Full interview with House District 59 candidate Glenn Reynolds
ABC 17 News is interviewing candidates heading into the Aug. 4 election. On the Republican ticket for the Missouri state house District 59 seat, The race is between Blair Oaks School Board member Glenn Reynolds, former Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin and retired engineer Vic Rackers. The seat represents Cole County. ABC 17 News reporter Alison Patton interviewed all candidates. Read the transcript of the interview with Reynolds below.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A small portions of the recorded and written interview were edited to remove technical issues.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
ALISON PATTON: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
GLENN REYNOLDS: Well, good morning, Alison, this is Glenn Reynolds. I'm the candidate for the 59th District for the House of Representatives here in Missouri. And that covers Cole County and a little bit of Jefferson City. Not most of it. And so, with that, I've been here for a long time. I really love Cole County. I love our state. And so with the opportunity here, I thought I would step up. I heard a lot of people complaining, but no one really steps in to take that role. So, I thought I would take the opportunity to see if I can help our community and help our state be prosperous.
PATTON: And tell me, what do you do for work?
REYNOLDS: So I own Central Missouri Power Wash. I go out and I wash buildings and homes and parking lots and all kinds of things that need to be cleaned. And I make the world just a little bit brighter.
PATTON: OK. And then you are also the Blair Oak School school board president.
REYNOLDS: Yes. So I'm currently the Blair School board president. I'm actually president of– I'm sorry, I take that back. I am just now stepping off of being the Blair Oaks School Board president. I am just a school board member. I was the president up until April of last year, so I apologize about that. But I am the president of the Cole County Republican Club, do that. And then actually an assistant wrestling coach for the kids wrestling club at Blair Oaks.
PATTON: OK, now tell me, as you're kind of campaigning and everything. How do you think that your experience as a former school board president as well as the president of the Cole County Republican Party, how do you think that might help you if you get the role?
REYNOLDS: So, if I get the role, I think it will help me a great deal just from a focus on our community needs standpoint. So I do view one of our fundamental roles is to prepare the next generation to be successful. And that's part of the reason that drove me to run for the Blair Oaks School Board. Plus, I have a vested interest. I have three boys and all of them are coming through currently. And again, I just want that next generation to have every opportunity they can to be successful in life. And so yeah, a robust educational system absolutely feeds into that. And then the community buy in, which was what we were truly blessed with there is the community buy in with the educational system. If we can get that throughout the state, the parents making sure that students are doing what they need to from an educational and academic standpoint, as I can't express how much that helps. And where we're at currently, we're blessed with that. We're actually one of the top, top schools in the state. And it's I attribute most, of that to the parental and community involvement. And so again, that involvement can cross lines and go into the state legislator. I'm a community, just a one of your regular community members, but I want to come here and be able to be successful and help our community prosper.
PATTON: And now one of the big things I've got–I've got quite a bit for the questions, which we'll probably jump around here.
REYNOLDS: Sure.
PATTON: But one of the things that's kind of going on right now, or at least recently, Governor [Mike] Kehoe recently passed the budget and he kind of froze some things and vetoed some others. But he says that the state has a spending problem. What are kind of your thoughts on the state budget?
REYNOLDS: So yeah. I would tend to agree with that. A lot of levels of government have spending problems. But with that we have to take a look at the budget. And if we don't have the funds coming in, unfortunately–as a business owner, I get put in the same situation I have to look, and say if I don't have the funds coming in, how is that going to affect me? And where do I need to make changes to be able to meet what budget I do have and still be successful and accomplish the goals that I need to accomplish? And so, it's the same way in the school systems. Our district currently, we're sitting at a budget shortfall. And so we're going through the process of planning that out and what that may look like if the revenue doesn't show up and where we're going to be, unfortunately, that's why we're put in this situation. We already have to make hard choices. And when you get placed into a realistic situation where we're not going to have the funding that historically we had been given, then we have to make, whether it's, cuts and what that looks like. So, yeah, you have to make hard, hard choices.
PATTON: And that was another one of my questions. Public school funding kind of stayed stagnant this year. Kind of based on the state side of things. How do you think that can–do you think that that's fair, especially when costs and inflation is rising for schools?
REYNOLDS: So I'm not sure that it stayed stagnant more than it was reduced. And so with that, I think that stems back to a number of things that we've had in issues that have passed that were supposed to send money to the schools–whether it's the marijuana items that passed, we were supposed to get funding from that, whether it's the lottery, that we're supposed to get funding from. There seems to be a reduction in that. And there was money that I think the governor expected that money to come in, but it never showed up. The schools actually are receiving less money and it's not necessarily stagnant. It's actually a reduction. And so with that, I think some of the private schools may have gotten more money. And in this world, we have both private schools and public schools, and we can live together. But we got to figure out what that looks like.
PATTON: OK. Tell me a little bit more about the private school aspect.
REYNOLDS: So, Governor Kehoe has added funding in there, the voucher program that helps fund, portions of private school. And I don't know, if some of that came away from the public schools or not but I know that there's a great deal of money that went into that. And I am all for helping out kids where we can. But, I also want to fund the public schools and make sure that they're getting what they need to be able to be successful, because by and large, most of our students here in the state are a product of the public school system. I'm a product of the public school system. And so, I want to see what we can–as I always say, we go back to we need these children to be able to be successful and be productive members of our society.
And so by doing that, the public school system sets up most of them for success or failure. And so we have to work to try and make all those successful.
PATTON: OK. Now what kind of, should you get elected, what kind of committees are you interested in joining?
REYNOLDS: So committee wise, one of them is the education and family resources I believe, is one of the committees that covers education. And that's one of my top priorities, is making sure that we have a solid educational system. And then the other one is infrastructure and I can't remember the other or the portion of it, but basically conservation. I'm a volunteer now. I was a volunteer naturalist at Runge Nature Center, and I'm a hunter and fisher, and I love–that's one of the things I love about Missouri is the opportunities that we have to go to spend time outdoors. And I would love to be able to help make work on that and manage that portion of it, because we're really blessed here in Missouri, more so than other states. And so I want to make sure that we continue to keep, keep those blessings and manage them appropriately.
PATTON: OK, and then that was kind of one of my questions here as well. Amazon and Google are kind of making plans to settle down in Montgomery County. What are your thoughts on that, especially as you had said, you had mentioned that you were a volunteer?
REYNOLDS: Naturalist. That's all right. So, a naturalist is someone who helps others enjoy the outdoors and teaches them about nature and what that–all the different aspects. I used to lead adventure birding trips, actually, up not far from where the data center is going in at. And so, with that, what was your question on?
PATTON: So, I mean, data centers, how do you think that those are going to affect the one, the economy, and two, the environment?
REYNOLDS: So and I feel like each data center needs to be taken as its own individual project. You have to weigh the both the cost and the benefits out on them. And my biggest thing is making sure that we're not going to be a net drain on our economy, whether that's through the water resources or through the electrical grid pulling down and then driving our prices up.
Missourians here currently, we're feeling the crunch as far as– just from an inflationary aspect. Our dollars just not going as far as they have been and everything costing more. Well, add another 10% onto the electrical grid. That's 10% more that people are having to pay that they don't have in their pocket to spend on whatever they else there are. So, again, I want to look at each of these and make sure that they're a net positive and that they're not draining our resources. Now, there's plenty of jobs that will be brought in from them. I don't know what the sustained jobs will be. I'm still just like everyone else. I'm still doing my research on this. I try not to be a knee-jerk reactionist because I don't feel like that serves people well. I want to be as educated as possible. So I'm still doing research on this. Again, I just go back to we need it to be a net positive for our community, if we were to do that. Otherwise, we don't need a drain on the resources.
PATTON: And talk to me kind of about this environmental aspect of data centers as well. .
REYNOLDS: So data centers, the biggest thing in my research is from that I'm picking picking up on is that there's a large water usage, but I think that they have solved that problem through a basically recycling the same water, being able to circulate, cool the water, circulate it back to, and reuse it. So that seems to be coming around. The other thing is just the energy usage. And so, data centers are basically big server storage warehouses where people either store their information or use it as a cloud-based system to access all kinds of different things across the net. And so with that, servers require a lot of energy to keep them cool. And when you have so many of them together–now, I forgot what the term is for these mega data centers, like the one that's going into–potentially–going into Montgomery County. But then there's also other smaller data centers that maybe they ran a small warehouse and house the servers in those. They still have energy needs. And it's above and beyond what your typical household or typical business goes. It's actually quite the draw. And so we need to make sure that we have both the infrastructure to be able to handle that and the resources to be able to handle that. And so producing that type of energy in Montgomery, say, Montgomery City. Well, we have the nuclear factory close by there that actually produces energy for most of Central Missouri. But, I don't know that… All right. So we have the nuclear reactor there in actually in Callaway County, but not terribly far from there. That produces most of the energy for the central Missouri area. And nuclear is a very efficient form of energy. And I think we've talked about it in the past, potentially, building a second reactor, but that never came through. But if we have these data centers the reality is, they probably will need a great deal more energy in the area. So we have to have the infrastructure to be able to handle that. The questions I always ask is who's paying for it, who's benefiting from it, and who's receiving the negative portion of that? And we have to weigh all of that out before we make the final decision.
PATTON: Kind of talk to me about the state-income tax because this is another kind of budget–it eventually becomes another budget aspect, accounting aspect of Missouri.
REYNOLDS: Absolutely, absolutely. And this is–seems to be one of the larger talking points that people want to talk about and learn about as I go and do, as I go and talk to people, meet them out in the field–in the field, so to speak. Well, knocking door to door, but in doing that, we've talked about sales tax, but it's actually the current one. It appears to be an income-tax removal, with the possibility of a sales tax. And so I have read the bill, I've been in to meet with reps to have discussions about it, and then I've been to the community meetings to educate myself. Again, I don't want to be a knee-jerk reactionist, but I tried–I tried to weigh everything out and get the most of it before I make my decision. The good news about all of this, is this is going to be decided by our elect–or by our citizens. And so with that, with that, they'll make the final decision. I always encourage absolutely everyone to go online, find the original bills and read the full bills. This one is a four page bill. HJR 173, HJR 174. You go through and read them and you can come up with your own either decision on whether it's good or bad, or if you have questions and you go and find out the answers to those. Now, with that, I will support whatever we vote. I will get behind it. Whatever my personal opinions are, I'm concerned about the–It appears to be a lack of planning. After we reduce or after we remove the income tax. There doesn't seem to be a set plan on what's going to be coming after that. They talk about sales tax, and that's fine. That seems to be the way. But there doesn't seem to be any real guardrails or plans come in on that, and that concerns me. I know that things change once you get in and start going through these decisions, but it doesn't appear that we have a true, oh, just a true plan. I want to make sure that before we make our decisions, we know what’s going on, but that’s just my personal opinion on it, again I’ll get behind whatever we vote.
PATTON: And you mentioned that you were out door-knocking. What do the people you door-knock with or your constituents, what are they saying about income tax and some of the other things we’ve talking about?
REYNOLDS: What are they saying about–Can you repeat that please?
PATTON: What are the folks that you're talking to? What are they saying about income tax?
REYNOLDS: So I've ran into a number of–in my area and the people that I've talked to, there's been also a great deal of concern about what the final product looks like. And a lot of people don't trust government. And given the fact our history, I can't say that I blame them. But the biggest thing, again, I stress to everyone, go and educate yourself. Read these bills so that you truly understand what we're facing and what the changes are. And I look at these bills and just one of my philosophies in life is one side is going to sell you the pipe dream, another side is going to sell you that the world is going to end on it. The reality is, it all ends up landing in the middle somewhere and it's up to us to determine what that middle looks like and go and pay for it.
PATTON: OK. And tell me a little bit about–you said that you were door-knocking. What are some of your other campaign strategies?
REYNOLDS: So, door-knocking, I attend a lot of events out there. Just the biggest thing is I want to make sure that people know that they can talk to me, because in the end, this campaign really isn't about me. It's about our community. And how do we best benefit our community so that we can all get out and be prosperous? And so I would say the typical normal standard strategies of Facebook posts, door knocking, attending events, those are the main things. But again, I stress that I want people to know that they can talk to me and feel confident in expressing their opinions, and that I value their opinions.
PATTON: Now you're also coming in, or I guess all of the candidates are coming in behind long standing Rudy Veit. How do you think that you will kind of come in and fill his shoes?
REYNOLDS: So coming into this, my first year, I plan on learning how to be the most-effective rep that I can be. I don't have any delusions of grandeur. I'm coming in as someone who freely admits, I don't know what I don't know.... And then I want to fight and stand up and do what's best for our community.
PATTON: OK. Let’s see, I didn’t write them in any particular order. Well, I did but the conversation kind of shifts. OK. I believe we just have one more left, and then–I guess two more technically. And then we'll all kind of open up to you. Let's talk a little bit about amendment three, which I was just told that it will be on the November.
REYNOLDS: I was I almost sent that to you, but I decided to let you to. Yeah, it's the November ballot.
PATTON: For some reason I thought it was on August. My apologies, but we'll talk about Amendment 3, and then we’ll shift to Amendment four, I think, is what I was actually thinking of, but Amendment 3, talking about health care. Tell me a little bit about where you stand on health care, on reproductive health care?
REYNOLDS: I'm pro-life.
PATTON: You’re prolife, tell me a little bit more about that.
REYNOLDS: So I believe in saving as many of the babies as we can, as we can out there. That's, I feel like I have absolute community support on that. We feel the same, same way in our district about that. And I would say that I am absolutely pro-life and willing to fight for that.
PATTON: OK. Now let's switch gears and talk about Amendment 4, which would change the initiative petition process.
REYNOLDS: Yes, the initiative petition reform process.
PATTON: What are your thoughts?
REYNOLDS: So I, again, we're blessed with this is going to be on the ballot. Excuse me. We're blessed with this because it's going to be on the ballot, and our voters get to truly decide what it is. What we're going to do, whether we're going to stick with the simple majority or if we're going to make that process much more difficult for the citizens, to get the initiative petition Form. Some people say that it prevents dark money from adding bills to our Constitution...I've read it. We will end up dividing the state into eight, eight different districts, and one of those districts can veto any initiative petition. So, I tend to be a little bit more concerned. I'm afraid that it's taking it too far. I like where it's going. So, I do feel like we probably need a little bit stricter rules on how we add things to our Constitution, whether that's just a 60% vote or a 65%, or if we keep the framework that they've built, and instead of having all eight, we drop it back to five of eight or something like that. So my concern is money can be spent in one district to completely take down any initiative petition. And I fear that that might take the voice away from the people also. And I want we're not–we're a representative republic, and we want people to have their voice too.
PATTON: Is there anything else that you would like to say or mention that I didn't ask?
REYNOLDS: Well, for me, having my children has opened my eyes to a lot in this world. And so, selfishly or not, I want, again, want to make sure that the next generation coming through has the best opportunity to be successful as they can. And I know here in Missouri, we deal–or most of the people typically that get ahead, they're going to have a regular job and a second job. And so that's tough when you have to work those extra hours to be able to–and being away from your family, from your family. And as a small business owner myself, it's tough to get one started. So I want to take away some of the regulations from the small business aspect, if we can, to make those small businesses easier to be successful. It's absolutely tough to get a business from zero to producing a profit. And I've been down that road. I've been doing that for the last ten years. And I know people, a lot of people out there, they have their small businesses and things, and we have so many innovative people here in our community that, given the opportunity, they can create some amazing things or provide some amazing services. So I want to make sure that they have that opportunity to be able to, to be able to do that and also teach their children the value of a dollar....
Well, I've been telling people that I want to bring family values back to the capital. And so I feel like a lot of what we're facing has stemmed from the breakdown of the nuclear family. And I applaud the people who stick together for that and be able to make it work because it helps our community and our society. And so with that, I appreciate your time.
PATTON: Thank you so much.
