Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome in
time. Now for our community connection, we have John Strum on with us.
He is running for re election in District ten. John, been to
any good forums lately? Say again, been to good any good forums lately?
We've been to quite a few forums. People like to get together and
visit. Yeah, and we like to get up and tell I tell people
about what we've done. People like to hear what we've been doing down at
the city and invite us to come to some forums. We've got a you
know, Republican Women's Afternoon, We've had Washington County GOP forum, We've had
the City Forum down here. And I appreciate the opportunity to get up and
visit with people. It's kind of hard to broadcast what you do, you
know, in a rural district. We don't have all the TV stations and
all the big newspapers and all the big publications. So any opportunity we get
to get up in front of people and visit, I tend to take.
Are you ready to take some rapid fire? I'm ready to take some rapid
fires. All right, let's get it. What is your stance on abortion?
I am very much pro life. It's I think, you know,
abortion is a terrible thing that you know, we should be ended in Oklahoma
and really is we As soon as Roe versus Way fell, we reverted in
Oklahoma back to a nineteen ten bill that made it illegal, made it a
felony and punishable by law, and I was we were glad to see that.
I've taken a lot of hits for voting against I think it was forty
three twenty seven or whatever that was. But I had a lot of problems
with that bill. It was a good red meat bill, but the problem
was it blended criminal law and civil law, so you could sue somebody that
for something that didn't affect you at all. And in criminal law, you
offend the state and the estate punishes you. In civil law, you affect
your neighbor negatively, and they can sue you if you back over their fence.
You know they owe you twelve hundred dollars. If you run into your
car, you owe them. But you can't sue somebody just because you're offended.
A judge can throw that out and say, you know, you don't
have grounds to sue. And that bill blended those and while it's a powerful
topic. It's a slippery slope to start opening our legal system up to that
where everyone can just sue anybody because they're doing something that they don't like,
even if it doesn't affect them. And so, but we do have the
toughest laws here in the state of Oklahoma on abortion, and I'm glad to
see it. There's a thing called track in tax when it comes to motor
vehicles. Tell us a little bit about that, and where do you stand.
I'm awful proud of that legislation as well. I get hit on that.
As far as it be an Orwelian government trying to track everywhere you go,
I don't want that. But in twenty twenty three they said that thirty
percent of the new passenger cars were electric, where they were hybrid, where
they were some alternative form of gas. Well, we pay for the roads
in Oklahoma with the gas tax and the diesel tax nineteen cents a gallon on
gas, nineteen cents a gallon on diesel. They don't pay, and if
they do pay, they pay when they buy the car. They pay a
little bit. That says this is tof set that. Well, it doesn't
match up and so we've said, if the gas and diesel people are fine
with footing the bill for the roads, which adds up to about five hundred
and eighty million dollars out of those taxes, we can leave things the way
they are, but the way it is now. If they look at the
price of roads going up, they say that by twenty thirty four, our
gas tax will have to be go from nineteen cents to forty cents a gallon.
Oh and if they do or they don't, they project that they'll be
more electric cars. I don't know that their will either way. It's twenty
twenty four now. In ten years, I don't want them more than double
what I'm paying for gas to pay for the roads, especially when a good
part of the population is not helping. And then by twenty fifty gas cars
will have to have be passenger cars will have to be getting forty nine miles
per gallon per the federal government. So what we're looking at is roads and
bridges becoming more expensive and fewer people contributing to pay for that, or the
people that drive gas and diesel vehicles will have to foot the entire bill.
So we've passed a bill to make a study not to track in tax.
We put a study on that said, what do we need to do by
twenty twenty four, now by twenty thirty four, what do we need to
do by twenty forty four, just to look at that and see what's going
on in the future, and you know, the alternatives we come up with.
We're completely get rid of the gas and elect or gas and diesel tax
and take that out of say sales tax, take that out of property tax,
take that out of you know, to pay for roads and bridges and
why is that on your tax. The study was about nine months. It
ended. It didn't cost us much. It was all people that already worked
for the government or agencies that contributed and they produced the study already it's on
o dot's website. You can go look at it and see what the alternatives
are. But we're not doing anything now and the bill didn't do anything now.
But we need to know what we need to do in the future to
be able to maintain the infrastructure. And so it was very important. I
was glad to be a part of it. That's from what did you stand
on in education in Oklahoma? Education? I have in District ten, we
have in District ten. The district I represent sixteen public school districts that educate
our kids. I am a very strong public education person candidate I suppose representative.
I want our kids to have every opportunity in the world. And I
think we've done a lot of work. We've done a lot of great work
backing up and looking at looking and seeing what we need to do to prepare
those kids for the world. And some of the greatest things that we've done
we've done in the last few years, which is to look at like say,
I cap your individual career path and a kid in ninth grade that knows
what they want to go into, we should get them on that path.
And something I've said that is always that's very important to me that I've worked
on the whole time i've been down there, is giving kids an opportunity to
graduate from high school with a marketable skill, to get them a certification,
to get them, you know, an education that they can come out with
and feed their family, support themselves. And it's one of the things I
say, it's kind of a joke, but not really. If you come
out of high school and you have an HVAC certification, an HVAC, you
know, heating and air certification, or a welding certification or auto mechanic certification
in two or three years. If you don't really like what you're doing,
you're making sixty grand a year and you can go do whatever you want after
that. But the real idea behind that is sixty seven percent of our kids
never go on to any form of higher education, so they're limited to a
high school diploma. That's what they have to offer the world. Now they've
got, you know, the sweat on their back and their elbow grease to
offer, and that's that's great, but for the rest of your life,
you're stuck at that line. Where a person can come out now in the
state of Oklahoma with an associate's degree, an associate business degree. They can
come out with a certification for electronics, HVAC, plumbing, you know,
the trades things we need, construction, and I'm glad to see those things
going into our schools. You know, in no uder you can fly an
airplane and right there in the classroom, and aeronautics are second largest industry in
the state of Oklahoma. So we're comparing those kids now for the jobs that
we have Again, and the jobs that we're going to have. It's twenty
twenty four. Now what are those kids going to need in twenty thirty four,
twenty forty four, And so we're looking at those things. But ultimately,
in education, I want the kids to have every opportunity they can get
to succeed. And I want our schools to be strong. So many of
our local schools too, and our public schools are are our communities. You
know, I'm a bowering wrangler. I'll always be a bowering wrangler. I
work for Copan hornets, I work for ironmen, I work for bruins.
And these are rural schools that I think a lot of times don't get the
attention that they deserve out here in the country. And I know it's hard
for a lot of people to take, but Bartlesville is a rural community,
less than fifty thousand people, and so they don't get the attention that the
big city the metropolitan schools get and I work all the time to make sure
that they get that attention and get the resources that they need to succeed.
You've done some things with frank Anty Tech. They've been pretty awesome. Absolutely,
you're a firefighter. So you know, we have a great opportunity.
Our career techs have blossoms, not the word, but but have really grown
to encompass the things the kids need again to succeed. And you know out
at Tri County Tech, they they've got the spread and they ask all the
time, what can we do to help? What do we need to do?
And and I went out one day, you know, with the previous
president out there, and we had a good discussion. One of the things
we needed around here was we were having to send our firefighters and and EMTs
and stuff to to burn's flat or to steal water or to aid it a
train. And it was expensive to do that and it was limiting. And
so we went right out here at Try County Tech and we built the Burn
Tower. And you know, they've extended that into classes for EMTs and emergency
management and fire training and everywhere I go, my my guys always run through
my fire departments and they're excited to have it and they're able to you know,
they were just out there last night night before last doing ropes training and
doing doing uh you know, burn training. And again it's a great opportunity.
We were able to bring right here to Bartlesville and provokes you might not
be as familiar with you as as I am. I tell folks a little
bit about you. You've been here for a darn long time. Yeah,
I grew up. I tell people I live in the house a mile from
the house. I came home from the hospital and I'm right out on the
Strong ranch on Hulut Lake. My family out there were very much community oriented.
We work in the in the rural fire department, we work in the
school. My grandpa helped build the water department out there, and we've you
know, helped to maintain it. And we're very community oriented. And so
this this position to me was an extension of community service. What can I
do to go help? And again it came from that the rural area is
being left behind. We love being rural, but we also want opportunities.
We like clean water, we like good roads. We like to think that
our roads are being patrolled at night, you know, and we can sleep
safely in our beds. We want those things. And so when I ran,
you know, I ran against a I ran against a great man,
you know, big heart, good family. I mean, he was a
great man, but he he's legislated from a starting platform that was kind of
limiting to those things. And we were work and then on getting our fire
departments built up, and it was one of the things I couldn't get help
with and led me into that. But I still live on the ranch.
I still run cattle. I'm a pipeline inspector, kind of an amateur pilot.
I suppose I've lived here for forty almost six years now, and I'm
just a part of this community. And all of these are my communities.
You know, I'd say I'm from Bowering, but you know, my buddies
and my family and stuff are in Copaine and Bartlesville and wan and Coffeeville in
South Coffeeville and the town yeah, the good towns. So I'm just,
I guess, kind of a homeboy here trying to do trying to do my
best for my people down in Oklahoma City. Speaking of Oklahoma City, you've
been in office a couple of terms. I tell us a little bit about
what you've done in your time in office, so folks find out about that.
You know, it's an odd deal. I tell people. I kind
of fill an odd role in the capitol. I'm not so many people want
to pass bills and come home and say, look what I did. What
I did, Here's this bill I ran, And they've got these fancy titles,
and they do. I spend more time searching for unintended consequences and killing
bad bills than ever running good bills, and you don't hear much about mine.
I passed some incredible legislation that doesn't exist anywhere else in the United States.
You know, we had the Marshall Dillon Bill, which if you commit
a crime and a DA can offer you a lesser sentence if you don't return
to the judicial district you were found guilty in. And if you remember that
Marshall dollingy take you to the county line and say don't come back to whatever
it was, Custer County. That benefits on both sides, the people that
committed the crime. I don't know if someone stole my lawnmow, if I'd
want them to sit in a concrete cell for fifteen years or something. But
I don't want them around me. You know, go to go to jail
for your time, and then go. But the other benefit is that it
gets those people that did commit the crime, you know, it gets them
out of the community that they knew. It gets them away from the bad
sort that they were running with. It gives them their opportunity to start fresh
and new. You know, you don't have that ego problem. You can't
come out of jail and be the cool guy in sweet floors at the little
job you had at home. But you can go to Tulsa, you can
go somewhere else and you don't have that holding you back. You might as
well take part in the programs we have to get you back into society,
education programs and job programs and stuff and start fresh and new. So that
was good. You know, I worked with Phillip sixty six several years ago.
You had the big problem with everyone getting their credit card skinned. We
went down to the Capitol. I worked with Phillip sixty six and their Sea
stores, and we passed legislation that doesn't exist anywhere else that made the implement
the item that did the scanning a felony to possess in the state of Oklahoma.
Absolutely decimated credit card crime. We've done a lot of good. You
know, the emergency happened to Barnsdall, and we were that critical time right
after an emergency where everyone just you know, kind of throws their hands up
and can't do anything. I was able to go down and pass out a
legislation that gave the governor fifteen million dollars in the emergency management thirty million dollars.
It's just a savings account. But now we can lend those communities those
resources, those liquid resources, so that they can respond to the emergency immediately,
and then when they're paid back from FEMA, they can pay the state
back. It's a savings account. It's just sat over there to use.
But those are little things that we needed. I've worked on, you know,
water resources issues. I've worked a lot of water resources issue around here,
you know, with Barne Doll and the Waxoma Dam, with with Hula
and Copainn and Bartlesville on water quality problems. The people want clean water and
they want the bad water removed, and we have to keep that going.
I mean, those are those are health things, those are things people want,
and so those are the things I work on behind the scenes. You
know, last year I worked with the head of the ag the Department of
bag a good friend of mine, Blaint Arthur, and we created the Emergency
Drought Commission. We were three years into one of the worst droughts that this
community has ever seen. And what we were able to go do is put
together this commission and we came back and said, what do we need to
do to help people fix this problem? And we created the Emergency Drought Commission.
We came up with some solutions. We we ran pipes, we cleaned
out ponds, we cleaned out waterways. We worked with some of our local
water systems to be able to divert and use water that couldn't move in that
direction, couldn't get where it needed to be, so we could get water
where it needed. You know, it's just these little things that we could
do to make things better during the drought, and then you get busted for
growing government. Well, that entire commission, nobody benefited from that more than
District ten did. Our people needed that bad and it was needed. We
used it. It's done, and so you know, again it's something that
I always tell people, this job has absolutely no executive power, but you've
got a great title and a great phone list, and I use that for
the people of District ten, and so it's great to be able to do
that. How can people get in touch with you in case they question any
any way in the world you want to. I mean, the the easy
way is Judd dot Strom at Oka House dot go. I mean, that's
that's my official email, and everything flows right through there. It comes in.
And the good thing is I know how to contact people back through that.
I mean, if it comes through there, it's all logged and kept
track of. You know, I have a Facebook strong for state representative.
Just I've been you see. The phone beeps and rattles all the time in
this position. People say, oh, you only work four months a year.
I work three hundred and sixty five days a year. I work for
forty thousand people in District ten and I work. A good friend of mine
told me once that the best thing you can do in this job would be
a great advocate for your people. And I think about that every day.
And when my phone starts ringing at six o'clock or six thirty in the morning,
I get up and I go to the desk and I start work,
and I work all day long for the people I represent for District ten.
All right, goud, good luck to you. It's an early voting starts
today, continues tomorrow Saturday, and of course, election day on Tuesday.
Thanks for being with us, you bet. Thanks for having me all right,
Judd Strong District ten