones over Patriot Mobile from Cross-Politik over to Patriot Mobile. Actually, my phone is now over there at Patriot Mobile. I have a couple lingering contracts left with AT&T. Patriot Mobile has been awesome. They're a Christian company. Their customer service is all in the United States. If you need to move your whole company over, I mean, it's very, it's been, they've been great to work with on doing that process. So, you know, go to patreonmobile.com forward slash Cross-Politik. Bring your whole company over there. There's solid Christian, cell phone company. And I've really enjoyed working with them and all that jazz. So get over there. Verizon, AT&T doesn't matter. The wheel will take care of you and all that. My guest today is Aaron Miller. He's a public administrator, researcher, military veteran and civic leaders who is working on the ground in the Christian moral tradition and commitment to order liberty. He's a nationalist, institutional integrity and responsible self-government. He's involved in, I'll have him actually given a little more bio here. He's involved in a couple different things. But including, he's county commissioner and I'm probably going to butcher the name of the county. Marin County, Tennessee. So Aaron, thank you so much for coming on Cross-Politik 101 with me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, Murray County, everybody gets it wrong. So we kind of use it to figure out who's the transplant and who's native. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Say it again. Say it again. Murrin. Murray. Yeah, like Bill Murray. Okay, Murray County. I thought it was Marin because there's a Marin County in Tennessee in there. There's Marion County. So most folks here, if they're not from the local area, they'll say, Murray, but it is pronounced Murray. It's a whole historical thing. Okay. My bad. I actually thought it was a different county. Murray County. So where's that relationship to Nashville? Because that's what everyone knows in Tennessee. Yeah, it's about an hour south of Nashville. If you come straight down the the interstate corridor, you'll hit Brentwood Franklin Spring Hill and then you're in Murray County and the sea is Columbia where I list. Okay. So you're one of the cities in your county's Columbia. Yes. Okay. Do you know Chris Wang? I do know Chris. Chris is great. And Chris is fantastic. Okay. Awesome. And so you're also involved in like this Christian state craft organization. What are you? What what's that about? What are you doing there? Yeah, so that's a nonprofit that a couple of friends and I stood up in January. And so the ultimate goal sort of the tip of the spear is building out a training program for young Christian men to get involved in the political space. We firmly believe that as Christians, we have an obligation to be involved in politics because ultimately politics touches everything else in our lives, whether we like it or not, that is how it is. And so we believe that it's not whether a world view is going to be involved in governance. It's which and we'd rather it be ours. And there are a couple of support operations going on behind the scenes. There's supports the training model. But yeah, that's our main goal right now. We had a killer event in April Congressman Annie, Ogles, Dr. Steven Wolf, William Wolf, and Pastor Andrew Isker. We're all there. Had a great Q&A session and some good speeches. So it was a great launch. And right now we're looking to sort of spread the message and get folks on board and to get get them into training. Yeah, yeah. And I want to talk more about some county politics here in a minute, but also you have military background. You want to kind of give me give me a little overview of your bio basically. Sure. Yeah. So it's been 12 years on active duty. I was a weapons troops loaded the munitions on the aircraft, maintained the weapon systems. It wasn't really what I wanted to do, but it's what the Air Force wanted me to do. So I did that for a while. I got some school done. And then when I got out, I went to the Air National Guard and served as an education and training specialist and certified instructor. So that's kind of part the impetus for creating the Institute. But yeah, did that for several years and very proud of my service. And along the way, it's helped me pay for a lot of schooling. So I got a couple of master's degrees and I'm finishing a doctorate now. Okay. And then you from there ended up back in Murray County or decided to move to Murray County. Like what brought you to where you're at now? Yeah. So I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So more along the Tennessee Georgia border. And of course, while I was in Chattanooga, just grew and grew and grew and grew. And so by the time I got out, most of my family is sort of migrated closer to Nashville. And we wanted to be close to families and a wife and I started having children of our own. And Columbia ended up being the place. She transferred out of her out of her job when she was about seven months pregnant with her first. She said, I want to stay at home. And I said, okay, we'll figure it out. But the job opening that she transferred to was sort of the main motivation for us planning in Columbia. But we love it here. We want to raise our children here and et cetera. And so, do you, so your County Commissioner at Murray County, do you do anything? Is it a full, is that a full time job or do you, what else do you do for work? Great question. So it's not a full time role in this varies quite a bit. For example, in Florida, they have a different structure for their county commissions and city council. So some of our part time, my part time role is the County Commissioner. It's a couple of meetings a month. And then those meetings might be an hour and a half. They might be four or five. It, who knows, depending on the agenda. But full time I work in IT for a social media platform. It's interesting work. It helps pay the bills and keeps my life at home where their kids. Yeah, very cool. And so, man, young family, you decided to run for Commissioner. And then you won. It's one thing to run. And then you actually win. And you're now you got to fulfill your duties. What, what made you get into politics, you know, as such a young, with the, such a young family and still kind of building your career and all that stuff. Well, I've always had a drive for politics, you know, growing up, I'd ride around with my dad and listen to, you know, Rush Limbaugh and kind of all the older commentators. And dad was always really good about asking me critical questions. What do you think about what they're talking about and sort of having those, those lengthy or challenging discussions. And, but of course, while I was active duty, you can't touch, you can't touch politics. It's, it's actually, it is a military member. You're not allowed to do that. So, but I always knew that's what I wanted to get into. So as soon as I got out, what started going to local to you, a p meetings, you know, sort of finding out who's who and I said, I want to run for office. And initially, what I was told was, so at this point, I was 31 years old over a decade in active duty as an Occupational Officer, combat tours, et cetera, finishing my first master's degree. And they said, you're too young and you're too inexperienced. And I went, okay, I like going to what are you looking for here. But I read the bylaws and sort of dug in deep on the state level rules for the party. And I said, there's nothing they can do to stop me. I'm going to go and put my hat in the ring. And so I did. And Murray County is a deep red county. And so if you win the primary or the caucus, it's, you're probably just going to win the general. So strategy does come into play quite a bit when you're talking about campaigning. But yeah, it was very much like, okay, well, I've got an underground and polypsi and finishing an adjacent advanced degree. Like, that's probably going to get got a good handle on this. And it just shows that God has a sense of humor because you get in there and you're like, oh, that's not how it works at all. So it's been a, it's been an educational experience. And so Murray County conservative county in largely conservative state. You become county commissioner. What are some of the, I mean, I guess what is first, first, what are some of the issues that you actually won on? Yeah. So the main thing here is is growth. That's the big issue has been for years now. Murray County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state among the fastest in the country. And so the major issue is we got all these people that want to move here. They, they probably work in Nashville. Some of them drive down to Huntsville for work. But that puts, puts pressure on our housing market, our infrastructure, our natural resources. Obviously, there's a cultural shift. All of these sort of second and third order consequences that most people don't consider when it comes to growth. So for example, hey, there's more cars on the road. There's more traffic. It your, your commutes in Nashville is going to be a lot longer. You know, all these different things that the hospital, the ER is going to be more packed. And when it comes to things like infrastructure, the top three expenditures on the county level are going to be roads, schools and waste management, not necessarily in that order. So for example, law enforcement, your city government might have a police department, but your county government is going to have a sheriff's department. But with something like schools, that's almost never the case. The county has to deal with has to provide that infrastructure and that service for people in and outside of the cities. And so that puts a greater tax burden and expenditure burden on the county government. And so that's always been a point of concern. We've, we've tried to push impact fees, which is essentially where if you have a developer coming in, they want to put down 500, 800 homes. And let's say you's one of those families that move in, have a kid. Well, that's, that's another school. That's going to be $70 million. So impact fees would obligate that developer to give a tiny percentage of their profits directly to the county to offset some of those costs. And don't want to get into the weeds too quickly, but the state controls a lot of those things. So one of the major lessons I learned was the county has less direct authority than you might imagine, because the state government can always step in and say, no, no, no, no, we're going to tell you how to handle that. You can do this other stuff. So and then of course, the state level, you have developers, special interest groups, lobbyists, etc. that kill bills that disadvantage them. So that was a mate. That was a big one. I sort of inadvertently stumbled into the culture war around the same time they launched my campaign, although they, they were not associated. But there was, there was pornography in the local library that was being pushed on kids. And this was sort of happening in murder. Yeah, yeah, it's in this was sort of before this became more of a national topic. So I missed the boat on that. But yeah, I shut that down. There were several months of me being docks and I'm being threatened. My child's being threatened. But and that became an ongoing battle for the next several years to hold the people of the library board accountable. And unfortunately, as deep red as the county as we are, there are a lot of conservatives or Republicans that value their personal friendships locally or they value security or or not rocking the boat over their principles. And so I've been fighting, you know, our own side and almost as much as I've been fighting left on issues like that. Right. Now in this conversation, I like this. You know, obviously local politics is the most important thing we should be focusing on. And I got some other things I want to say to that as we as we get going in this conversation. But I, there's constantly the conversation of what is and what you're currently dealing with. And the cards on the on the table right now versus what ought to look like and what ought to be, especially as Christians. Yes. So versus is versus what is ought. You know, and you can talk about, you know, property taxes. What is what ought to talk about roads, public schools. You just, you just touched on, you know, kind of state authority versus county authority. You know, what is versus what ought kind of kind of stuff. And it was kind of like a broad question. But how do you think about that as a county commissioner, you're newer into this. This is your first term. Yeah. How what do you like you come in with this ideal like I'm going to do this, this, this. And then, and then you realize it's a different ballgame state has more authority here than you thought or whatever. I don't know. I guess how are you thinking about kind of that process? What is versus ought, you know, that kind of conversation. Yeah. I think an important framework for that is reformer versus revolutionary or radical, if you will. So a radical wants to push for dramatic change. They're probably willing to take more drastic or aggressive action in certain ways. Whereas a reformer is more incremental. Well, let's get a little bit done where we can as we can. And be a little bit more strategic, a little bit more tactical, and how we get those things done. So for me, I've sort of adapted on the fly and taken both approaches in some regards. So for example, with with the library, it was absolutely not we're not doing this. I call it for the library director to resign. I called for the library board to answer for why this happened. And you know, so I was a bit more aggressive in that approach. In things like impact fees or different resolutions on the county level, it's a little bit more of the reformer side because you have to build coalitions in that regard. You have to figure out, well, what is everyone's agenda? What are everyone's interests here? And how can we align those? And so we can form a minimum winning coalition and sort of move the ball down the field rather than going for a Hail Mary. I mean, would it basically another category or another way of kind of categorizing this would it be kind of difference between like, yeah, morally, you're in one sense, almost a radical. Like no, no porn and libraries. Yeah, we shouldn't be a big ass like, yeah, you would say that. And we shouldn't be that radical, right? So morally, it's like, yeah, it's more of a it's not an incremental thing. It's like, no, we need to stop doing this. But when it comes to like infrastructure taxes, although taxes some taxes can be moral issue. Sure. Would that be kind of like another way of looking at this like morally, we need to say no, and we need to stop doing bad things and moral things. But when it comes to road schools, all this other stuff, all the public schools can be moral issue too. Yeah, I don't know. Sure. Yeah. So I think what it comes to things like expenditures when you're going through the budget, things like that. It's more about good governance. What is good governance? And so I mean, you can look back at you know, Cicero and the ancient and a lot of these guys wrote extensively about, well, how do we define good governance? So a great example is an offer was was proper for discussion at the county commission to freeze property taxes for seniors. And this sounds good and is politically advantageous for a lot of people. But I made the argument and it's probably an unpopular one that well, at least among certain cohorts, that that's a bad idea because you're not, you're not mitigating the tax burden. You're just shifting it to younger people. Younger people that are already having a hard time affording a home, starting families, doing all these different things. So, you know, just sort of like breaking those things down and because obviously older folks are the most active voter block voting cohort. And so it's politically advantageous to pursue something like that, but it's not good governance when you're you're burdening, you're shifting the tax burden to another cohort in order to advantage a singular cohort. So things like that. And again, I would argue that that's also a moral issue. But looking at what are the long term consequences of this and will it ultimately be good for the county for my district for the people that are representing. And so yeah, I think it is you have to find a balance between there are moral issues. There are also questions of just objective efficacy and things like that. What I would roughly define as good governance. How did that argument go for you? The older generation frustrated with you or did it end up happening again and getting passed or. No, so the conversation or basically the discussion was withdrawn. And that's kind of the end of it. So I was a little bit surprised that it that it was that easy. But that is a conversation that's going on in a lot of localities and even states across the country. So something like Florida, the invention before where they're talking about abolishing property taxes altogether. I think that's great if they can pull it off economically and maintain their revenue obligations expenditures. But because it's going to be applied equally across the board, I would say if you can pull it off, that's good governance. So yeah, county property taxes. Let's get in that a little bit. Yeah. I think there's a number of issues here. And in the Christians, we just need to be I think thinking Christians about this. And not just think about I think I think property taxes are just wicked and sinful just straight up. It's a it's a wicked form of taxation, the the actual structure of it. But then there's also, you know, one of the things that I want to see, I would love to see property taxes and Idaho in my lifetime go away. Yeah. But with that, I also want to see, I want the power of politics to be as local as possible. Yes. And I want the responsibility of that power in the politics to be local as possible. And I want, you know, the roads, the, you know, all the local decisions. To be all the decisions that happen, whether they're at the state level or not, but they affect my roads or they affect, you know, are, you know, schools, whatever. I want that to become a local decision. I want the governor of Idaho to have the least amount of authority of what happens here locally in my town. That's right. And just, you know, just to kind of describe it, which means the taxation that I would like to see, as I would like to see basically all taxes collected at the county level. And then a percentage of that taxes get kicked up to the state for our state, because I believe the governor role in the state is a legitimate role in it, you know, follow law of lesser magistrates. And then there's a number of things that gets into states rights, you know, so I would love to see the, you know, the county clicked all taxes. So I'm in LaTaw County, you're in Murray County, in Tennessee. I would love to see Murray County clicked all the taxes. And then kick, you know, I don't know, 10, 20% up to the state, but everything else stays local. Yes. Yeah. So before we even get to the property tax conversation, structure of it, I think actually really matters. Go ahead. Yes. Yeah. So that's not dissimilar from how the federal and state governments operated at our founding, and certainly after the constitution, you know, did away from the federal's paper, sorry, I'm not a federal's paper see articles and confederation. But yeah, originally it was the vast majority of the property, or excuse me, all taxes would be collected at the local level. And some of that would be funneled up to the federal government. And then a lot of things were also revenue is provided through tariffs and things like that. But it was a much more decentralized governance model. And the 10th amendment of the constitution, not that we exercise it as much as we should anymore. But at least in the mid-term amendment. Yeah. Well, so the 10th amendment, the amendment essentially outlines precisely what the responsibilities of the federal government are. And then says anything outside of this is up to the states or the people, which is generally interpreted as the local government. And so I think what all of our states could benefit from would be a 10th amendment, something akin to the 10th amendment that provides that protection between the state and locality as well. Yeah. That lots of state governments aren't going to like that idea, but in order to achieve what you're talking about, that's essentially what we'd have to do. That would get us a long way there. Yeah, no, once you have power centralized, it's really hard to push it back down. Yes. But I think actually the way we, so if I'm arguing that I think is much power as possible, should be as much local as is as local as possible. And the responsibility with that power should be as local as possible also. If I'm arguing for that, and that includes, and I think that necessitates that the money that control the money has to be as local as possible. Yes. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, some sort of state 10th amendment kind of order of authority, order of politics should be happening in the state level. Basically saying what the states, the governor's office has can do this and this and this and everything else to reserve to the county. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that's how it should be. I think we'd be much more efficient. The closer the power is to the people, the more accountability there is. One of the other things that sort of blends all of these things together between the federal and state and local and state and local are things like grants, like block grants. So on the federal level, they collect all of our income taxes and then they decide how it's distributed down to states and localities. And there was a Supreme Court case. I think it was Doddby, US in 1981. And so essentially, I know Doddby, South Dakota, North Dakota. So one of the Dakotas wanted to increase their speed limits on the highway. And highway is state jurisdiction. And so they said, hey, there's nothing out here. You can see 100 miles in every direction. It'll be fine if we crank it up to 75 or whatever it was at the time. And the federal government said, well, you can do that, but we're going to withhold your block grants or your funding for your highways. And they said, you can't attach strings to this. And so when I put the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said, yes, they can. And so that allows for a lot more uncontrolled and unaccountable authority to the federal government in relation to states and localities. And it's the same thing with state and state between state and local governments as well. They can do the same thing and they do. Yeah. So how do you think like, obviously what we're talking about is like kind of like a discipleship play a long term play. Like how do we get our people to start thinking, hey, yeah, we need to bring back the authority of politics to the local localities, especially at the county level, what I'd argue for. You know, how do you kind of think through that as a kind of commission where you're in this, this gets into the, again, the what is versus the what ought. Yes. Yeah, it's tough because when you look at this is pretty consistent across the board voter turnout. So in local primaries, you might be looking at between eight, you know, six to 10% and then general, it's more like eight to 13%. For local elections, unless it falls on, you know, coincides with the federal election, then, then obviously have close to 56% ish. So the key to all of this is how do we activate voters? And you've always got the sort of the hot, hot button issues that everybody comes out for something like pornography and the library or, or all these different curriculums in our local schools that we disagree with. Everybody gets really excited and amped up about that and they'll go out and vote for or against it. But then after that, it kind of dies back down and a lot of folks go dormant. I think the long term play here is, is as leaders in the community and I've made the case before even even pastors need to take a more active role in promoting civic engagement and voting is the absolute bare minimum. You should be showing up to your local, whether it's your political parties meetings or tertiary groups like the other publicans or what have you grassroots organizations. I think we've got very comfortable with, well, we're going to go to church on Wednesday and Sunday and we're going to close the church doors and we're going to pretend like the outside world doesn't exist. Well, we know that's not true. It still touches everything around us outside of Wednesday to Sunday. And as we've seen in Minneapolis, sometimes other people are going to kick your church door in and affect you where you think you're safe. And so we need to, we need to be constantly building that into our community culture that we do have an obligation to be involved not just with the hot topic issues or the hot button issues, but consistently and throughout the election cycle, you know, instead of just coming out for our federal elections presidential elections, you need to be involved at every single point, every primary, every general. And if God is leading you to become involved in politics directly as a candidate or as someone on a support staff, then you need to look for ways to do that and to become better in that role. You know, surprising, like in this conversation, you know, part of what we're talking about is like, yeah, I want, you know, 95% of the authority to be at the county level. This shouldn't be a mind blowing conversation. Like it seems to me like this should be easy. Hey, guys, we want to keep our our decision making processes as local as possible. I can go in and argue with my county commissioners. I can go in and argue with my mayor. I can go in. I can't go in and argue with the governor. Right. You know, it's like he's he's in Boise. He's six hours away. He's difficult drive for me, whatever the access I have and all that stuff. But I can go in and, you know, argue with my county commissioner in your case, people can argue with you and your local county about decisions you've made and stuff. And I think that that changes the whole accountability of the situation and everything. Yeah, yeah, accountability sort of travels upstream. So a lot of the research I'm doing for my dissertation is built around political pressures. And so, for example, on the local level, if there's something that your constituents disagree with, they can call me on the phone. They can shoot me an email. But then that trickles up upstream. So you should be applying pressure to your local officials to your county mayor. And then they should be applying pressure at the state level. Our state representatives, our state Sanders, generally know who we are. If we're in contact with them enough. And so as you pressure your local officials, pressure them to then pass that pressure on to their state level officials. And they're and they're, you know, state governor and things like that. So, I think that's a good thing. And that's a, it's another way to apply political pressure, other than things like grassroots movements, protest actions and things like that. Yeah, that's really helpful. I got I got a plug I got to get to here real quick, but I want to get into the kind of the raw and disinjust property tax movement that's happening nationally and what's going on there. But buying or selling a home seems so complicated. I've got my theories on that. But good news doesn't have to be not a story real estate at least they make buying or selling really simple. They've created a framework and specialized model to guarantee your success with 1000 success stories with over 1000 success stories. You know they're the right team. You can trust they have experts dedicated to every part of buying or selling process to ensure that you have seamless experiences along the way. So if you have questions about the real estate. And just go head on over to story real estate dot com story real estate dot com. The other thing is if if obviously if you guys are thinking about moving to Moscow connect the story real estate that kind of thing. But they're also very good at connecting people nationally. So go to story real estate dot com and get connected them even if you're, you know, moving to another state or thinking about moving or looking for a real turn your area that kind of stuff. So real estate oftentimes has some good connected friends and other states and everything. So go to story real estate dot com. So Aaron, I mentioned a. Ron to Santa's and Ron to Santa's is talking about I should have had a video clip and I didn't think to ask my producer to bring it up. But I mean this is like he's been talking about this for like two years or whatever year and a half or something like that long time. He's been talking about eliminating property tax in the state and it like is very reasonable very rational is logic is very simple. You know, and I got I think there's there's a biblical argument and then I think there's an economic argument and then I think there's a very just kind of basic. You know, love your neighbor kind of argument why property taxes should never have existed in the first place. And again, we're getting into the was what is what I okay if you eliminate property taxes, property taxes, the bulk of the money that go to the county. So how do you eliminate property taxes while still being able to keep. And you know, figuring out a different method or a different way of keeping tax revenue in to be able to provide for the sheriff police department that you know the sheriff department deputies, you know, fire all that stuff. I very much appreciate Ron in this conversation. I think all I'd say one of the things I like about Ron the most about this is he's just been talking about it for a year year and a half two years. He's like he's discipling he's teaching he's he's got the long game in mind. And I think there's some ways. Excuse me, I think there's some ways that he can kind of roll it out. I think there's some potential ways you can kind of roll out in in, you know, what would you call it kind of kind of decrease property taxes while increasing other ways of revenue over time to make this, make this work and not be catastrophic, you know, problem. So how are you your county commissioner. First of all, also, can the county commissioner even eliminate property taxes and say, hey, we're going to get our taxes just through everyone's just going to always 5% of their revenue or whatever they bring in or we're going to increase sales taxes locally to $6.00 or you know, I don't know start there. But you guys this county commissioner even have authority to get rid of and replace property taxes. Yeah, so it's a great question. This is going to vary from state to state. So this is one of the sort of the complications and Tennessee things like property taxes are required at the state level. And I think maybe we could institute something like a county tax, but it would probably have to go through the state anyway. We would just make that proposal band together with other counties. So other county commissions and we would all sort of vote on, yes, this is a resolution that we support and we would like the state general assembly to decide on that or at least to review it. So in Tennessee, we're only allowed to raise the property taxes. And then on top of that, there's also a state law that sort of de facto raises property taxes through assessments, property assessments. So for example, many of the houses in my county have almost doubled in value in the last five years, six years. And so we had a property assessment raise in addition to the county raising property taxes right before I was elected. So everybody's just screaming about it. So in most states, I would assume I haven't looked into this too terribly closely, but for the most part, property taxes are required at the state level. And then even something like the city jurisdiction, I think they probably could levy sales tax to my knowledge. I think New York is one of the only cities in the country that has a major city income tax, this levy to the city level. So theoretically, it could be done. It would almost certainly have to go through the state in order to authorize that. But as far as the mechanisms of sort of replacing property taxes, this goes to my point. It's like, why is this state in control of our property taxes? Why is this not like keep this as local? I can't again, I can't go into the governor's office and say you're raising my property taxes. And you have no, you've never even been to my county or never been to my like, there's just no relationship there. Where I can go and argue with you. So it's like even like the way we've structured this thing is like we've put the power of the purse so far from my county. It was living in Tennessee. I don't, I assume it's probably similar to Idaho, I'm not quite sure. But even just that is just bad politics. It's just already on the wrong foot there. Yeah, and I think a lot of it's just, well, this is just something we sort of accepted. This is an ongoing theme I've seen on the county level is a lot of folks just say, well, I don't really know what's going on here. And I don't have a lot of time to look into it. So I'm just going to let it ride or I'm going to trust the experts or what have you. And a lot of major decisions that we've seen on the county level during my first term has been well, the industrial development board said we should do this. They they recommended it or there's a rezoning and the zoning commission recommended it. So let's just do it. Otherwise, why do we have these other bodies? And so it's sort of a dismissal of the authority and responsibility that we take on as elected officials. So sorry, a little off track there, but I think it's important, important to understand that there is a lack of institutional knowledge and confidence on the local level that I think sort of reinforces this idea of, well, this is just how it is. Let's just accept it. But the reality is, even on the local level is restrictive as it can be sometimes in relation to the state government. We still have the the ability to just write things onto a piece of paper and try to pass them. You know, it goes through the county attorney. He says, well, you can't do this because the state constitution or the state law says this or that. But as legislators, you we essentially have a blank piece of paper that we can write whatever we want on it and try to get it passed. But there's a lack of creativity there that is I think is a byproduct of that lack of institutional knowledge. So how would you like Ron the sands is doing the state level. I assume I actually don't know. I mean, I assume you'd like to figure out how to eliminate property taxes over time and get a better, more honest tax structure. So I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I know Texas is his his plate of this idea here and there of de-coupling their state educational systems away entirely from the federal government. But of course that would require. Well now it's entirely on you. You got to figure out how to fund that. And with the surplus, you have have a lot more room to do that. Even the the Romans, of course, as men we think about the Roman Empire at least once a week. But during the Roman Republic I'm listening to a biography of Julius Caesar right now. And so whenever they wanted to introduce a new expenditure, well we're going to we're going to increase the grain dull or whatever it is which is essentially an early form of welfare. In that resolution they had to have a system of taxation in place in order to cover that. So it was very much a one for one swap. We have to we have to make sure that we have a full spectrum approach to funding this government program. And so yeah originally the idea of property taxes is that no it's going to the schools in the same way that you might have a wheel tax in your county. That is going to deal with the roads. The problem is one ends up outpacing the other almost inevitably. So you end up having to raise those taxes in order to fund that specific thing. And then it's much easier to take grants from the state or federal government rather than raising taxes on your own people is certainly more politically viable and advantageous for the elected official. So the incentive structures that are involved here are also very important. I think one way that you could you could do this a little bit more cleanly and with accountability would be to have a referendum. And so essentially taking it directly to the county populace or the state populace and saying hey here's the plan. We're going to get rid of property taxes but we still have fund the schools. So in order to fund the schools we're going to do it this way this way or this way. And then giving it directly to the people and and having them vote on it. Of course the tension there is are the people well informed enough on that policy in order to make an informed decision. So yeah there's all these different pressures and tensions at play that that have to be accounted for if it's to be done effectively. What would be kind of like your top three. You know goals to kind of assess that where you're at with your county now your time is county commissioner has been successful or will be successful. You know what how do you think that there's like okay for me to be a successful county commissioner. I would love to see this and this and this very much. I think the number one thing that I'd love to see and we're working on it right now is a zoning reform package. And so you know I think our zoning laws are from like the 1960s or something like that. And it's just not built for the current environment with all these folks coming in. And I do a lot of work. I mentor local elected officials that are from Gen Z local and state officials. And they're telling me this from across the country I'll go to a convention with one of these organizations and it's Florida and Texas in Virginia and rural New Jersey, which I didn't know is the thing until you got met. I got from there and they're all saying the same thing they're saying hey I have a constituent that's calling me and saying hey why is there an apartment block going up across the street from my house where they used to be a pal pasture. So this sort of explosive growth is happening in rural areas across the country and that's that's what sort of influence my my decision to write my dissertation on zoning law, which you know I know it sounds very like very riveting stuff. But sort of breaking down along those regulations and giving more ability and flexibility to the individuals things like are long for accessory commercial units and accessory dwelling units. This is a great example. So accessory commercial and accessory dwelling. This just means you're adding another building on your otherwise residential property that is going to be that building is going to be zoned for commercial or additional residents. So in ADU dwelling unit would would look like hey moms moms getting a little bit older. But she still wants to maintain her autonomy. We're going to build a tiny home in the backyard. She can help take her at the grandkids and she can sell her old house. And so that buoys the housing market a little bit. And then you're starting to reintroduce multi generational families, which is which is just good for everybody commercial units. Same thing you want to start a small business. You can't afford commercial property. There's just no way. So removing that obstacle by eliminating some of that regulation can then well now you can officially file as a business. You're not doing it under the table. And that creates more tax revenue for the county. So at scale it starts mitigating the needs for some of those other revenue sources. So I would say 80 use ACUs. So I think a couple of other things I've built into my policy blueprint. I guess the third would would be as we've got these these developers coming in. They want to drop 500 800 we had a vote for 1300 homes at once the other day they got voted down praise God. Just north of us in spring hill they have the city center and it used to be this quaint southern town. And then they just started dropping his developments all around the city center with no no commerce in between. So now everybody's cramming into the town center for school and grocery stores and post office and court court house and all these different things. So building I would like to see developers be required to say well for every 10 homes you have to build a a small general use space. And then the community can decide is that going to be a homeschool co up is that going to be a local grocer. So this is moving more into that use based zoning or rather a form based zoning rather than use based zoning. So building and more flexibility getting rid of some of that regulation on the individual and then you can start looking at okay we've buoyed our revenue in this manner. What can we cut on the other side and so you're allowing room for something like abolishing property taxes. So I would say that those three policy points specifically are things that I think would be enormously helpful and I would call that a success. I'll talk about we don't have much time left, but I do want to talk about zoning laws. I think most zoning laws I would say as they are or as they're viewed kind of the vision behind zoning laws I'd say most I don't like most are telling me how or what I what I can't and can't do with my own property. So I think that's what I think is. Versus you know so but I'm not against zoning laws in the sense that I think it's a great way to love your neighbor. It's like hey yeah we're going to allow for a housing development over here and which means there's going to be no you know major manufacturing next to this neighborhood or something I don't know you know it's just we want to just we want to build out our city in a way where we're helping each other and loving each other and creating kind of you know I don't know what I'm doing. You know I don't want you know a night shift factory next to my house you know pop up kind of thing or whatever I mean think of me a million a race car facility track next to my house whatever. Sure you know you can think of you can think of an extreme extreme examples and stuff so. I think but that's like basic principles like you know basic like guys what we decided as a community you know here's our downtown here's where neighborhoods are allowed to build and that kind of stuff so like the minimal zoning laws I think are are really good but once you get past that I think the zoning laws become such a problem to like like right now I got I got 10 acres of my house I would love to build up. House for each of my kids Lord well someday when they graduate love for them to have houses on my crutch and this is I don't have tons of money but I have a little bit of land and I'd love to I to do that I don't need I I legally can't do that right now because I'm out in the county and I would have to you know probably have money to really fight it to be able to do that kind of stuff yeah so there's even basic stuff like I can't pass certain things out of my kids without kind of getting in the legal fight. I don't know I guess a little bit of this conversation is like the way we use zoning laws now it's like preferential treatment money money makes makes whatever we want to do with this neighborhood like money's a huge thing with zoning stuff so I don't really know a solution there besides like what I would like to see is actually just basically zoning principles we come zoning laws whatever we want to do. But like action zoning principles versus the government getting into the weeds and telling me how far my sheet rocks screws need to be apart kind of stuff. Yeah no you're absolutely right so that would look something like a resolution versus an ordinance so to very generally a resolution is more intent is speaking to intent rather than the screws example so yeah I think counties would massively benefit from basically saying here here are guiding principles. And the form of a resolution and then using that is we're continuing to go back to that well as we adapt and refine our zoning laws is this is still in line with these guiding principles that we put forth as a county. And I think you mentioned money money is a huge driving force but the other is is like I said before political pressure so how do we do that we do that by again mobilizing our own communities creating a Christian voting block maybe. It's within a network of C REC churches or churches to have a similar vision and saying hey guys I need the entire congregation to go out and vote for this referendum or this late of candidates or whatever the case may be so that we can start getting into those things and the bar is so low. And again you need to be selective in who you're supporting so if you need someone that has the level of creativity legislative creativity if you will and the political will to go in there and say yes guiding principles are a good idea I am going to push for this resolution and now I've got enough people behind me that are applying pressure to the rest of the legislative body or God willing we've elected a majority of people that are already on the same level. And we're already on the same page and and and going out of that direction and that's a great way grassroots organization is a great way to counter sort of this the money angle involved here so that's certainly one way to do it. Okay close out question here. Yeah. Here are county commissioner like you know like most of you've already kind of laid out some percentages of participation and elections stuff like that what do you appreciate as a county commissioner from your citizens. Great question yeah yeah so one of the first things I noticed so obviously I'm on the younger side on the youngest person on my county commission relative to the vast majority of them by a very wide margin you. And I'm not I'm not disparaging my colleagues by this at all it's just a fact the vast majority of local elected officials are older they're usually retired they usually empty nesters they have time to put into this sort of thing. And so a lot of folks would would come up and say wow you know it's really great to see young people involved in politics or or I always wear a suit to the commission meeting because I think I have an obligation to put forward a very professional appearance. A lot of folks would hey you know what I appreciate your dress so sharply or you're so well spoken or whatever the case may be just sort of that direct feedback about myself personally but also I'm always very grateful when people show up to the meeting. Or they just reach out to me give me a phone call shoot me an email and say hey here's an issue this coming up or here's an issue that is that I'm dealing with locally that I want answers to or I'd like for you to vote in this direction because ultimately if we are to act as effective representatives of our constituents we have to be hearing from them. So some of the time we'll vote on something and it'll go the way that a lot of folks didn't want but I didn't hear from them I didn't hear what they wanted so so how can I vote effectively how can I make an informed decision on that. So just being in communication with your local legislators and your local elected officials that that's the aside from voting that's the baritone that you can do and I'm always appreciative of that because otherwise I'm shooting in the dark here. So letting me know what is desired or what issues that my constituents are having and having that conversation that's always been extremely helpful. Yeah very good what are two websites you want to point people to. Sure yeah so the main website would be Christian Statecraft dot org and you can go in there and see what we're doing with the Institute with the ICS we were expecting to have our online learning management system and our training funnel setup within a month. So if you go on there shoot me an email through or the contact us page and yeah I'd love to get you connected with that young Christian men that are interested in getting involved let's get you started in that training pipeline. Now you can find me on x at TN underscore conductor and you know I don't post a whole lot but you know shoot me a DM if you're interested in getting involved or have any questions for me I love fielding questions and helping people get involved in this space. Yep thank you very much Aaron for coming across ball to go on one with me everyone else thank you please share the show getting involved in your local county politics. You know this is this is important conversation that I think we need to be having and I think the long term goal really is to reclaim authority at the local level I think that's. The big battle and all this so thank you for joining cross ball to go on one with the water boy it's going to be with you guys make sure you guys download the app make sure you guys join the club make sure you stay in touch and we'll see you at the fight left these conference in October.