Oral History Interview with John Y. Brown, Jr., May 26, 1998

START OF TAPE 3.2, SIDE A White: Today is May 26th, 1998. Governor Brown and I, I am Ethel White, are continuing our conversation from a few years ago. I am afraid we had a false start, but we’re going to keep going here. [Pause] White: Governor Brown, we’ve been talking about the years between the sale of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the time you became governor, and I think we can go back and fill in the gaps later and why don’t we just move into...the gubernatorial campaign. Do you think that might be about where we are?

Brown: Well, no I think there is….

White: Or do you want….

Brown: sort of….

White: to go back a little bit.

Brown: ...a lifestyle transition here….

White: Okay.

Brown: ...that I thought at least it was very apparent in my life if you want me just to take a few minutes and….

White: That’s fine.

Brown: ...sort of explain where I went from there. Having gone into business with my wife Ellie, 1:00when it came time to sell the Colonels and my son started crying at the dinner table that his daddy had sold the basketball team and it wasn’t going to be the Kentucky Colonels, it was going to be the Cincinnati Colonels, and I just thought, gee, you know, how important it is to young kids to have role models and have something to look up to and get excited about and so, I went back and bought the Colonels back, in a way that I s…I controlled the Colonels, and the Cincinnati group agreement was to play so many games up in the new coliseum they were building and play most of the games in Kentucky. Well that partnership didn’t work out, but I didn’t want necessarily to get out front with something like a professional sports team and I thought this would be good for Ellie and she’d have a lot of fun and do a good job and she certainly did. In fact this week, she got a letter and we are both of us, we are named to, 2:00to the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, and she hired the coach (Huey Brown?) that she sees as a national moderator, network moderator now and that was his first coaching job that she hired him and he brought us a championship for the Colonels so while we were in the beleaguered league of the ABA trying to compete with the NBA, and both leagues financially had no future, finally there was a merger between the two leagues and Kentucky was not a big enough market to be taken in the NBA and so therefore we sold, and, and I think in many ways, probably changed our marriage relationship, I think you know, women like to feel their man is the security and the brains and the genius of whatever he is doing and, and once he, the husband goes in business with the wife, she finds out how dumb he is, and how many, you know, dumb decisions 3:00they’re just like everybody else, so, especially in an explosive public arena like pro sports, and I think it put a lot of strain on our marriage but anyway we ultimately got divorced and very amiable, it was then and is now. I consider Ellie one of my best friends, I think she would consider the same and we have three very well adjusted children, are very happy and successful in their own lives, so, I went from there, then I was out of work and without a mission and I looked in my life, I remember the old Colonel saying that, when he became sixty-five he looked over his life and figured what he could do better than anything else and, he said, well it’s frying chicken, so that’s how he ended up making a career out of frying chicken because that was his greatest success of self creation or whatever, and he made a gigantic success of it, and so, you know, what I do, except go right back into pro basketball and...I’m sort of a deal guy that looks for, you know, an advantageous deal and having been president of the ABA, I sort of knew the setup of the NBA owners and I visited with a number of them and I picked out one that was in trouble that I might be able to get a good deal, and get back involved in basketball, on a favorable financial involvement and I did that with Paul Snyder of the Buffalo Braves. I bought in, with a million and a half dollar loan, with no money, for half the franchise and then I had an option to buy the other half and shortly after the year had begun, it wasn’t doing very well, and we sold Bob McAdoo for three million dollars, 4:00which gave me the full ownership in the Buffalo Braves thereupon which I swapped for the Boston Celtics and ended up as a Celtic owner, and…I even brought Padre and Harry Mangurian, who was a silent partner, and then when I ran for governor, in 1979, I didn’t figure that I could be involved in a pro sport that’s a thousand miles away, plus the controversy of being pro sports while I am trying to, to run a well intended and, and responsible campaign, it just didn’t fit, so, unfortunately I sold the Celtics who just a few years later were valued at a hundred-fifty million dollars when they went public and so, I’ve had some missed opportunities in my life, I never regretted them, because you make decisions at the time based on where you are and what you think is best, and that was a, a real plum that I let go of, 5:00but, anyway, my main goal was to get in public life and to try to make a difference and bring a whole different dimension of the businessman in the government, because I had always thought or learned along the way that government is a business in every aspect of it and it’s never treated as a business, it’s always treated as private property to be doled out, or to be divvied up by the politicians (that are getting?) power and that, you know, to me it was not only dishonest but it alienated me deeply, because my father 6:00had fought against that system and crusaded against it for so many years and when Phyllis and I got married, I think as a team, I felt like, you know, we could go back to Kentucky and, and perhaps win the election on short notice, a surprise element, a newness and a freshness and I felt I had a good reputation in Kentucky, not only through Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Kentucky Colonels, but also my father had an outstanding reputation and his name was known [clears throat] across the state, and even though I didn’t have any organization, and even though I, I wasn’t told by a single person I had any chance of winning, I knew in my own mind that...I could win and I was confident I would win, but nobody else thought so.

White: Did, did you, I, as I recall, you had a six or seven week campaign.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: Was that because you made up your mind only that far ahead of time, or had you planned for 7:00some years to….

Brown: No, I mean my….

White: ...to run that kind of campaign?

Brown: ...I had been, I had been looking for a house in Los, Los Angeles with Phyllis before we got married and we got married with, by Norman Vincent Peale and we had about four hundred people to our wedding, and Doctor Peale gave us sort of a, the goal, he said, you know, “here today we are marrying two very special people, now you’re a team, together, and go out and serve God and serve mankind.” And so we’re sitting around the beaches in St. Martins and thinking hey, he told us to go do something special, 8:00and I think both of us had felt like we were special in what we had done prior in our lives, and she was sort of in transition, she was no longer with the NFL Today and she was looking to what to do with her life and so, we didn’t even have a home in Kentucky [Chuckling] and she had only been here once, so, it was a bold move, but that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about, you know, we love to take on the unthinkable, and, but I felt like, you know, I was well enough known and respected and with Phyllis and the excitement, and glamour, and the freshness that she brought to the campaign that, we make a tough team, and so we went against all the skeptics. I remember having Larry Townsend, when we came back to look at the race from St. Martins, and we had about two days before the election, he talked to every top person in the state, he told a hundred and nineteen people, not one person said I had any chance of winning and these were all the top people that I have known 9:00over the course of time. Well the more they told us that we couldn’t do it, then the more we just said, well we will show you, and so there was a great deal of, of I think satisfaction that we just took on the established political machines and administration where no one had ever done this before. All I want to find out is how does this telephone thing work, we are the first ones that brought the technology of using the telephone banks, and how much air time left on television we can buy and get our message out. When I called from New York, the day before I came down to announce, I just wanted to know if we could buy enough time on television to make a case for ourselves, and so we reserved the time, and that’s really all I wanted to know and I had three people meet me at the press conference and the message that I gave at the press conference was the same message that I gave too, four years later, hadn’t changed, it was amazing how my thought pattern really was on as far as what I wanted to do as governor, and then after my term, what I’ve really tried to do and I think accomplished, it was real simple, it was running government like a business, and economic development, and creating jobs for our people, so, in any event, it was not complicated, it was rather easy for me, it was...risky, and at one time we thought, what are we doing, 10:00why am I doing this, is this fair to Phyllis, you know, we didn’t get a phone call for a whole week after we announced and it was rainy, like it usually is in March, and, and one morning she woke up and said, “what do you, why do--why are you doing this?” and I said, “I don’t know,” and she said, “do you really want to do this?” and I said, “well, I don’t know,” because the fires really hadn’t been stoked, I just signed up, felt like at some point in my life I needed to do this, and this is as good a time as any, but as the sun came out in the spring and derby time came around, there was a different, you know, reaction and, and excitement, and I remember meeting right after the derby and in these political campaigns everybody tries to become the campaign manager, they’ve all the ideas about you run it, and fortunately, I was secure enough to run my own campaign and I didn’t have to listen to everybody or anybody….

White: Did you have a manager in, in name?

Brown: Well I was ready--Larry was my manager, yes.

White: Larry was yes. 11:00Brown: But Larry was my right hand man too, so he knew that I was going to call all the shots and, but he was great, as far as transferring my image and credibility because he was so high on me, but we met one morning around one in the morning, I remember Phyllis sitting there and she got up after ten minutes because they were all so negative, they were not going to win unless I land on the capitol lawn in the helicopter and denounce all this corruption and I didn’t feel comfortable, you know, beating somebody else in the head. Julian Carroll and I said, you know, Carroll Hubbard and George 12:00Adkins are doing a good job with that, I don’t need to do it. And so at the end, about four hours meeting I remember looking around and Bob Squier who is a famous consultant who represents Clinton, and I remember him saying, “John...you don’t understand, we’re here, we have our career reputation on the line.” And boy that just set the (cord?) out and I used some unkindly three or four letter words, and that got me started and I went around the room and tell everybody, “instead of trying to run the campaign, go back and do the damn job,” and I told Squier, I said, “Squier you ain’t got one commercial down here, you’re supposed to be doing all the media, you don’t have one commercial. I had to get WAVE to come over to my bedroom and tape a few commercials, that’s all we’ve had on the air,” and I said, “you go produce, do your job and then don’t worry about everybody else, don’t worry about whether I am really serious about this, I mean I spent a half million dollars of my own money, that’s serious running.” And I said, “you haven’t done a damn thing, and you’re supposed to be some hot shot, 13:00and yeah, your reputation is on the line. If you can’t take Phyllis George, a Miss America sweetheart from Texas, and think John Y. Brown Junior’s father never had a mark against his name in fifty years of public service, and who was, you know, brought Kentucky Fried Chicken here and built it in, into an international success, and had the Kentucky Colonels and, you know, some other things, if you can’t take us and beat you know, one of the candidates was an alcoholic and the other candidate, you know, none of the candidates really had any kind of major substance, I think Terry McBrayer did, but he had the clout of the Carroll’s administration, and so if you can’t take us and beat this crowd, you ought to get out of business, you, I mean, you don’t belong in the business.” And so that got everybody thinking, and they went home with their tail between their legs, and all of the sudden you couldn’t hear a pin drop, those phones started ringing and, and then people signed up a thousand a day, we signed it, so it started generating the enthusiasm of winning and then the next thing we know, George Adkins is dropping out of the race and our commercials hit the air and…I remember the one commercial that really hit is one of our county...fund raisers here, Ed (Hahn?) who was the county judge and old country head and he was a friend of mine and he got up in front of about five hundred screaming 14:00and hollering at the microphone and this was captured in the commercial, he said, “you know, John Y. Brown, he came in a millionaire, and he ain’t, and he is, he is coming in a millionaire and not going out a millionaire.” And he said, “we know where he got his money, but we don’t know where these other governors got their money.” And that really, sort of hit a very simple chord, and we really started moving and all of the ( ) came until the last week, and then they all started putting their guns on me, but it was an exciting campaign.

White: Well was, was the, do you think the secret to that campaign was, you know, the day finally came when enthusiasm was generated, or, or was the, was the secret to the campaign some super organization that got up and running fast.

Brown: No, it, the….

White: Or….

Brown: ...the key….

White: ...or what were the components….

Brown: ...the key of the campaign….

White: ...maybe is the pattern for it….

Brown: ...is I didn’t, you know, so many people use consultants, enlist in consultants and usually consultants got their own agenda, they’re just 15:00like professional management to cover their butts, and I have been around long enough to call my own shots, and when it go…--was not going anywhere and when everybody is sitting around on their hands, worrying about what the other people are doing, I think the fact that I had chided them and told them to get to, back to work and get their job done, quit worrying about everybody else, I want to run this campaign ( ) longer. That, that’s when we started focusing and we had everything to sell, we just needed to sell it. We were a fresh, new package, you know, I ran anti-politics, pro-business, and that 16:00was the theme of the times, that was even pre-Reagan, and so….

White: But you also, I remember the f...volunteers burning up the phone lines, so….

Brown: Yeah, and that was a new….

White: ...a lot of volunteers….

Brown: ...technology, yes.

White: ...apparently.

Brown: And there again, you know, if you think you can, you will, if you think you can’t, you won’t, and all of the sudden everybody is saying you know, we can, and some good news started seeping out and it just spread like wild fire, and, and that was the last three and a half weeks of the campaign, and it just picked it up fast and what happened in our campaign, we just pre-empted the other candidates. We were the only, all the others had been running for four years that was old news, and so here, you know, a, a new novel or whatever approach in message, in looks, and, you know, we just dominated the campaign where nobody else was being listened to, and it was sort of a new technique in politics but, you know, I am basically a salesman, so my instincts were pretty good about what we could do, and, and it worked, and it was fun, it was exciting, it was challenging, 17:00risky, I mean all the things you look for, and but I was there for the right reasons, and I didn’t vary from those reasons one iota, I did not offer a single job, we did not have a single scandal, we were…had the, you know, finest quality people you’ll ever find in government, even the Courier Journal said that it was wholly honorable and ethical and, it said it was the ablest cabinet in the history of Kentucky, which it certainly was. My people, the cabinet secretaries, (Ethel?), had gone out and acquired over a quarter a billion dollars of personal net worth from scratch. I mean you got Bruce Lundsford, you got Tommy (Ladd?) (Ron Ventura?), you got Ron Gary that’s got a five hundred million dollar company, called (Rest Care?) you have W. T. Young that’s the number one horseman in the world, you’ve got myself that went down to Florida and started three companies 18:00from scratch, that, you know, we’re all somewhat national developments, and you got...Bob McQueen who sold out for I think for two hundred fifty some odd million dollars, the prison systems that he started and, and we ju...and George Fischer who was my secretary of the cabinet, about three months ago sold out for seventy-three million dollars in cash transaction, I mean, these are our boys, these are Kentucky boys, and I think one thing we were able to prove, and I think one thing that I gave an inspiration to all of our people who have gone and done so well is that I always said, you know, with the attitude that the big corporate giants, you know, they are not hard to beat, and they are all messed up, worry about their paycheck, and that you can, you know, have an opportunity to go out there and lay on the line and come up with a better product and believe in it, and…there must have been a dozen outstanding entrepreneurs in my administration that have gone out and had major successes 19:00and I’m, I’m really proud of them, and that’s sort of maybe at this point in my life, probably the most satisfying thing I see, from Jerry Abramson the mayor of Louisville, to Paul Patton started out with me, and, and…that might (iffy?) somewhat but it’s amazing seeing what the people have done that were in my administration because most of them were there for a good cause, and they wanted to make a difference in their government, and I think they were all ambitious to want to have something after them but like Bruce Lundsford left his law practice, accounting practice, and (Lon Garry?) left his accounting practice to come down to Frankfort and Paul Patton left his...very successful coal development company to come down, and, and ended up as party chairman so...it was a, they were the finest group of people and I don’t think any president had a brighter group than the group I was able to surround myself with, and I’ll say this, ( ) everyday but you often wondered what 20:00these people think when they drive to whole Frankfort every day, but we really all had...I think an inner cause, plus most of these people never had their name in newspapers so there was some glory to go with it and, and I had enough glory, so I gave all the glory to my cabinet people which I think helped them, you know, get the praise they deserved and it was a, unselfish but a very bright group of people, and we were never afraid to (tell?), say no to the governor, because W. T. Young, who was my mentor, he was my chairman of the cabinet and he had just very (quietly?) say, “governor, you can’t do that,” and then that just of sort of set the atmosphere that everybody else could talk to me like that, which made it very healthy, because you know, most of our governors had felt like kings and they’ve had everybody at their feet worshipping how wonderful they are and they never get the real truth, so.

White: I want to ask you about W. T. Young, because you had said on the, the first tape we did that he had had as much influence on you as anybody else.

Brown: Yes.

White: And I don’t know, when did you get to know him and what had your relationship been before you became governor?

Brown: Okay, well, W. T. Young was my next door neighbor growing up as a young man, and I had read somewhere 21:00where he was chairman of Royal Crown Cola, and I saw an ad with Tina Sinatra that he had put out, and I thought it was very effective and I called him and didn’t know him well at the time other than we were next door neighbors and he knew my little sister Pamela. She used to visit over there all the time, and I asked him if he’d serve on my board, and he was the real...person I leaned on for advice because he had had so much experience and wisdom that I drew on and we are best friends today, I mean we play golf two or three times a week and he is eighty years old and to me as effective and, as active as he’s ever been, and, but he, he just has an ability to look through all the clutter. I mean he told me lou...move my company to Lexington, I said, “well gee, I can sell the ( ) or move to Louisville because it’s a bigger transportation ( ) I should be living here, that’s my home, that’s where I want to live, you know, I ended up doing a lot in Louisville, you know, 22:00and far as my mark, but this was home. But that was a, that was just some advice; he’s given me so many pieces of good advice. I still, you know, if I got a major problem I go to Bill and say, “what do you think, Bill?” The one thing about him, if he doesn’t have answers, he’ll say, “I don’t know the answer to that.” I remember walking back to (Lane?) after one of my bypass surgeries, I said, “you know, Daddy is running for congress, he is eighty years old, and he was looking to get in on the action and he is going, you know, getting pulled in all those crazy business deals, and you know, gold, or uranium, or things that you know, people were coming in and pitching him deals that were taking advantage of him,” and I said, you know, “what do I do, Bill, I mean, how do I, how do I control my dad?” And he gave me a great line that I’ve used many a time, he says, “well John, it looks to me like you got an unsolvable problem.” [Laughing] and, and that was true. But anyway, I was going to tell my dad how to, how to run his life.

White: How about Larry Townsend? How did you know him?

Brown: Well Larry came to me back in…I guess 1970, or ’71, and he was president of Jaycees and he just read about me, heard about me and….

White: Jaycee? Oh! President of the Jaycees, okay.

Brown: Uh-huh, of the, 23:00of the….

White: Junior Chamber, right?

Brown: ...Junior Chamber and he was just, you know, he was a fine looking, finely groomed, high energy, committed, sort of patriot type and he couldn’t have called me at the worst time because the last thing I was looking for is another project. But he got me involved at, in trying to get the democratic national convention to Louisville, and since I knew Bob Strauss well, I knew we’d get an audience, so I pitched in and the mayor at that time, I don’t know if it was Kenny (Smeed?) or Bill (Stanford?) but anyway, we put on an old spread and came in second to Miami and…I made a few trips to Washington, and this Larry, you know, he wanted me to be President of the United States and that was his vision. I said, “Larry, I am not interested in being President of the United States, I am too worn out. Maybe someday I will get in politics but I’m just...not is not the time, but I do have a, a legacy, and I was 24:00interested enough to do the telethons with him. It was always his goal, but he wanted me to get in politics and you know, go for president, and I never misled him because I never once told him that I really had the inner energy or desire to do it and but if it weren’t for Larry I wouldn’t have run for governor, I mean, off my honeymoon, Larry is the only one I talked to and he said, “come on in, you got five days left,” and I chartered a plane from my partner Harry Mangurian, that I owned the Celtics with, and he picked us up over there and I had been too cheap to go commercial, or to fly my, charter my own plane, and it was some little island, no telling how long it would take to get home, but I came home and Larry met me and after we evaluated a hundred and nineteen people, we went up to see the signing of the peace treaty between Palestine and Israel, and the Middle East Peace, Peace Treaty and…we flew to New York and I called (Herb?) about 25:00two o’clock, I said, “well, line (it?) up tomorrow, Larry and you know, we will be in at eleven o’clock.” Brown: And then I, I had a bad cold and I was trying to call him back and the little sucker purposely turned his phone off so I couldn’t reach him, and so the next morning I had no idea what I was going to say at the press conference, so I went in the men’s room, and Phyllis laughs about it, and I was looking in the mirror as to what I was going to say, and ironically it was the same thing I would say at the end of my four years, but it all came to me, and I really enjoyed it and there really wasn’t what I would consider a stumbling block in four years of serving or you know, so many things were distasteful about politics but the good thing was that it wasn’t a career to me, it was a, a purpose and a cause and I, I was able not to take myself too seriously, and I think that gave me the independence of being entirely different, not caring what the popular trend was or whether it was the right thing to do, and I think that’s 26:00what we tried to do, and, and it was ever really known, I mean we didn’t have any average administration, we really had a great administration, and that is to get done everything you can get done in four years and you go back to the various areas of government, it was really revolutionary from, you know, we had ten of hundreds of million dollars been setting around not even drawing interest you know, we had, we collected like two-hundred million dollars of old tax debt that we were owed that hadn’t been paid and we just put the muscle on people, and got them to pay. But that little annual report you got, did I give you one, about the accomplishments of the Brown administration?

White: No, but I had seen one.

Brown: Okay, I’ll get you….

White: Separately.

Brown: I’ll get you one, I got one on my desk but, that basically, I wanted to send that to all the taxpayers, it was going to cost two-hundred-and-sixty-eight thousand, I said gee that looks self-serving, but they are entitled to know the 27:00( ) facts and fantasy and the news media is not interested in the substance of what the administration does, it’s all on the periphery and I would have gladly send out, because we had it made up in about four days and it’s really, it’s, it’s something I’m very proud of and if there is any (thing in the world?) that we could have done, we would have done it, but I think the four years we accomplished everything I could of hoped for. And you know, the one area that maybe you would have liked to have done more in was in the field of education, but nobody knew what to do! That’s before the Carnegie study came out, before another major study, and…you know, we learned from all that research and you know, they’ve taken steps since then to, to at least concentrate more on education, how much it’s helped, I think the jury is still out, but at least they’ve certainly made it more of a priority than it was back then, and but they’ve also doubled the tax rate whether or not long term that was necessary or going to be helpful to us, only time will tell. 28:00White: What do you mean you didn’t know; nobody knew what to do?

Brown: Well, there wasn’t any states that were doing any innovative in the field of primary and secondary education, and I had looked at the college...set up as really a, a group of what we have eight or nine colleges, as just (turf holders?), you know, fight and get all you can and hold on, and…I, I tried to, you know, clear out the University of Kentucky as a, as the state university and Louisville also as a priority as a urban university, and we tried to set some standards and some direction and, then on primary and secondary, there was very little research done, like the Carnegie study that evaluate all facets of primary, secondary, give all the comparative data, and that was within about three months of my going out of office, and that was the 29:00most informed information I had, I mean, plus the fact that the state elects their superintendent of education and he’s got his own agenda, so you don’t necessarily control him, you’re controlling him indirectly, but not directly, so that really wasn’t my job, if you want to say that, except that’s an area I like to have done more in, but we didn’t have any, we didn’t have a vision at that time, I don’t think anybody did, I mean, you know, some of these states, like Mississippi and the, Okla...Arkansas and some of the others were more dramatic, but when you change the whole system it’s very risky, so in a way that was maybe a blessing that Kentucky could learn over the last twenty years, all the best of those things that worked.

White: How many...were your administration was, was predominantly businessmen.

Brown: All businesspeople, all….

White: Were they old businesspeople?

Brown: All except Jackie Sweigart who was the secretary of the, of Natural Resources, 30:00and George Wilson who was the secretary of prisons, or, of the corrections, and all the rest of them were businesspeople, 31:00and highly successful, I mean, and I, what they gave us is an independence and a freedom to make our own decisions, we…. [Pause] Brown: Okay?

White: As far as the businessmen in your administration goes?

Brown: Yeah, the businesspeople….

White: What do you think is, what do you think is won or lost when you say pick perhaps the bottom line against a vision for, you know, something like education or...I am trying to think of another example of….

Brown: I, I think what I am trying to say is how….

White: ...being solvent versus having a, a vision of what you want to accomplish beyond a good return for your taxpayers.

Brown: Oh, I think first of all you have to be independent so it’s not a political decision that you’re going to bankrupt the state, and that’s what we have done as a nation and also done as a state, is what is the people want, to give a grab bag of everything without any real independent design 32:00and intelligent planning. We were free enough, and well-intended enough to just want to do the right thing, and we certainly were people with vision, you know, we had all started, creating companies, built companies, and we were there for the love of Kentucky, to build its future, but equally important, and perhaps at that time more important, and that is clean up the mess down there, as far as, you know, job descriptions and having people in jobs that there were no jobs and through our process we eliminated over eight thousand positions and it was hard to do but something I was committed to do because this is our one chance to bring about change, and we’d...I think made people more aware that they had to do a job in the state government and you are all good employees they just need leadership, and, and they didn’t know, they finally found out that political clout means nothing to us, we don’t listen to that and I saved two hundred millions dollars a year and that’s the money we could put into education, 33:00and that’s just two-hundred dollars less for every tax payer at the time we had about a million tax payers, and so that was significant and that was a cause that we had everybody concentrate, where can you eliminate co…cost and, and at the same time we were all visionary, we built more roads than any administration in history up to that time, but we built them a lot cheaper because we had the road builder in there as the secretary of transportation, I don’t think we ever had one, that ever built a road, and all these governors, Happy Chandler and all the rest of them talking about their road, you know, they’re road governors….

White: Was that Metts?

Brown: Huh?

White: Was that Metts?

Brown: Yes, Uh-huh, and Frank (Style?) was offensive from time to time but he had such impatience and intolerance for bureaucracy you know, he, he ran through, and sometimes over, a lot of people but, as I said, you know, at the end of the day he laid a lot of black top a lot of road, and he didn’t have any corruptions and, and he shook that cabinet up to where there we...weren’t any politics, everything is on a bid 34:00basis, everything was on the best person, the best bid got the job and that was, you know, that was an institution that built up over decades, it was totally political. And the same way really in all the other factors, I think in economic development we just basically said that this community would watch you. We like you; we understand you, come here, UPS came out for a derby party, and we put our...brass out there that was just on a par with their brass out of Connecticut and we got to build a big facility, we got them every piece of legislation they wanted in the next sixty days, and they made the decision to move there. The Toyota never would have come here to Kentucky, had we not set up the original office and made the original contacts. I never took any credit for it, but we’d set up all the groundwork for that, and we had an office in Japan, the first time we sat one up, but...you know, 35:00we had...GE was going to leave the state or leave Louisville.

I met with Jack Welch the chairman. In fact, I ran into him a week before last and he first peppered me with some four-letter words that he wanted to get out of Louisville, didn’t like the Courier Journal, didn’t like Louisville, he couldn’t wait to get out of there and I was a little embarrassed, I said “well, Mr. Welch, I agree with m…a lot of what you say but let me go back and see if I can help,” and unions are causing trouble because every time they had a lay off there was a big front page story in the Courier Journal and hear talk of you know, how they’ve gotten fired their families were going to be hungry and, and he was probably trying to run a business and had, you know, more jobs in the state than anybody else and so I said “well, you know I have taken your time and my time coming up here, let me see what I can do, you don’t have to do anything, but I, you know, my job was to try to do something to help and I’m going to back and meet with the union, I’m going to meet with the Courier Journal, and I am going to do anything I can to try to clean this up and 36:00if you want to hate us, you know, hate us but let me see what I can do.” Brown: So, I went back and there was Mr. Cassidy that was head of the electric union, and I went down to the Courier Journal and just showed them what poor citizens they were being trying to beat on the company when they had to lay people off, that happens, and that doesn’t mean they’re bad people ( ) run them out of here we won’t have anything. And then we invited Jack to the derby, and he came down and had a big derby time and then later in the year he committed a forty million dollar expansion. So we were good spokespeople and salesmen for economic development--much was image, our slogan was Kentucky and Company, a state that’s run like a business and other governors were afraid to touch business like it was something bad, to me it was good, it was a corps of our base of assets that would build education, build roads, attack crime, I mean it, it’s okay, you know, that’s what America is best known for is the free enterprise system so, we, 37:00I think really sold that idea and I think really s...launched the economic development that we are now enjoying in Kentucky and I think we can even do better, I just think that was the focal point, is how do you give our people better jobs and we haven’t changed for fifty years, you know, the coal miner goes up and they’ve become coal miner like their daddy, and the farmer grows up and becomes ( ) and you know, the whiskey business, you got business and they are all industries that are being phased out or on the decline, we need to bring some fresh ideas and, and a fresh kind of energy and jobs and opportunity to the people here, and that’s the key, we’re still in the heart of the United States to, you know, create the best of jobs whether it’s light industry or whether it’s sales and service, distribution offices and we haven’t been as aggressive and as successful as we need to be.

White: I wonder what has been...th...why over the years has been, has Kentucky not been a magnet for business, and why over the years has the Democratic party not been known for being a, a business party. And of course you got a state, Kentucky, which is largely democratic and--I mean, is it a lack of understanding? Is it, is it, is it a lack of education? Is it, why would the newspaper beat up on, on business is, I...why the Courier Journal for instance….

Brown: Well, they….

White: …beat up on GE ( ) GE?

Brown: …they encourage it, the Courier Journal is a liberal newspaper, and, and usually they always accentuate the negatives. I mean it; it has to be Mother Theresa 38:00or something for them to come up with a positive story on somebody. That’s their nature, I mean they’re basically cynics, and they’re basically gossip columnists and there are some exceptions to that, okay, there is some exceptions to some of the editorial writers that try to--but I think the day-to-day reporter is out there to report news, not substance, and I got so frustrated, not mad, just frustrated at the system, that I abolished my press operation a little after a year in. I said I’m wasting my time, these people aren’t interested with what we are doing here, they’re interested in a news story, I got you, and I, I called a press conference and…one little reporter raised his hand and said, “well governor how are we going to get our stories every day?” And I said, “well, if there is anything serious, I’ll order a press conference, I have always been open with you, I never failed to answer your question. I went on KET every week and answer any question that every wants to call in but I frankly don’t have time, we don’t work for the press and this is going to save about four-hundred-fifty thousand dollars and...if 39:00you all got any questions, you know you can catch me in the hallway or the men’s room, I’ll be around here, you know, you can ask any question you want.” So, I really sort of enjoyed doing it [Chuckling] because they, they’re so unmerciful and it was….

White: Wo...did it, did it anger anyone beside the press when you did that?

Brown: (I don’t think I?) angered them, they just said, “that’s the way John Brown does, he is different, and--but they left me alone, they didn’t, and they were congregating around my office I mean I felt like they were listening in and every time I walked out they’d hit me and like a bunch of vultures, and I just, I had a nice relationship with them, I was very pleasant and fortunately I was secure enough not to lose my cool, because anybody growing up and is successful has a tremendous ego or pride, and boy it can destroy you in a moment. I mean, look what’s happened to all our presidents. There is only one that’s enjoyed the job, and that’s Ronald Reagan, okay. And he is the only one that was above it. He just didn’t listen to it, he went on about his life and George Bush, and Clinton, and Nixon, 40:00and Carter, and L. B. J., I mean they just took them down and…but, you know, while they do a lot of good, you know, what, it was a necessity and I believe in the free press, there is just so much accentuating the positive, because that’s what sells newspaper that’s pretty sensational….

White: You mean the negative?

Brown: Yeah.

White: You mean accentuating the negative.

Brown: And, and we just had overkill on it, and I don’t think they have the purists in the media like I tried to be in politics and I think other people following up politics there are lot of good people in politics today, that sacrifice an awful lot in order to be in there. And here’s Paul Patton who I have a great admiration for and…probably the only person that could ever get elected from eastern Kentucky by himself and (Byrd?) had joined up with Wilson Wyatt to get elected, but he’s made a career, I mean he spent thirty years. I wrote him a letter, I said you know, outside myself, I don’t know of anyone that’s worked harder or been more committed to try to, you know, do something in public life, 41:00and you, and, and I’m sure he had to do a good job. But since I was in it, if you noticed about all of our governors have been business oriented, some better than others, it’s not an answer-all to everything. I think the main thing that if you are independently secure, then you ought to be publicly secure, and, when we, we, you--we held the line, chapter and verse, that we have no deals and anybody that mentioned politics it was just like a cancer and we just didn’t tolera…--didn’t understand it, didn’t want it, didn’t tolerate it, it wasn’t around. But I went in the office, my first day there are not a single person visited me. Ordinarily any governor when he goes in there will be five hundred people outside the door wanting a job or their contracts, or remember me, or whatever, and my office was empty, I didn’t have an appointment, and in any event, all those things I would like to have etched in stone more, I didn’t realize how quickly they’d go away, I didn’t realize that the next day, 42:00when the Brown administration is transferred that there is a whole new agenda, you go on right back to the good old days of, you know, the Bill Collins and all his shenanigans and all the politicians of, it, it really made me sad that I let that happen.

White: It didn’t take long, did it!

Brown: No, and, and it was just sad, because that’s why I did it, is to make a mark and prove that it wasn’t necessary but then again, you know, I should of propelled my legacy, I should have gotten in with Grady Stumbo two days earlier and got him elected, but I didn’t want to be kingmaker, there again, I was being too much of the purist.

White: And that brings us to your...relationship with the legislature which was, if not unique, it was certainly unusual, as I recall.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: I’m trying to think back, but as I recall, you were not a governor who got in there and tried to manipulate the legislature and…steer them closely 43:00into a certain...route, pa...you know….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: …pathway. Yours was I’ll do my job and they’ll do their job. Is that? Do I have that about right?

Brown: Yes, and….

White: And I remember there was a lot of comment in the press about how unusual this was, and how now, some years later, how, how do you feel about that? I mean, were you, are you happy with the r...the arrangement? Do you think you could’ve accomplished more if you had worked more closely with the legislature?

Brown: Well….

White: Is it?

Brown: I, I ha….

White: Is it more pure [purer]?

Brown: ...I had made a statement in the campaign, and I remember I gave it in my opening address, because I had made a statement that the contributions of the legislature over the years, being dominated by a governor, that it wasn’t worth the carfare to send it to Frankfort. One of my little statements I’ve made. And I really believe that because they were all totally controlled by a governor 44:00 and….

White: So, there was no independent voice?

Brown: No independent voice.

White: is that the idea?

Brown: And that’s all, I was (following?) all the constitution, we have a free form of government and we have checks and balances, and if I couldn’t honor or live up to that, there was nothing pre-conceived that I wanted other than the right thing, if I couldn’t sell it, I probably didn’t deserve it, and…anyway, it did start off awkward because they didn’t believe, you know, that we got some new governor in that isn’t going to play it like all the other governors and call, call across the river and you get things handled, and when we started laying off a lot of people, they thought they had an in for life and realized nobody would listen to them, that we were just trying to run each cabinet independently. I remember going...with Bill Kenton and Bobby Richardson, they were my speaker, and they had never worked with a governor like me, and we hardly knew each other, and yet they were the speaker and they were democratic and they were trying to be cooperative, not knowing if they were really sincere in the effort, but we were in le...in the 45:00general assembly a month, and this is really a funny story but it’s really true, it is true as I can tell it, and, is...I was sitting in my office and Bobby Richardson and Bill Kenton came down and said, “Governor,” he said, “They’ve, they are having caucuses all over the state, they shut down the house and senate while they have a, a Louisville caucus was the big one, and eastern Kentucky caucus because what’s Louisville getting, and then Lexington had a caucus, what’s, what’s Louisville getting, we want to get our share, and northern Kentucky, west Kentucky, and I said, “what’s a caucus?” I mean I didn’t know what a caucus was! And “well they’re going, they’re going to, they’re going to put the arm on you governor, and we need to be nice to them, this is very, this a very sensitive time, it’s getting bigger, and we got all your bills today now on the floor. I’ll made my (government?) bills,” 46:00and I said, “you know, you need to deal with them governor, because, you know, they’re, they’re going to vote against every bill you won’t get any passed.” And they were nervous, like their whole career on the line and I was nervous, I mean. And so, a guy named (Karl Metz?) and he is a school teacher in Louisville, called me, representing the Louisville contingency, and said, “governor, we voted unanimously here, that if we don’t get the southwest community college gymnasium, and we don’t get the Gene Snyder freeway, I forgot what it was called then, if we don’t get that….

White: Jefferson.

Brown: “Did...if we don’t get that finished, we, we’re going to vote down every bill you got.” And, and I probably can’t use these words, you probably heard them but, I said, “I’ll tell you what Karl, you just go tell your people to help themselves and come see the next governor, I am not interested in any kind of deal,” and I hung up the phone. 47:00Now this guy, he goes back and, he said, “you know the governor just told us to stick it and come to see the next governor” [Laughing] and it’s just instinct I, and Bobby Richardson and Clinton--I mean...K.… White: Kenton?

Brown: Kenton, they looked at me like, I had gone crazy, and as it turned out, then Louisville closed the caucus, and everybody said, “what did you get?” “We didn’t get anything,” and then nobody taking anything, we don’t have to get anything, so we are no worse off than they are, and we don’t have to go home and, and give anything, because this governor doesn’t give anything, so we are free! And all of the sudden they realized it was to their benefit, they didn’t have to go back and say I can’t get you that bill in the roll because nobody gets it. And everybody just settled down and did their job, I got everything through that I wanted but that was right, that was the testing stage and it worked….

White: But governor, politics is supposed to be the art of the deal! I mean [Laughter – White] Brown: Yeah, no deal, and what are they going to do for four years, 48:00not have a governor they can talk to? Huh? What are they going to do? I mean that’s, you know, that was the only job that really mattered, and I could do by appearance of the governor and the power then just have to muscle it, and I got everything I wanted, and…and it worked like a charm. It was just my style of selling, and you learn in selling put the other people on the defense, and so I just took all the little candy away from them, there wasn’t anything to play with. So, what are they going to do? They are going to be statesmen and, and they were, I mean, if you look back over the last twenty years, they’ve done an awful lot of good and Martha Lane didn’t know how to put the budget together, didn’t put a budget together, the legislature had to put her budget together for her, I don’t know if you know that or not, yeah, put the whole budget together, and…and they’ve gotten some competent people, maybe not enough, but you take people like Joe Clark, I mean he was just an invaluable sort of patriot for the legislature, he really kept them at hand. Mike Maloney 49:00here, was another real, and Joe Wright, and John Berry and (Govern?) Hughes, they had some really outstanding leaders, the senate had an outstanding group of people; they were my protectors. And one time they came in and they were going to have the legislature approve almost everything the governor did, and, and I was half laughing at it, and I gave an interview on the front page of the Courier Journal, I said, “they want to be governor, they ought to run for it, you know,” and “they can’t do this and finally I stopped it, I got enough people in the senate that they were going to have an oversight to, you know, approve everything that the governor did. And so they tried all their power plays, but first….

White: And, and did they continue to do that for four years?

Brown: Not too much, no, I mean I, I let them know where I was stood but I was polite, I was courteous and I reasoned with them, but I didn’t beg them and, and they, I didn’t have to give a single road to a single legislator, or a single project, I was just, we don’t do that, 50:00because you know, you can’t be a little pregnant, you either do it or you don’t do it, and so we just said no and, and I think we’ll tell you that our administration was by far the best administration they ever worked with.

White: How about the process of--was there a process of educating each other if, if not, if not trying to make deals and not trying to lean on each other, how about simple communication as to this is why….

Brown: Oh sure!

White: I think this is good.

Brown: I called them off….

White: How would that work?

Brown: I got, yeah….

White: You would have meetings?

Brown: Yeah, absolutely, I had meetings and, I think they grew to like me and I think they grew to respect me, and I was still a little bit of a mystery to them but I think they found out my word was good and they got to where they could be respectful about their job and not have to go home with a bag full of goodies to show their constituents that they did their job, because that was taken away and that really made their jobs easier, and you know, now the legislative research, I mean 51:00they really getting involved where they understand the issues, where before, it was, whatever the governor anointed and, I mean I gave them some interview that you know, no governor is that smart, you know, we got governors that are governor this and governor that, and I said, you know, there is never a governor, a governor build a road, he wouldn’t know how to lay the gravel, the black top, and you know, and we got governors going around building roads here, there, and everywhere and I said, that’s something that we need to lay out a plan, what’s good for Kentucky and at the same time try to divide the assets equally among all the four regions in the state, and that’s the way Maysville ever got a road, or you know, they’d have enough votes up there, to double A highway, the only reason we built the AA highway was, was because long term that’s the Ohio River, where they’re going to have to be homes and business and they got a railroad line, and they got the beautiful waterways, and some day that will pay off, and it might take fifty years, but some day we’re going to be glad that we got a highway, from Cincinnati to Ashland, 52:00and all that waterfront, in my judgment will be filled in, and there’ll be a lot of commerce, because that’s closer to the market place even then Louisville and Lexington.

White: How about the process of delegating? I can, I can make some assumptions from what you’ve said….

Brown: Sure.

White: ...but I think, I think, you better say it. Is it easy to delegate? Is it hard to let go?

Brown: Well, it was awfully hard for me in Kentucky Fried Chicken, because that was my first major success, and I was always fearful of losing it, and plus it’s my money and my fortune and everybody was looking at me for the day-to-day results. And I remember I had twenty-one people reporting to me and…when I became governor, it was the total reverse. I wasn’t smart enough or informed enough to make all the decisions for state government, nobody could be, and so I was fortunate to spend a great deal of my time really getting the very best person for the job, like Dr. Grady Stumbo. They got thousands of these programs over there for family care, and health related that I could spend two lifetimes and never learn, and Grady was a student of that, he has his own clinic up there, he graduated in, in tops in his class and that medical school in UK and one of the ten top young men in America, and was just an extraordinary person to be committed and to relate sensitively to all those programs. And Bob (Warren?) had been in government for twenty years and he knew every program 53:00and the, the allocation, the history, and, and I listened to him more than anybody else as far as how to allocate our money, whether we got our money’s worth, and where we could cut and save, where we needed to spend, and he was very sensitive, is all, in our own hearts and minds is not political. We didn’t care about ever running for anything again, we just wanted to do the right thing, and, and, and if you look at my cabinet, you know, every one of them were outstanding people before and after, and, I’ve got, you know, I had in coal, you know, ( ) I feel Bill Sturgill has probably done more business in energy than most anybody in Kentucky and he….

White: Had you known him before?

Brown: Yes, I saw him at a ball game and said, “Bill, you know, your dad and my dad they go way back,” and I said, “I need your help and I don’t accept no as an any kind of excuse, you know, I, I didn’t run down here to do this job myself, if I can’t get people like you, we are never going to change this state, and I promise you, you will enjoy it and we really need you. If I got W. T. Young signed on, you can sure join.” 54:00And then once W. T. came on and then Bill, then and boy it was like the Harvard School to be able to be wanted and accepted in the administration, and, I, I don’t want to brag too much, but even the second line of people were so outstanding in our administration, from the (Lewis Matthews?) and (Tommy Vance?) and they were just all people inspired and we hadn’t, we had...no handcuffs, that was, that’s why I enjoyed it and that’s why I told both my sons, the greatest thing about public life is you’re, you’re free, you know, and that’s, that was the greatest thing I had was my freedom, and, if I had to do it over--I don’t think, that I could have done more, had done a better job, but I did learn to delegate, where before I never have. I mean I have delegated totally here and my job was to motivate these people to not stop and think why are we getting up every morning and driving to Frankfort, and live over there in the rainy days 55:00and, the, the fog and all the media beating on the doors, and I let them get all the, whatever exposure of it, because that would keep them motivated and, I didn’t need any exposure, I didn’t got to, I think one ribbon cutting in four years, for a road, I went, I went over to Hodgenville with the, where Abraham Lincoln’s birth place, they had wanted that road for years, but I just felt like I didn’t need to do that, Let the Frankfort mess going down there, tell the, take the transportation people, take the helicopter there, and Grady Stumbo, when we took over the hospital in Louisville, I think I did go to that one, but that was a, it was a major visionary undertaking where the U. of L….

White: I need you to remind--oh, U. of L.

Brown: U., U. of L. was running a hospital and losing five or six million a year and I just gave it to Humana, and they took care of all the...indigent care, and, you know, the, the University ended up making five-six million a year, 56:00instead of losing it, and we guaranteed indigent care, so, here, ( ) another bold movement like the Arts theater down there, Julian Carroll said, “I’m going to build you a twenty...three million dollar art center and I got in and I said, “I’m not going to give an art center, I mean they got the University of Louisville is going to run it and, and, they will never make a profit, they will lose three or four million a year, and so we went to Bill, and I went to Mr. Bingham, and Miss (Seyler?) told them to raise six million dollars and want them to run it, we didn’t want to run it, and I think that’s one of the proudest thing that Louisville did, and I mean Mr. Bingham, of all things he’s done, they went out and raised a little over six million and we had a congratulation party and I--we challenged them to raise ten and darn if they didn’t go out and raise ten million, and it’s one of the finest...involvements, I think, for the people of Louisville, they’ve done a great job, from what I understand. But I think the principles of business just apply in government, if you can do it on a pure basis, and it’s hard to, 57:00but I really didn’t have any goals beyond being governor, and trying to accomplish what I could it in four years.

White: Would, would you have run for a second term, if it had been available? That’s a terrible question probably, but….

Brown: Well, I tell you, I was….

White: I mean I, I guess, maybe a better way to ask it is, does a governor really need eight years to accomplish what he or she needs to accomplish, or is four enough?

Brown: I think four enou...was enough for me at the time, because I couldn’t have kept my people past the four years, and I had to cajole them to stay the four years, but they were all career people, like Grady or like Bruce Lundsford, or Larry Townsend, or...all up and down the, Bill Sturgill, and other kinds of secretaries, they couldn’t have committed eight years, I would have had to freshen up, and…I don’t think I would enjoy it as much, but then when I got out of it, I felt like I owed it to the state to run the second time. 58:00I didn’t have the same passion that I had before, but I certainly had the same experience, and…I was so far ahead in the polls that I think our people just took the race for granted and then the little lottery came up and people ( ) at the local analyst would tell you that a hot issue will steamroll any candidate, and the lottery was the thing, that was something everybody could get up every day and look forward to taking their dollar, and maybe hit the jackpot, and I didn’t understand it, because it was such a bad gamble and such a bad practical investment but you know, most of the states have raised, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars through that, and that was one that we were just asleep on, didn’t understand, and should have been aware of, but I don’t regret having run the second time, even though I was going through a lot of changes in my life, and I had quit drinking...about that time, and you get sort of a little bit off the wall when you lose all your crutches, I quit smoking and drinking 59:00all at one time, and that was sort of a killer for me and plus my hip, I just found out the day before I announced I was going have to have another hip replacement and I was in a lot of pain, the campaign--but that didn’t affect my effectiveness and I really gave it my best, but I wasn’t as inspired and as innovative. What I needed, I, what I’d forgotten is they’d forgotten what I did four years ago, I got to refresh their memory and have a new cause you know, it’s not what you did for me yesterday, what are you going to do for me today? And, we were twenty-three points ahead in the campaign, and voted the most favorable administration in forty or fifty years, or whatever, and…we just felt like, you know, everybody knew us and knew what we did, we didn’t have to tell them again well, and you got to tell them every day, and people are entitled to know what are you going to do for them tomorrow and I’ve be...when Wallace came up with that lottery, we looked 60:00and I said, “boy, people...” White: It’s Wallace Wilkerson, I.… Brown: Yeah.

White: I better said that for the tape.

Brown: Yeah, Wallace Wilkerson, I said, “you know, here, and he’s got people thinking we’re going to raise taxes, we never raised a tax in four years, and I thought well people knew we ain’t, not going to raise any taxes, but they didn’t, but in campaigns they create whatever perception they want, and also when the day of negative advertising were all five candidates running against me were all negative, you know, he raised taxes, he lowered educa...I didn’t do any of that, but, you know, we cut back the budget on education, but we still had the biggest increase in salaries for the teachers that they ever had, but we had to cut back and froze them but they weren’t cutting them, it was--but, and that’s what they made it sound through the negative advertising.

END OF TAPE 3.2, SIDE A START OF TAPE 3.2, SIDE B White: Okay, we’ve got a, a copy of Governor Brown’s report to the taxpayers from what year was that?

Brown: This 61:00is 1983.

White: ’83, and will you explain again what you were starting to explain to me about this bar graph here?

Brown: Well, when I left office, I, my feeling was I worked for the people of Kentucky, and not for any kind of political establishment and my idea was that I’m going to make a, a report to the taxpayers. And so we put together a synopsis of the accomplishments of the administration, where we took over, where we ended, and it was very informative, and the public never really knows, they take whatever from the newspaper that they feel like is worthy, and, it was going to cost two hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars, and I just felt like gee, you know, I really should do it, I want to do it, I almost did it, but at the same time I felt like you know, I’d be embarrassed by spending the state’s money for something that looked self-aggrandizement, but it was really the facts, and the facts were that when you.… White: So, did you actually circulate this?

Brown: I circulated it to the media….

White: To...

Brown: ...hoping they’d pick up….

White: …to the media, 62:00 okay.

Brown: ...when it was printed, but they didn’t, you know, they, they are the experts in their own mind on reports of state government, they wouldn’t find anything in here false, it’s all true, that when we came into office, as the graph shows, we had thirty-seven thousand employees, when we left we had twenty-nine thousand, that’s over 22 percent cut and that’s never been done before and that was done voluntarily, not necessarily because of, of tight economic times, but we were just trying to streamline government to make it more effective, and at the same time we brought the salaries up. The reason they were going, they were competitive with private enterprise for the first time, the state jobs were brought up to be competitive. The general fund here, we actually, inflation was much higher than what our income, so we had a negative income, as far as real dollars, but you see how the four years before had like a 16 percent average increase where the four years, during the recession that we were in there, they were about six points, six-and-a-half perc...percent average. Here, as you see, the graph 63:00that the press never reported on but m...it was most, the most important thing is every state around Kentucky, you see Illinois, Ohio...is that Michigan, I guess? Or….

White: Indiana?

Brown: Oh, Indiana, and.… White: I mean Illinois, Indiana….

Brown: ...and West Virginia….

White: ...Ohio, yeah, West Virginia.

Brown: Yeah, they all raised the sales tax, the corporate tax and the personal income tax, and Tennessee raised the corporate income tax and so did Missouri, and we’ve always said, we didn’t have a single tax raise, and poor whole Kentucky, we weathered all these changes in the economy and loss of revenue, and we didn’t have a single tax increase, and I’m proud of that because that’s what the public wanted. It’s easy to go raise money, and get a bunch of money in, but I think the public was tired of it, and we were smart enough, or experienced enough rather, business people, we saved three hundred and eighty million in payroll here, you know, right at a billion dollars in just designated savings, because we’re 64:00all business people and we weren’t looking to be politically correct but business correct.

White: I want to ask you about this before you turn the page, because one of the things the press liked to talk about was...they liked to quote people who thought you had perhaps been a little too ruthless in….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...in reducing...you--the numbers of employees.

Brown: Well, I think….

White: What, what was your….

Brown: I don’t think….

White: ...your ( ) for that?

Brown: ...I don’t think ruthless would be the right way. They had personnel laws that at that time allowed us to do this and there were questioned right strenuously by some of the legislators that worked in Frankfort and some of the representatives, but I don’t think we lost very many of those cases, and, if they were, weren’t handled right, I wanted them to be able to correctly, everybody is entitled to a fair hearing and, and, if we had to have a layoff, do it in due course. But our goal was to reduce all unnecessary cost in government and that was part of the process, and we had a couple 65:00of our people that maybe overzealous and, and too aggressive, and but when you, you know, you have to layoff eight thousand people, you’re going to have a certain amount of that, but overall, I was afraid that so…you know, that the press was going to report on some highway we didn’t cut the grass real good, because we’ve you know, cut back so much, but they didn’t, I don’t think they found a single area of government that wasn’t more efficient when we went out than when we went in, and I think we proved that point, and...yeah there was, that, and overall though there was very little criticism, when you take eight thousand people lost their job. I hated to do that, I’ve hardly every fired anybody, but to me this was a system created by politics, and that’s what I was there to eliminate and change but didn’t, but then it’d never get done, but look down here what the results were, where every state around just raised, most of them all their major taxes and we didn’t raise any. And, you know, how do we get the money for our education spending in the last fifteen years, we’ve doubled the income tax, we’ve doubled the corporate income tax, and we’ve almost doubled the personal income tax, 66:00and I don’t think it was necessary. We had plenty of money down there to do what we wanted to get done, but now we are not near as competitive on economic development as, as we were.

White: Well, you, your administration was run during a recessionary time as you said. So the, the, the monetary savings...from your cutbacks went to keep--how much of it went to keeping you afloat in recessionary times and how much was able to be freed up for any new programs?

Brown: Well….

White: In other words, you must have had to paddle real[ly] fast just to stay even.

Brown: Well we did, but my, we were left with about six hundred million dollar deficit, I don’t know if you remember, when we took over after Julian Carroll, they had changed the law on the real estate tax and they had cut out about a hundred and forty million that we were expecting, plus the recession, plus inflation was about twenty percent, and the interest rates were like twenty-two percent, and we just, we just found enough pockets in there 67:00where we could eliminate expense. One of it was several million dollars was the department of information that the governor would be, you know, mimeographing out that you know, the governor today announced a stop light at so-and-so corner in Fulton, Kentucky and, and for a curb cut here, for old Joe up there in Springfield and, and I just, I said that’s all self-serving and we don’t need that, and…we just went through everywhere that we didn’t find essential, but we didn’t cut any human services, we didn’t cut education, we didn’t cut...you know, the vital services of state government, whether it be medical, or whether they’d be safety, or whatever. The….

White: Was there any money to do anything new?

Brown: No.

White: Or was it just….

Brown: No.

White: ...a matter of….

Brown: No, but we were very creative….

White: ...keeping afloat.

Brown: ...we created a bond system that helped get Toyota here.

White: Oh yeah.

Brown: It’s our creative incentives that got UPS to come here and to attract a lot of new ( ) I just told Bruce Lundsford to go find out whatever everybody is doing and put the best package together and recommend it to me. And Bruce was 68:00my--had never been to a legislative meeting 69:00and but he was young, he was bold, he is smart, and he got all our legislation through, and now he is chairman of a three-and-half billion company, and….

White: Where did you get him? I mean….

Brown: Through Larry….

White: Had, had you known him?

Brown: ...Townsend.

White: Through Larry.

Brown: Through Larry. Larry brought a lot of these young Turks in, and Larry had a good instinct on knowing people and motivations and, and these were, like Larry (minded?) they were, they were patriots, and yet they all came down, Bruce came to get the experience and exposure, and from there it gave him great credibility to come to the Brown administration, and he got involved with EMCOR and, and I was a partner with him and I decided not to go forward, I gu...I wish I was, I had stayed with him because he’s done a great job, but, it really wasn’t that hard, I’ve often said that this was maybe the easiest job I’ve ever had for two reasons, there is not any competition, and you don’t have to make a profit, so how easy can it be? I mean you’re ready to take an old tired system of politics and you clean it up.

So, it was like cleaning up a dirty room, 70:00you know, to me, and…I thoroughly enjoyed it and all the people, I mean you could ask them, and it was really one of the real inspiring times of their life, and we had a good time. About every two or three weeks I’d have Phyllis throw a party at Cave Hill, the cabinet and invite them their wives and so they could feel all a part of it, and I’ve never been with a group of people that I thought were smart, or inspiring, or innovative and creative. I mean we sat there and attacked every element of state government to find out a better way of doing it, and yes we, we could of used more money in certain areas, but like building more prisons or things like that, but we had bond in vehicles that we created that we real--I don’t think money was a handicap to us, even though we went through real people then, real tough economic times.

White: Can you talk a little bit about workmen’s compensation, or workers compensation, because that, a lot of, there was a lot of that...in the press and in some of the materials I looked through, 71:00and I noticed that Governor Patton has now gone through...a lot of things, but, but that was kind of a, a, a tough nut to crack, wasn’t it?

Brown: Well, I tell you the truth, the, the right to work law was one that I philosophically could have been inspired with, but the timing was never such in Kentucky that we could have gotten it passed with the legislature, because we were the only state in the south that didn’t have the right to work. And, and after I got into my term, after two years, I made the commitment to the labor boys that we were going to change that bill, if I ever had gotten back in office, that was one I probably would have fought to change. The workman’s comp there again, the political climate was not such, and it’s such a 72:00complex issue, I had (Russ Dozier?) that headed it up for me, he was former editor of the Lexington Herald, a very bright young man. Paul had an advantage on me that he was a student of that coming out of the coal mine industry to where he dealt with it every day and I was in sales and service and never really had that much exposure in workman’s comp, and I spent untold hours trying to learn it, and it’s really the most complicated subject I faced while I was there, and to Paul’s credit, and to my lack of full understanding, because I love to take on controversial issues, and we chose all we could, and the more controversial, the better we liked it. But that was an issue that the time was not such that I could accomplish anything, and I don’t think I had as good an understanding of it as Paul did. Paul had a mission when he went in, and he knew exactly what he was dealing with, and he handled it boldly and masterfully, 73:00and…at the end of the day, that’s what we needed to do, it was a tough nut to crack. But to me at that time that was not a priority but one that we were, you know, we made some changes, and we challenged the (marriage?); we cleaned it up some, but we didn’t really do the overhaul that Paul did, and that needed to be done.

White: How...

Brown: You know, the one, one thing I think we did for Kentucky probably, as revolutionary and, as anything, is we made our...you know, little old hillbilly state, if you want to refer to it as that, as we sometimes, we made us as a modern business...intellectual community that wanted business, could deal with business, and supported business, and I think I was one of the first governors that ever say, “hey, business is good, we want you to come here, we love you.” And make no mistake about it business is good! Money is okay, 74:00that’s free enterprise, that’s why we all get up every day to go out and try to make a living and, so I think we’ve changed both the local climate, and the national--until Reagan came along, and Reagan picked up some of the same type of, of slogans, or whatever, but it really worked and I, I guess, when Ross Perot ran, even though Bill Clinton is a good friend of mine, I was sort of intrigued with the idea of a Ross Perot, but he didn’t have the temperament or the personality, and that was unfortunate, because I would love to have seen this someone come in at the national level and try to do what we think we accomplished at the local level, because it worked. And it’s all so simple, it’s just a matter of taking your resources and making them to work best for you, that’s all, there’s no magic to it, it’s no, nothing that benefits the business community against the working person, it’s just taking every area of government, get your money’s worth for your roads, keep the politics out, use your money in education where it’s going to do the most good for you, and just think how much you 75:00saved by not having to fulfill political commitments that don’t necessarily contribute anything to the local or the state program, and I, I think across the board, the medical programs that we were able to get by, the money we saved in Medicare, Medicare, I think, if you’ll read in here, Ethel, was going at a rate of [paper shuffling sound] let’s see here, it’s in the last page, it was growing at a rate of 26 percent and when we left office we’d cut the rate growth to two point three percent, and four-point-five percent and that’s not putting some controls on them, it was just out of hand, wasn’t easy to do, but we stepped at the plate, and then we had a strong enough leadership to get a handle on the, escalating costs, and out of control costs of health care.

Brown: I really enjoyed women for the first time, having opportunity in…in government, I think June Taylor was as good an example as you could ever use. 76:00She had been a secretary for twenty-five years at state government. And everybody knew June, I didn’t know her well other than respectfully, she was always cheerful, and the first person I asked for was “who’s June Taylor work for?” And three other cabinet secretaries had already hired her. I mean she was hired for economic development, they wanted her over in transportation and one other one, and I said, “uh-uh, let me talk to June,” and I interviewed her, and she was just as I expected, I said, “I want you to be my executive secretary.” Well, after about six months, I lost my chief of staff, Jim (King?) that went to the University of Kentucky and I’m thinking, well who could be my chief of staff, I mean they’re the, they are your key person, that has to know government, has to know credibility, that’s got information that’s going to be helping you to make a decision, and so I had a cabinet meeting with all my business people in this little room, and here, in my den, and I said, “what about June Taylor?” And it just sort of hit me, 77:00“why wouldn’t she be a good chief of staff?” And everybody said, “well that’s great, absolutely!” And I call--held a press conference and June was making, I think twenty-six thousand a year and…I told her she is going to be in the cabinet, she was the first woman chief of staff in the United States, and…we’d never had a woman cabinet secretary before, but I had fun, I am a great kidder and I had fun telling her, I said, “June, I’m going to move you to thirty-thousand,” and then we announced it you know, she was real proud, and I think it was fifty-thousand, I raised it to, and she just didn’t know, but she was so good, she protected me, she is the one that put all the...oh, all these...committees together, and boards and all that that the governor has to do, and she knew people across the state better than anybody in the state government. And I couldn’t have gotten--she was the one that was a real valuable assets [asset] in my administration and…I got a, I mean, I am really very fond of her, she was so effective and so good, 78:00nobody else could have done that job as well as she did. And….

White: Did, didn’t you...you either had a record or, or, at the very least you underwent some sort of a conscious initiative to increase the numbers of women in government.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: Am, am I ( ) bringing that correctly?

Brown: Yeah, we did some goal setting and…I guess in, in increasing salaries, we tried to bring them up, and we had a lot of, of...well, Jackie (Spire?) was in the first cabinet secretary, but we had a lot of, of commissioners, you know, Lois (Matheus?) was commissioner, and we had three or four women, and they were all just very, very talented and very, very good, but I was always a believer in that, I always said, you know, women can do anything a man can do, if they are given the opportunity and…and I, I, at least we broke through there and I think it’s been a lot easier since, because there’s been a number of cabinet secretary that are women. But th…. 79:00White: While we’re talking about women, perhaps you can talk a little bit about the part that your wife Phyllis played in that….

Brown: Sure!

White: …because she did...well, talk about Phyllis and, and the crafts.

Brown: Well Phyllis….

White: And whatever else.

Brown: ...had a passion for crafts, and…and was really sort of--still is, sort of a honorary spokesperson for the craft centers across the United States, and she goes on QVC about once a month and helping to move and sell Kentucky crafts and other crafts too, but that’s where it started and the crafts (folks?) raised, had just some artists that didn’t know how to get their products to market and she saw the, in many ways was their savior and…and leader, and she’s still interested in it and…did a wonderful job, you know, it take a, a...a cottage industry like that and make into I’m sure a, 80:00probably a billion dollar industry today and…and we have a lot of talented people and, and she thoroughly enjoyed it and worked hard at it. And also she renovated the mansion which I wouldn’t have known how to do, she went out and raised the money, a couple million dollars in private funds and, and I have a number of people tell me when I was over at the Lexington Ball here last month, how proud Kentucky is to have that style and, and…most of it really go to Phyllis when I was their governor, but I’ve never been known for style, but I think she left her mark there that’s been appreciated by all the governors and the first ladies and she was a good partner, I mean...we hit our lives at the right time to really want to do the same thing and we complemented each other and I think people enjoyed her, you know, success and notoriety and they didn’t know me that well but they got to know 81:00me pretty good and, and I think it was a good partnership, and while our marriage, you know, went different directions I think it’s been geographically, we changed, when she goes to New York, and I go to Florida, and, you know, to live together you got to be together. And, but we still have a very respectful relationship, and our divorce will probably be final in another week, but...we have two wonderful children and I think we have a awful good history that we both feel awfully good about.

White: Right.

Brown: But it’s awfully tough to be in public life, two people...husband and wife, but I think, when we look back, we’ll both say that was the most...glowing and glorious and productive time of our life, though we were both very free to do things that we wanted to do. I gave her an office next to my door and I consider us, as my partner, I don’t know of any other governor that would (seat?) his wife out with him, but I thought this was what people wanted and so 82:00I gave it to them, and one thing I was able to, to do as governor that I would think was important and if you find all of our present leaders is, if we find leaders that are secure in themselves, they’re in a much better position to make the right decision, and for some reason I had had my ego pretty much filled by the time I got to be governor, and I was ready and able, wanting to give other people credit instead of taking it myself which is unusual for governors because they can’t wait to, you know, get up and receive the honor and the accolades but I didn’t need that and I really was sort of a in-the-back governor but I, in my own conscience, you know, it would have been done without me and I had the kind of influence I wanted, but I wanted to give other people credit and I think that’s just part of leadership, that I was secure enough to be able to do that. I used the line, you know, a lot of people say, “why do you say that?” And, and that was, you know, I would try to hire people smarter than I am and, and that wasn’t any discredit to me 83:00but we can’t give ( ) in every area, and I did, I did pick people that knew more about their area of expertise, but I knew how to communicate with them, where I knew what I was getting from them, and they worked, you know, sixty, eighty hours a week and, but that was just I think an art of management that we hadn’t known before, you know, the governor went to every ribbon cutting, and every fish fry, and every congratulatory and that’s just part of being a politician, but I was spared that and because of that I had more free time than any governor ever.

Brown: I remember going in to (Maxine Lutz?) in January, and I said, “what do I got February, March and April?” and she had me down three things, two of which could be flexible, be cancelable, but we would be very polite, say, “look the governor ( ) he will try to stop by.” And I never went to a dinner or a cocktail party I’d always--and I didn’t want to be rude but they accepted this as part of my modus operandi and they were very polite 84:00and I got around an awful lot, but I stopped in after dinner, I’d run in, and say my message and I’d run out, so I didn’t have to go over there and go through a whole dinner and spend, waste three hours of my life, and, and I had time to communicate with enough people, and I worked as hard at this as anything I’ve ever done, but it was on my terms, you know, sometimes I might sleep until ten or eleven o’clock and I’d work until two in the morning, and most of it was behind closed door dealing with my cabinet secretaries because they were the ones that were shouldering the job of getting results, and, but I think it was very, very effective. I know the press, you know, I’d walk in sometimes with a jogging outfit in at one o’clock and they just didn’t understand it, but they sort of, you know, but the main thing is to get results, and this was my style of management, and it seemed to really work for me. I don’t think I’ve ever done a better job of management through people, and really keeping control, and but the main thing is to have a governor that’s got the experience and the security. 85:00I remember Frank (Ashley?) came in one day, so many, so much of politics….

White: He was your press secretary.

Brown: Yeah. So much of politics is knee jerk, oh my God what are we going to do now, and I just never did, I never did lose my cool, and Frank came in one day, he said, “oh, we have the first scandal in the administration.” I said, “now, Frank, we don’t got [have] any sc…” “Yes, we do governor, it’s first scandal of your administration.” You know if somebody’s been raped outside the governor’s door, I didn’t know what, you know, what could have happened out there, there is going to be some scandal, and I said, “now Frank sit down here a minute, I want you to learn something,” I said, “first of all, there is no scandal and second of all it’s not going to have anything to our administration, do you understand?” “Oh! Oh God you don’t know,” I don’t know, “Frank just remember what I told you, now you tell me what it is.” Bob McNaulty is, is, is resigning as the first black cabinet secr...cabinet secretary, and he’s just, you know, thinks he ought to kill himself or something, he’s just talking, you know, he is just so upset and so ( ), and I said, “well, good for him, if he is man enough to recognize that this isn’t the job for him and better now than later.” 86:00I said, “call him in here,” and I just congratulated him on having the vision and boldness to be man enough to say this isn’t the right job,” and so the next day I applauded Bob (McNaulty?) for recognizing this wasn’t the right job and I had pressured him into coming in there and being the first black secretary, but this wasn’t what he was really cut out to be, and it was all over, but those are the kind of things that I tried to keep the lid on that often you get, like the Clinton administration, they’re chasing the tail all the day long, and maybe there is nothing--that’s the rather [chuckles] wrong expression but they, they, they’re, they never have really been in control of their communications, you know, and maybe there was no answer to Bill Clinton, I don’t know, but that’s what you liked about Ronald Reagan, you know, he didn’t let anything bother him and he gave a sense of security to the nation that he is okay, we’re okay, and...I wrote a letter to Bill Clinton, it might be interesting to you, and…and I’ll get it, if you want it, but it was really interesting, and my philosophy, 87:00and I swear to you I think he used it to change his whole tactics of...communication. I [shouts] Day!

White: I’m going to put his on pause while we find it.

Brown: Yeah. [Pause] White: We are looking for the letter, but...

Brown: Yeah, I, I’m saying this for a reason as to a philosophy, is that Bill Clinton was a good friend of mine, and he was like almost a younger brother and he came to the derby several times, and I went down and campaigned for him when he lost the election and I always liked Bill, he was just very likeable and he is very inquisitive and always want to learn and…he came out one, about the year before he ran, with Phyllis, I stayed up until four o’clock in the morning with his feet tucked under and just sitting and talking and chatting, and he is just a very likeable person, but after about a year and a half [clears throat] I...I called the white house, I heard he was coming into town, and I wasn’t really for him, I wasn’t active for him, I voted for him, 88:00and when he called me I said, “sure I’ll be for you,” but he never called on me and I was busy getting back to business, getting my life organized, and I never have been a big politico anyway so, I was at my pool in Florida, and Lincoln was there and I said, “Lincoln let’s go down and see the president, you know, he is coming to Miami and let’s see if we can maybe get up there and we get a chance to shake his hand and say hi to him, and see him.” And he said, “Oh Dad, I’m playing basketball today, I can’t go.” I said, “Lincoln, come on.” “No Dad I got a basketball at five o’clock.” Well, in the meantime I’d called the white house, called his office say, “yes sir, Governor Brown, and, and…I’m sure he’d love to see you and we will make arrangement to go here and there.” And usually when you go there, there is, you know, a, a thousand, two thousand people out there to greet the president as well as the media. But...I finally talked Lincoln into going there with me and we were the only two to meet him, an…there is a picture in there of Lincoln and President and Hilary and he showed us Air 89:00Force One; but we got to talking there, and I said, I gave him some opinions and he wrote me back saying, well what’s the answer, and so...I wrote him this three-page letter that I really think he listened to and followed because when he was at the train up in Ashland, remember we came, he campaigned in this the last time? He came over to me and he said, “well I took your advice, didn’t I, that you wrote me a letter?” Brown: And I, he, and this guy’s got a genius of a memory, and I said, “you sure did Bill, and you’re right on.” But what I basically told him he’s being a pessimist in getting involved all the wrong issues, and whether or not he is a great president or not is going to be left to the historians, that what the people want is somebody that inspires them and makes them think that good, and he’s talking about the, the downsizing and the economy, and the jobs, and the middle class and, I said, “hell we’ve got the greatest economy in the history of the world, we have more opportunity than we’ve ever had,” I said, “spread the good word!” I said, “you’re too much of a pessimist 90:00and the two great presidents in our lifetime were FDR and JFK, and they made people feel good about themselves and feel good about their presidency and that whether or not you do the right thing, leave that to the historians fifty or a hundred years from now, but make people feel good and get off all these issues like gay rights or whatever else and,” and I didn’t use that as a, but anyway it was a pretty harsh letter writing to him, and then I said, “you know, you’re the young man that came from Arkansas, from whatever, and ended up at Oxford, and came from governor now to be President of the United states,” and I said, “you know, you need to take the ball and, and drive to the basket for a dunk,” I said, “if you play around with the ball, you’re going end up losing it,” or something like that, and but anyway, it was really an interesting letter and I, I, and if you notice in that campaign, he started giving a litany of accomplishments and I used the old, I g...I used the old slogan 91:00of...it was Will Rogers or, no, Dizzy Dean, Dizzy Dean, I think he said, “if you done it, it ain’t bragging.” And I said, “it’s okay to talk about yourself,” I said, “there is not a president in history that wouldn’t take credit for the highest economic times you ever had.” You know inflation is down, and imports are up, or down, or whatever, exports are up and, and you’ve got so much good to talk about.” Brown: Well, he almost bores us to death, with going through ( ) done but he got that message across and now the perception is, yeah, he’s done a good job! But don’t you remember, for like two years, he never talked about himself, he never talked about anything except the, the hand wringing and so I basically called him a handwringer in the letter, and Hillary wrote me a nice letter and his chief of staff Mack McLarty but even though I haven’t spent a lot of time with him, I played golf with him a couple of times, I felt like that letter was...made a difference in his outlook, so anyway, I don’t know how I got across that but that’s pretty wha...what I try 92:00to do, I think that anybody, Ed Pritchard or anybody else, I think I made the people of Kentucky feel good about themselves, and I made them feel like we could do anything anybody else does and I was a pretty good example of that, because I gave that story, I may have given it to you last time, the Harvard Business School story?

White: Yes, Mm-mm.

Brown: And that’s really the way I felt, I didn’t know I knew and I thought they knew everything and they didn’t really know as much as I knew but, that feeling of self-confidence and good self-esteem I think that’s the main thing you give a child, is to feel good about themselves so they’ll want to excel, they’ll want to keep doing better and improving on it, but any event...what else would you like me to talk about?

White: Well, I’d like you to talk about what was going on in agriculture, and particularly tobacco, in those years. What were the issues then?

Brown: Well, the, the issues back then, how do you get your products to market? Well, all I could do was try to set up a network of selling and, and distribution and 93:00combines and you know, four years are a very short time to revolutionize that system. I mean we made some trips [clears throat], Bill Sturgill and I over to Europe and Asia to try to, you know, get some contracts that would be meaningful, but it’s basically a, a free enterprise market, and all we tried to do was do as much as we could to try to get the farmers to work together to sell their product and get it to market, and there isn’t a whole lot of machinery set up, other than you got the research at the University of Kentucky, and you got...you know, you got your lobbying efforts to try to sell Kentucky products.… [Pause] Brown: Okay.

White: So, distribution, getting your goods to market was the...

Brown: Yeah, you know, it’s like Phyllis and her crafts, all we can do is help our people sell their products, get to market, we don’t contro...control the world market, 94:00we can’t make agriculture instantly profitable and over the years, you know, we’ve made it maybe survivable, but I wouldn’t say necessarily profitable.

White: Were you the first administration to put as much emphasis on foreign markets?

Brown: I think….

White: Was that….

Brown: ...we’re the first ones that….

White: We want to talk about that.

Brown: I think we all...Illinois is the number one in the country on foreign exports, and we learned from them, and I mean they are a central state, they are not on, they are not bi-coastal, and they have the Great Lakes up there and they do their shipping and distribution.

White: Had there been much done in Kentucky before on, on that score?

Brown: To tell you the truth, I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure. It’s sort of hazy, but I know that was one area that we tried to be helpful, and whether or not we were that successful, is questionable, but I think first of all, we had limited things that we could do to be helpful, and…but we did take action in those areas 95:00that we thought could be the most helpful. But this is really free enterprise in work, and, and, you know, they are the ones that have to create their own market and, and all we did is try to simplify basis of distribution and points of distribution that might help them, cost wise, to compete, you know, we’ve got the best highway system, good rail system, good water system to distribute goods, but there again, in the field of agriculture it’s just a tough market place because of competition and low margins and the farmers never have made the kind of money that you make in other...industrial...areas.

White: But my impression was that you did a certain amount of selling also.

Brown: We did! Probably wouldn’t sell….

White: Yeah, not, not just….

Brown: We were the salesmen for Kentucky, and we did sign some contracts internationally, both in Europe and in Asia, but all that was a start to pick up on later, laying the groundwork for it. 96:00White: What about the ‘Buy America’ campaign?

Brown: Well, that was some….

White: Where did that come from?

Brown: That was...sort of an impulsive thing that I think made our people feel good and it was sort of a, oh it was sort of symbol today to be proud of what we make and we’re as good as they are, and, but it’s not really practical, I mean so much of our business is international, and we don’t want to cut them off because we want to have the spirited day of self-acclaim, but...that was a rally we had and you know, one that probably didn’t have a lot of substance other than be proud of who you are and be proud of people and [interruption] and.… White: I’ll pause this. [Pause] Brown: Things we would’ve liked to have done in a bigger way, and some of them, all we could is lay the groundwork, one thing I want to do with the prisons, and we never did get around to it because…. 97:00White: Wh...what, what did you say?

Brown: One thing I wanted to do like for the prisons.

White: Oh, prisons!

Brown: I wanted to make them self-supporting, I wanted to put those people to work and make them earn something, sell something, create something, manufacture something, and…it was such a frozen bureaucracy that it was really difficult to get inside with outsiders and make it work, and…because they have a culture that had been ingrained for, you know, decades, but that’s one disappointment that I would have like to have seen us set up a--and we, you know, we did research who’s doing it, who’s doing it well, nobody does much of it, and I think given another four years, we would of put together a program where these prisoners would be making something and have the incentive to do it, and they’d be paying their own way. Agriculture, I think we did all that we knew to do, but agriculture is pretty fragmented, 98:00and there is no one real leader or dominating voice for the field of agriculture, and it’s a tough way to make a living, you know, that’s one, that’s one reason that I feel that the most important thing to do is to change our vision for Kentucky, and I went all over this state proclaiming what Harold (Luft?) did in Bowling Green is what every community has to do, but the community has to do it, you know, we don’t just sit here and apportion out new jobs and new industry and new opportunity for, they have to go dig it up themselves, we can open the doors for them, but (Harold Luft?) brought in twenty-one national companies in the little town of Bowling Green and is one of, is one, been one of the four areas in the whole state that’s grown. And…and every community, you know, has to want business, and help work with the state that create jobs, but I see our whole state 99:00being lined up with light factories and, and…and that type of work, like the mountains, I mean, you got to bring the jobs to the people, they’re not going to come off trees up there.

White: So, your vision would be a re-direct away from agriculture and towards small business.

Brown: You’re going to get something to fill in and make a, making a, another option for an opportunity. Those people, for decades have had to look to agriculture their sole source of revenue, they haven’t had any other job, they either move, and get another job, and people don’t want to move, you know, they want to keep their heritage, and yeah we got to offer them different opportunities and it’s all the basic of selling and making it attractive, and we’re here right in the heart of the United States, and as far as the distribution center with the waterways, the highways, as far as a sale center as far as a service center, I mean we ought to be the center for all those things that are national, I mean we ought to be one of the main regional office for them, as well as being able to attract some national companies. 100:00We got a good work ethic, a beautiful place to live, but yes, and we did sell a lot, and I think we brought in like eight times the amount of heavy investment than had been brought in and I think we really accentuated it, but that ought to be a prime deal, it’s like when New York started campaigning ‘I love New York,’ ‘I Love New York,’ if you heard about it enough! Well, it sort of changed the image of New York, and I, I spoke last year as a keynote speaker in Louisville, and I said Louisville never has really believed in itself, and, and we were sort of fenced in, I remember talking to the po...one of the leaders at the Courier Journal, and I didn’t mention name, it was Berry Junior, he said, “Oh I wish we could build a fence around Louisville and lock everybody else out.” And I said, “we’re going to keep up, you know, we have to be enterprising and, and don’t tell me we can’t do it, I mean, you know, two of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world were born right in your neighborhood here, one of them was Mohammed Ali, and the other Colonel Harlan Sanders down the road here in Shelbyville,” 101:00and I said, “here is John (Schneider?) over at Papa Johns, and, and you know, David Jones, oh sure you got all the tools to do it, and I think they have to want to, but the, the Courier for years just sort of put a lid on anything new or anything competitive and I think Louisville hasn’t kept up with Cincinnati or Indianapolis, and other towns.” White: I noticed that the chamber of commerce’s name has been changed to greater Louisville Inc., and I wondered whether they got that from your slogan for Kentucky [laughter].

Brown: I don’t know, I don’t know, but they’re making progress, but I, I...

White: This is some of the concept, I think.

Brown: But...were you there for that by chance or not?

White: For your speech?

Brown: Yeah.

White: Was that, was that to the rotary?

Brown: No, that was to the Louisville Chamber of Commerce.

White: Oh, no, no, I wasn’t there.

Brown: I loved it because I’ve….

White: But I read about it.

Brown: That…I did a lot for Louisville, from the, you know, from, the airport to the arena, to the art center, to, 102:00about everything, I left my mark there and yet I was really born and raised in Lo...Lexington and would like to have some legacy here but, back in the early days I built the YMCA there by going to the...Brown Foundation, we both donated a million dollars and, and then I had the ( ) Brown auditorium when Mr. Bingham ( ) to me but it, it’s like any other, it’s like the Russians, you know, until you got rid of the old timers, the ones that want to keep things as they are, you never changed, and Louisville is, has got a lot of good leaders up there, but they have a long way to go, and, and to make it an exciting city.

White: Did your administr...was the River Port started under your administration?

Brown: I’m not for sure.

White: Or, or, or did you pick it up and done with it?

Brown: I’m not for sure, I know we were active in it.

White: Yeah, you were active.

Brown: I know we; I went down there for a couple of...of announcements but, anyway, what I, what I said at the end of it, I said, it’s all a matter of leadership, all these towns had a leader or two or three leaders that 103:00had the vision and made it happen. I mean, why would Atlanta be the city it was today if ( ) (Marvin Allen?) didn’t have a vision and a dream and got everybody all wrapped up in their slogan, every time they met. Is God deliver us from the ways that we are, something similar like it, you know, give us a chance to be better, to change, and then I closed it with a, reading some at work I said, you know, my God if New York can go around bragging about ‘I Love New York,’ then just think what we have going for us, and I went on about...you know, this is I love the cheers, I love that I’m here, you know, I have been back to Louisville for many years, then I had them repeat after me, I love Louisville, I love Louisville, I love Louisville, but it, anyway I’ve really enjoyed that.

White: You were also a champion, as I recall, of small business and I wondered whether ea...you, you, you basically said that, that it was small businesses as opposed 104:00to large corporate businesses….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: …that made this country was, what it was, and I wondered whether that came from your experience with Kentucky Fried Chicken, or whether….

Brown: No, it came….

White: ...it was just sort of a total….

Brown: ...from, no, it really came….

White: ...experience.

Brown: ...from the facts of the department of commerce, 80 percent of all the new jobs in this country are created by small business, and…and that’s what I was fostering, and we started KIDFA which was a financing partner for a lot of small business, some of which I’ve think have been very, very successful.

White: KIDFA?

Brown: KIDFA, K-I-D-F-A, Kentucky Industrial Development Foundation or whatever and our financing authority is what it is, yeah. And Bruce Lundsford was the head of that, and…they started arranging financing for companies that looked like they had some merit and qualified. And as I understand it, it’s still going on and very successful, 105:00but yes, that’s, you know, I wanted people to locate here and start new companies because that’s where you create all the new jobs, and, industry itself had been declining jobs, you know, heavy manufacturing had been declining jobs over the last two decades, and I think one thing that I, like this cabinet that made us unique, is we were all entrepreneurs, and the difference in an entrepreneur is we will create a better way or a simpler way, or a newer way to do everything, where the corporation don’t change it, keep it like it is, because you might mess up, and I didn’t have a bureaucrat in the whole administration, unless you call Jackie, and Jackie was a good gal and knew her stuff, but she was sort of hard to keep up with, as far as the, you know, cutting back and keeping budgets and…but she knew more about the environment than anybody else and I think served her ( ) effectively.

White: How did you work out 106:00the, it’s, it, it seems to be devil people trying to...workout the issue of business growth versus environmental responsibility?

Brown: Well, I think….

White: Do you, do you remember the issue of….

Brown: Yeah.

White: ...issues (completely?).… Brown: I did but I was more of a pro-business and will, you know, we’ll do what we have to on the environment, and certainly we want to protect but, but not at the cost of creating jobs, not at the cost at this point, and we can sit here and, and emphasize protecting the environment, but nothing we were doing was going to grossly affect, we weren’t bringing in chicken farms and a lot of things that maybe the people got upset about, so you know, we just saw the jobs, job, jobs and business is good, and we never really got a, in conflict with the environment, I put Jackie over there because she was the number one environmentalist in the state, and I said “Jackie do your job,” and I said, “I want to bring business in, 107:00but I want to protect the environment, so you have balance to you,” and, we never, we didn’t have any problem, you know, she got along….

White: Never problems with that?

Brown: ...pretty well with, she got along well with the coal mining people, and I don’t ever si--I wasn’t a big environmentalist, but I don’t think we ever sacrificed the environment for business, and we never were tested with that.

White: Mm. What, what about eastern Kentucky, do you, do you feel, you, you said that you felt that you had divided up the governmental resources pretty fairly among the different….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...regions of the state. Eastern Kentucky is traditionally seen itself as getting the short end of the stick. What would have been your, what were your...what did you focus on in eastern Kentucky, was it roads?

Brown: Well, about….

White: What was the secret….

Brown: ... all you focus in [on] history….

White: ...for behind opening it up?

Brown: ...well now but--eastern Kentucky was, because that’s 108:00a lot of my heart was up there, that’s where my dad made his living. And I ran very well up there and I spent a lot of time up there, I played about every mountain golf tournament they had as a teenager growing up, and I had an affinity for the mountain people, still do. Did you see that movie ‘Sling Blade?’ White: No, but I know what you’re talking about.

Brown: ( ) oh you got, you got to see.… White: I, I know.

Brown: ...they were pretty….

White: I know.

Brown: ...it was all about Kentucky, but in any event, you’re limited to what you can do, I mean we started a housing project up there, Frank Metts did and I think we built fifty houses under some federal program, almost like the Jimmy Carter in, in the help to Humanity for Habitat, and…we built the key highways that we thought would be helpful to eastern Kentucky, one was at, was it Highway 23, I think from Paintsville all the way to Ashland, because I think, I thought Ashland was the, the get out place for the mountains, there is nowhere to go over the mountains, then instead of going to Ashland, we...created 109:00a highway 23 that took us all the way up there. The truth about the matter is the mountains have a, a wonderful set up of highways and roads, compared to what, you know, the...the mountains and the topography and everything else allows it to do, but the problem is how do you get jobs up there? Well, you know, we, we...promoted the Synfuel, you know, we were the number one on getting those Synfuel plants and we tried to attract and give incentives to bring light industry.

White: What happened with the Synfuels?

Brown: Well they, they had their day, and had their support, then they phase a...phased away when the oil business improved, and the embargo was over, but we were on the top of it and we had like four of them all ready to move in to Kentucky and set up shop, until the oil crisis was over and then it wasn’t a necessity, 110:00but you know, you’ve got several things you can do in the mountains, you keep doing what you’re doing, or you create a tourist attraction up there, and which takes a lot of money and a lot of time, or...

White: Did you try? Did you try some of that?

Brown: Well, to, to, not to a wasteful degree, but you know, you got tourist attraction what you have, and we looked into putting a ski resort up there. Well, you know, we don’t make snow when we can’t preserve snow. I let Bruce do his little deal over at Butler, and we were all against it, but Bruce was just determined, Oh this is the hottest thing ever, and it didn’t cost the state much money, but he wanted to take it, so we let him do his thing, and we were all--the older people said, “Bruce, it ain’t going to work,” but Bruce wanted to do it, that was the only mistake he made, I think looking back, but...I think the mountains, the key is to get a Toyota kind of business to bring the jobs to the foothills where they can drive to work and go home at night. And but I think you’re always 111:00going to be limited to taking and creating the jobs right in the community where the workforce is. But I think, I saw where Governor Patton was building some industrial parks, I think that’s good, and I’d give almost any incentive that wouldn’t be costly, would help pay for the cost of job development. I mean, you know, you got two choices, like Reagan said, you can take your life on foot and go where the life is good, but those people are ingrained with that mountain affliction or affection and they don’t want to leave, and they’re great people but they don’t have any opportunity, and so you either create jobs there, or create jobs at the foothills, you know, the Campton and all up along the mountain range there and create the kind of industry where you can get good labor cost and set up the training for them. But I don’t know, there is, there is no easy way to bring prosperity to the mountains, unless you’re going to find oil up there, 112:00or coal comes back to where it’s going to be profitable for the individual.

White: But then you’re saying it’s possible, in other words, the, the configuration or the topography is not so impossible that you ought to be able to do in the mountains what you do anywhere else?

Brown: No, I didn’t mean that.

White: You didn’t say that.

Brown: No, I think it’s difficult.

White: It is difficult.

Brown: Yeah, it’s a possibility, but….

White: Possible.

Brown: ...you take, you take Hong Kong, Hong Kong built a magnificent city right in the middle of mountains, and the swamps, and, but is it, is the cost worth the investment? And…one reason I built...the AA Highway was that was an area of Kentucky that we could move, and the mountain people would have a place to come to and get jobs, it’s close by, but I don’t know of a whole lot of economic development that you can offer in Hyden, Kentucky, or in…Jenkins. I mean you’re, you’re, you’re stuck into the mountains. I think we got a good road system, but...you know, it’s costly to put 113:00a plant up there that far from the market place, and so we might as well be practical and say that, you know, we’ll bring you jobs and you might have to travel forty-five minutes today to get to your job, you know, they do that in New York and a lot of other places, but I don’t know any other easy answer. I think it’s mostly...jawboning. If you think you’re going to create prosperity in the mountains, without all, oil or coal.

White: Do you, do you remember...anything about your program in oil shale development? That may have been, that may have been western Kentucky, and not eastern.

Brown: I remember the oil shale and….

White: I don’t remember what became of that though...was it not workable, or perhaps that was taken over by the oil, the end of the oil crisis too.

Brown: That was all product technology, it went on oil shale was going to be profitable, I think when the, the embargo lifted, you know, the price came back down and it didn’t look like, I guess an opportunity as much as it did when it looked like, you know, oil is hard 114:00to come by.

White: Huh, let’s see, moving away from eastern Kentucky, I thought, I don’t want to jump around too much, but I’m, I kind of have to. What do you remember about the governor’s executive management commission? Was, was that the, was that...

Brown: Is that, you mean, you’re talking about the economic development?

White: Well, was that the, was that the...the organization that was behind the whole impetus for government efficiency? Did you set up a structure that, to, to try to make government more efficient, beyond….

Brown: Yeah, what was the name of that you called that?

White: Government, governor’s executive management commission.

Brown: Executive management com…I’m not sure this is one, but we had one and George (Fischer?) handled.

White: That may have been it.

Brown: And he did a brilliant job, 115:00and he had, you know, internal training of management and internal planning, and he was the one real responsible for eliminating the eight thousand jobs, and he looked at every cabinet, and looked at where they could save, where they can cut back, where they could consolidate, and that, that could be, because he had a training program, they had meetings, and hundreds of people come to them, and it was all about training people to do a better job about bringing our salary level up to the competitive factor, we did an awful lot on, on the personnel situation, and I think most of it good, other than the negative part to have to lay people off.

White: Was, was there anything done in government reorganization besides...creating fewer jobs, in other words was there any basic reshuffling say of cabinet offices or….

Brown: Yeah, we, we….

White: ...anything like that?

Brown: ...we separated justice and corrections 116:00because we didn’t think the, the fox ought to be running the hen house, you know, and, after justice goes out and locks them up, and then they’re supposed to take care of them. So we separated that accounting because it didn’t make sense, so we had a separate accounting for corrections, we ended up having a sep…separate labor department I think, because that was, didn’t belong in economic development, and…and we did a lot of, of consolidating and most of it was to get a clear voice out of what we are doing to be productive, and the second was...just trying to save money, I think we went through every area that we could without and eliminated it, unless we thought it was important. And I don’t know, I was the only governor in, I’m sure in the history of government to ever abolish his press operation, because I really didn’t, I, I was sort of offended at their intentions, you know, maybe offended 117:00is not the right word, but I was suspect that they were, anything that was really going to be productive for the public, was certainly, not…and they’ll all tell you I was the most open administration they ever had, I never lied to them, and didn’t, you know, but that’s their job, you know, they’re here to fill that little space in the newspaper every day, and so that’s four hundred and fifty thousand and several million on public information, we did that throughout government, we did it over in, in human re...resources to where there was just one big gigantic bureaucracy, but I don’t know, I didn’t know if any that were that criticized as being a major mistake, where we eliminated and consolidated. We did an awful lot of that, and, but I was fortunate to have people that I thought were competent and, and sensitive. Otherwise a governor doesn’t have the time to go over, becoming an overnight expert in so many of these things, and like roads, I just said, “Bill,” I mean my, “Frank, just build the roads to where they’re needed the most, 118:00and where you get the kind of price, and eliminate all the other expense over there you don’t need, you know, Frank was like a banty rooster and he wa...walked on some people which he, they sh...he could have found a more diplomatic way, I mean I had all the engineers come to my office, and of course they are the monument builders, you know, said, you got to get rid of Frank Metts and I was very polite but perhaps things haven’t been handled as smoothly but you know, we’re here to do a job for the people, and...I basically just told them that where there wasn’t, you know, this was Frank’s job, but I would talk to him and see if, you know, if engineers I guess were ( ) labor were being considered as much because they ran that department for years and years. But I found that state government didn’t wa.… White: But then what happened to the contractors, I mean you, you ran your own campaign, you didn’t, presumably were not, I mean, you, you came in, you s...and you said you owed nobody anything.

Brown: Right.

White: But contractors are notoriously...dependent 119:00on government….

Brown: Yeah.

White: ...for their contracts. What happened with that? How did they….

Brown: Well, that….

White: ...how did they do business?

Brown: They had to do it the right way and it was different, I am at the first fund raiser they came out with two-hundred thousand in cash wanted to give it to me, and…and I said, “well, no, we don’t take cash.” And some of them ( ) “we won’t say anything,” and they all had their little...

White: Don’t take cash….

Brown: ...pocket to take….

White: ...as opposed to checks, I mean….

Brown: Yeah!

White: Yeah.

Brown: I said no, I’m, I’m sorry I can’t do that, thank you very much, but no thank you, and we walked out, they had two-hundred-thousand cash among about twenty people and they had a little bag of cash and they’d go back to the room and Frank said, “you all meet with them, see what they want to do and keep me out of it,” and they, each one had cash, say, “oh no, don’t, don’t, them, nobody will say anything and,” so we didn’t take any of their money, and we didn’t make any promises and what Frank did is just bid it out to people where we’d get the best price, and just like we 120:00bid[ed] everything else out, whether it is insurance, or anything else, and it was just the right way to do business, we were free enough to do it, and it saved the company well I’m sure you know, tens of hundreds of millions of dollars, but those are the kind of things, those, that was the biggest impact we made, is we just cleaned it up where we had people who were independent, they were experienced in their field of endeavor, and wanted to do the right thing, and I was a visionary, and I really felt like I had a good pulse on where we were going and how we were getting there as far as the philosophy of government. The government wasn’t just to tear down and eliminate, the government was to be effective and efficient, and if you read the, the Courier Journal article, I guess I can use the good and the bad if I can.

White: Sure.

Brown: Huh, I think, I think that, can you read that, or do you need glasses, or you got glasses.

White: I got glasses. Kentuckians will look back on an administration that was wholly honorable, efficient and despite an unfavorable economy, effective in promoting the public interest. 121:00Brown: Yeah, and if the Courier Journal say you’re wholly honorable, that’s a big statement. But here it said, but the heart of Governor Brown’s….

White: Accomplishment.

Brown: ...Accomplishment, was in bringing into Frankfort the ablest cabinet in Kentucky’s history, and that didn’t say a whole lot but they really, that was the most outstanding people I’ve ever been around, and I was secure at this point in my life and I learned enough [interruption] to get burned about how to pick people, and I was very methodical. You learn how to pick people from women, you know, they, they got better instincts because they’ve been conned and chased all their life and I did, I learned from both wives that, but I, I, I’m, I’m...really proud of that group and we had a testimonial here a couple of years ago, Larry Townsend had it, and they, everybody showed up, and we had about four hundred and fifty people, that, they came, that they were all my cabinet and, it really was a great night. [Pause] 122:001:00:12 INTO TAPE 3.2, Side B NEW DATE White: This is Ethel White, today is June 15th, 1998; Governor Brown and I are going to continue our conversation.

White: Governor, you said you wanted to talk a little bit more….

Brown: Sure.

White: …about being an honorable administration or perhaps honesty in government, so, go ahead.

Brown: Well, my run for the governorship was more out of passion of watching politics...for most of my forty-five years when I ran and watched my father go up against the political machines and watching favors traded for government to power, and it was just, you know, I guess from the teaching from my father, you know, that was just morally and even legally wrong, and I ran...in order to change it, and I was a businessman and, I didn’t...consider at any time any kind of political deal for anybody, or trade a road or a job for 123:00a vote, or support, and that was the, the beauty of...being able to win and finance your, your campaign without making any promises, I didn’t make a single promise in my four years, I didn’t make a single political deal, we didn’t hire one person in four years through any of our cabinets that was for political consideration, and it gave us the freedom to really eliminate eight thousand jobs that saved over two hundred million a year on a reoccurring basis and that adds up to about two hundred of taxpayer a year, that’s a lot of money, that’s a major part of a person’s income. And we were able to do it because we were free, plus we were business people, we knew how to manage, we knew how to organize, and we knew how to consolidate [clears throat], and also when it came to all the political shenanigans about buying insurance on concrete bridges and all these deals with contractors and the different banks around, where they, you know, the money lay around for seven or eight days before it started drawing interest and, we started having, you know, overnight deposits, 124:00and the money was, started drawing interest the next...day and bidding on all the contracts, before it was given to political favors, and we didn’t have political favors, so, it was bid out, and just saving tens, and tens, and even hundreds of millions of dollars. I think on one page of the annual report we documented over eight hundred and seventy million dollars of, of known savings and, and, and how much of that was reoccurring every year, it was you know, and, in, certainly over half a million dollars a year, and to walk out of office, after having re-structured it, and really having it running effectively, everyone said that the state government ran more effectively at the end of our administration because we had good people that were independent to do their job without any political consideration, not only the savings but also the efficiency and, and the fact that so many areas were consolidated to where it was more effective, and then to walk away the next day is our goal, and all the political herd 125:00marched right back in, fought their way back in the government, jobs given away, when I left office we had cut government to, from thirty-six thousand down to twenty-nine thousand and then, you know, it’s up to forty thousand, and…it’s disappointing, and I guess I made a mistake by not trying to...perpetuate our administration, I did that because I didn’t want to be a king maker, because that was political, but I, I didn’t think through on that question, because I was really preserving what we fought so hard to establish and to win, and many of the things we did get implemented, as far as state bidding and those types of things that took politics out of the government, but the reason for running….

END OF TAPE 3.2, SIDE B START OF TAPE 3.2, SIDE C 126:00Brown: In every area of state government, I remember the day I was elected, or inaugurated rather, I walked in my first day at the office, I didn’t get a single phone call, and there wasn’t a single person that came to my office where historically, the rotunda is full of people [chuckles] coming to get their goodies of whether it was job, or contracts or whatever the commitments from their county, and we didn’t have any of that, and not only did that save hundreds of millions of dollars, but also freed up state government to serve the people, and you know, you’d have a political person that’s appointed for political reasons and they’re sitting next to someone that is a career bureaucrat trying to do their job, and there is a conflict, you know, who is really in charge, and who’s, who’s going to be listened to, and we really made state government free to where our people could do their job without retribution or without being concerned about losing their job for political reasons, and I was really flattered when I left state government, I went around to each cabinet, and human resources is our biggest cabinet, 127:00and I remember a red-headed fellow been there thirty years, his name was Amatto and he just said, “governor, I want to thank you for giving us the chance just to do our job, and to be able to make decisions without being concerned about getting fired, because someone that was appointed politically next to us might have gained favor over us, and we just enjoyed it so much that we felt like we could really spread our wings and, and do things we never had the chance to do before.” And that to me was a, as compliment I’ve ever gotten.

White: Is there any way to institutionalize reforms so that it carries on beyond one ad...administration?

Brown: Well, I think so, I think the more you do it, the more of a standard you’re going to have to follow. Unfortunately, Martha Lane’s administration was pretty much totally political and she’d grown up in the political arena, her husband who ended up going to jail...you know, he was the one that was pretty much behind all the political appointees and all his buddies 128:00and friends, associates and fund raisers, and, and it was sad to see all that...going into effect the day that I left office, and I think, if you get people that commit not to do one political act, which I think Brereton Jones did, and I thought he had a very effective administration, but also I think you need to have governors that had a lot of management experience that can make the hard decisions as to be independent and we were free spirit, we were all entrepreneurs, we were used to controversy and, in fact we hardly enjoyed a, a decision unless it was controversial, because then we felt we were really siding on the right side, because we were free to do what we thought was the right thing, and we had, I think the experience of back up and, and a group of people that were the brightest I’ve ever been around. Did you notice in that Courier Journal…editorial, the last one on our administration, called us the ablest cabinet in Kentucky’s history. I think that without question it was. 129:00White: How does campaign finance reform enter into this? In other words, y...you and Brereton Jones had some, some funds that you could loan to your campaigns, you’ve mentioned the last time we talked, about Grady Stumbo as...

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...perhaps might have been a good successor?

Brown: Yes.

White: You know, how do you g..., how do you get the Grady Stumbos into office and how do you keep them there, and what is it about the system that seems to, in other words, you know, where is Grady Stumbo today? (There?) seem to be a lot of Grady Stumbos that don’t last.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: How do you cope with that?

Brown: Well, well I, I think, you, you look at our government and I guess you can interpret it as the, the worse form of government except all others [chuckles] and we have a lot of imperfections, and we probably always will. I think we’ve come to a part in our, in, in our political culture where money has ruled for the last twenty-five years, 130:00whether it’s money of candidates that can afford to run on their own money, or all the PACs and, all the different political interests and lobbyists, it’s amazing how they control the government of our country, and it’s sad that it does. There is only one solution, and…it was also happened this last twenty-five years is so much of our political money is been spent into what you call negative political ads, little thirty second spots that just misrepresent, mislead, and accuse opponents of things that they can’t defend, and it’s really gotten to where it’s turning the public off that’s why less people vote today than ever, it’s because they’re turned off on all this negative advertising and all this slick advertising that, they hire these...sharpies from Madison Avenue to come in and put on a slick campaign, and, the only answer is to provide free television time as a public service, 131:00you know, the FCC requires all TV stations to give up to ten percent of all their time for public good, and public charities, and I think this is n… there is nothing more important as a public event than a political campaign and I think we should require open debates and provide at least five or six air times, in good time slots on prime TV in the local markets for the public to see what the issues are and, and who the people are. Because what you are, you show up on TV, you can’t hide that, and there is some argument, well if you’re not an orator or articulate, you can’t be effective. I don’t believe that, I believe Abraham Lincoln in his quiet modest way he would of come across as a humble genuine bright person, and how better to debate the issues, certainly better this way than any other and that’s the way that you have to sign up and you have to commit to the program of so 132:00much television without having the right to spend all your own money or to raise insurmountable sums, it would be controlled, on, on a fair and equitable matter I think everyone agrees that this the key, to have open freedom to be on television, because television dominates the effect of seeing the campaign, radio and door-to-door and newspaper just don’t count compared to television.

White: To get back to your own administration for a minute, you accomplished what you did in recessionary times, which meant that you didn’t have--you did not have to raise taxes because of the...efficiencies you instituted in government. Now, if you had had another four years, right after that one….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...and in non-recessionary times, if you ha...for instance I...in other words, if you had continued the same fiscally responsible policies in non-recessionary times, what could 133:00and would you have done with the money that you would have then had...presumably?

Brown: Well….

White: What would you have liked to have seen yourself do next?

Brown: I think there is only one area that perhaps we could’ve done more but we knew less, and other than that, I don’t think we would have done anything except cut taxes. I, I think we had enough roads, we built one road, and that was a visionary road between Ashland and Cincinnati, because that’s along the waterfront and that’s the opening to the eastern...market and someday there’ll be homes, and there’ll be industry all up and o...down the Ohio River, from Cincinnati to Ashland. That’s the one that you won’t get a return on for fifty years, that’s the only really major road we built, but we have a great system of highways, and historically, you know, every governor comes in with so many commitments of these roads, and that they have built and I, I don’t think we, we need that, I think government really was serving an effective purpose, as far as we could see, 134:00and, and human resources, you know, we met all the national guidelines, and, and those mostly are national programs that are backed by the national sentiment and…you know, if you give a politician all the money in the world, they’ll find a way to spend it. We weren’t looking for any more money, and we were looking to do more or less, and it, and with the philosophy the government is big enough and too big and you don’t need a lot of it. Now the only area that I think we could have used more resources was in the field of education, but at that point there had been no real studies or research on what is a better education? I mean you take a state like I think Rhode Island had the, had the lowest per capita...that’s spent on for a child and yet they were number one in the country as far as their testing was concerned, and here you have Washington, D. C. that spent more per child than anybody else, they were last, and so from that standpoint, money wasn’t necessarily...the, 135:00the rule by which to have a, the best educational program, but since the Carnegie study came out, which was my last year of office, and there was another major study taken, you know, four or five years and it really had some good stuff, and that was accountability in the classroom and, and also to get, to (incentives?) the, the teachers and bring them to a level pay that was respectful for the kind of work that they were doing. I think that was the only area that we could have and would have used more money. But, at that time, there wasn’t enough of a road map as to how to spend it, and when you end in four years, you don’t become an expert in education overnight, but these studies really were the sort of the bible used by most all the southern states, in order to advance our education, and of course, we were the poorest state in education. And so, I think great strides have been made certainly, a, a, a much larger commitment has been made in education at all levels, but most of it was done as a follow through on these studies that were done at the last 136:00part of our administration.

White: Well that also brings us to something you had said previously…which had to do with communities having to do things on their own….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...and then separately, I think you said, “the private sector needs to do things on its own.” Is there a way you can describe...you know, where state government leaves off and community government, or the private sector, take over, in other words, can you, can you chart it, it, you know, what is the job of government….

Brown: That’s a good question.

White: ...as it’s getting smaller.

Brown: You know….

White: Does it; is there any leadership to be exerted?

Brown: ...I, I think Atlanta had a slogan back in the twenties...a guy named Mr. Allen was his name...I can’t think, I think they had his first name--Ivan Allen was his name, and they had a meeting of the community leaders once a week and tried to build Atlanta, which they did into the finest city in America, 137:00and they did it with an attitude of Lord deliver us from things as they are, and, and in other words their whole approach is, you know, we need to change, we need to take advantage of the change in the future and, in Kentucky, you know, we’ve sort of have been a proud heritage here, and most of us have grown up doing what our families has done, or doing what our father did, I became a lawyer because my father was a lawyer. If you’re a coal miner, you become a coal miner because your dad is a coal miner. If you are a farmer, you become a farmer, and…pretty much across Kentucky, we’ve kept the same industries that, today are declining in all the fields, whether it is agriculture, whether it is coal mining, whether it’s liquor, whether it’s tobacco, and we haven’t been innovative in bringing in the kind of industries that are the future of the American economy, and yet here we sit in the heart of the United States with everything to offer from waterways, roadways, distribution, we are within five hundred miles of 68 percent of the population, 138:00and the kind of businesses that we need to bring in are those that require light manufacturing for the distribution of goods, a sales office, regional offices in order to reach so much of this population, we are ideally suited to really be a very explosive state when it comes to economic development, but what you need are leaders, and the leaders really start at, not only the state level, in order to try to attract with state incentives or with straight attention and, and image business to come here for those reasons, but also the local communities to reach out and say, “we want you to come to our community.” Now there was one...town in our whole state that really exemplified what you need to do to take advantage of this, and that was Bowling Green, they had a head of economic development by the name of Harold (Hoffman?). Harold bought in twenty-one national industries into that little town from meat union underwa...un, union underwear, he went out to Corvette where the administration to St. Louisv...Louis and, 139:00and brought in their...Corvette assembly plant right there, and a number of other major industries but they went after them and the community together would meet with these officials and, you know, they would tell them, helped them get in the school, get in the country club, make them feel like the community that, they really wanted them, and they were aggressive. Now you know, Lexington changed when IBM came here, and the leadership of this city had to say we want you here, we want you to live here, we want you to enjoy, you and your family, and we haven’t...had enough of that kind of local leadership to reach out and to grab a hold of the big pie, and also our state hasn’t been aggressive ( ) but we’re getting better. I mean when we got Toyota over here, I sat up the office over in, in Japan because Kentucky Fried Chicken was my business and we had certain partners and people that we knew there and so we had an advantage in, in laying the groundwork, so when Toyota was going to make a decision, they were 140:00very fondly receptive to Kentucky because we’ve generated a relationship with them over several years, but first you have to plant a seed and then you have to make the sale and I think that’s what we need to learn.

White: I want to check this tape for a minute. [Pause] White: Go ahead.

Brown: Economic development basically is selling, and I think we’ve been playing all defense and that is concentrating so much on protecting what we have, instead of promoting what is going to build the best jobs for our people in the future years. There is only so much you’re going to do for tobacco, or the liquor industry, or coal mining without technology, and for that matter the farming is not any kind of...industry where government can make a difference, and that’s the supply and demand and, and the international market, and certainly you do what you can to advance your research for your farmer, but farming has not provided the kind of jobs that are advantageous 141:00to the community, and so each community, as well as the state, has to reach out and say, “here’s what we have to offer, come and visit us, we have a, a great tax structure”--which we don’t today, I did, the, the state income tax has doubled since I left office, and that’s a deterrent, you know, we ought to make this ver...the most inviting state to bring the best jobs to our people and but we’ve never thought that way. And that’s unfortunate, but that’s one reason I didn’t want to raise any taxes, I wanted to keep us as attractive tax state in order to attract industry and jobs, but when you boil down to it, and if your job is going to be the key to the lifestyle you have, whether it’s the quality of education, how much money, you’re really talking about money, and our whole American system is built on free enterprise and the dollar. You want to look at us as different as other country and the freedoms we have, but, you know, commerce is good, it’s not bad, it was always looked upon as something bad, because we don’t understand those businesspeople, but I think that’s what we brought 142:00is a freshness to government that we were businesspeople and business is good, and….

White: There is also, I think, a perception that business success did not, does not always filter down to the workers, and how do you, how do you grapple with that?

Brown: Well, I think that’s in the last decade, I, only, we ever recognized that before and I think my...you know, from some of our laws ( ), and laws of the eighties, and, and the advantages they gave to big business or to big money, I think is giving that perception, we never saw that before, but...I think that’s what you have, a balance of free enterprise, and I think in time it will get back in balance, it’s something like the pro basketball teams, you know, the owners make all this money but the players are the ones that have to play and now they’re getting all the money, and I think it’s cyclical...terms there that will get in the balance, you have your checks and balances in business, but it has...sort 143:00of left out the middle class to where, they’re taking as big a bite of the apple as they really deserve, but I think in time, it will all come in to intervene. The main thing is to, you know, create the kind of jobs that are going to, you know, get good...clean business and jobs to people to where they can have a more productive and a happy life instead of having to work at a coal mine or out in the field all day, and, I don’t think, you know, we’ve advanced that opportunity for our people, like a lot of states have, and i.e. Atlanta, Atlanta was just an old rural town, and they brought banks in, and they brought in the kind of industries to you know, bring a wonderful, popular life to their people.

White: Let me ask you a couple of questions about [clears throat] I guess you’d call it the administration of the, of the government while you were governor. You, you said you had regretted not developing a management team at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and that in your haste to hire people, you perhaps 144:00re, re, relied too heavily on resumes and titles and you indicated that when you became governor, you looked more for experience and common sense. More specifically, I am interested in, you know, what you were looking for in your personnel, particularly your top and second tier people and, and what kinds of questions did you ask them? In other words….

Brown: Well….

White: ...how did you separate them out?

Brown: One problem at Kentucky Fried Chicken is we were the biggest in the country and there is only a couple of companies to hire from, so we couldn’t go to another company with the same kind of experience that we needed. So, we were open season, I hired new people off the street they thought they knew and didn’t know. But this time, since I had been burned by that experience, I was very deliberate; I had...five or six interviews, like with Grady Stumbo. Grady had the resume, he was a doctor, he was one of ten top young men in America, he was committed, he went to the University of Kentucky, and…I didn’t know if he was going be too big a liberal, because he’d come from 145:00that kind of background. But he was a honorable quality talented young man, I thought, would pick up on what we wanted to do and to follow it, and he was a great addition to our administration.

White: How could you tell?

Brown: Well….

White: When you talked to him?

Brown: Well, first of all, he was recommended to me and then in the interviews, you know, I would, I learned to interview to get the kind of answers I needed to know. They weren’t the kind of questions to...make everybody feel good, walk out with a pat in the back and boy, you know, you look like a good guy, we’re going to work together. I got down to really what he wanted out of his life, what he could really contribute, what a difference it would make in his career, to come down and really take a lead and how this would help his people, and I knew he would be dedicated, I knew he’d be sincere, I knew he was experienced, he knew all these federal programs and there’re thousands of them and how, where are you going to hire somebody like that? And I think he would have the passion and the sensitivity to relate to each of those programs. Frank Metts he wasn’t interested in coming to state government 146:00until after we were already getting together and, and appointing our cabinet secretaries and Frank was one of the largest developers in Louisville and he was a, a multimillionaire, independent businessman and he finally came to me and said, “John, you know, if you can use me I’m, you know, I’d love to come and help you in some way, whatever.” And I put him in charge of transportation and he pretty much, even though he was controversial, he built more roads than ever, and less money, and he, you know, cleaned up most of that department that had been run by the engineers, but he was a businessman and wanted no political favor, and I think he did an outstanding job. You go through our cabinets, Bill Sturgill was a leader in the coal industry and he, he knew the trends and whether or not we needed, or could get the SynFuel plants that the Carter administration was promoting and, and he could talk across the table to the top people in the industry and I said, “Bill, you know, if you want me to come in and be your governor, now you need to make the same kind of commitment that I do, I need you, and there is no excuse 147:00for you not to, you made your money and now you know, this is something that you ought to do for your state.” Brown: Same thing with W. T. Young, he was probably our most successful businesspeople, but once I get, I got W. T. Young, you know, as well as Mr. Sturgill and a few others, and this was a place to be appointed to or selected from. And then you got people like Bruce Lundsford who was a lawyer and an accountant and now has the second largest business in Kentucky in (VENCOR?) and Ron (Gary?) who is a lawyer and accountant and give up his accounting firm, they saw this an opportunity to build their base of contacts and also experience, and it was the brightest people I had ever been with, I mean they were mostly multimillionaire entrepreneurs and they weren’t corporate types, they weren’t people out of big corporations, they were people that used to make their decisions at the street level, and I think they all related to the average person out there, even though they had made their money, they weren’t what you call the idle rich, they were people that, that scuffled out there in business and learned to make it 148:00and knew the value of the dollar, and knew how to handle and pick people, but, I, and you know, I was lucky to pick as many people, but I was very deliberate, I didn’t make a, I didn’t appoint a position until I was totally comfortable in the pit of your stomach that this is the right person, and the best person for the job.

White: Was this intelligence and ability to make decisions a, a problem for, for some of them in that, I mean Frank Metts was controversial, and I know he had a, was known as having a, a rather harsh demeanor, if that’s….

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: ...a clear description. There was some controversy in human resources with Grady Stumbo. Bruce Lundsford, I think left on the early side. Wasn’t he your legislative….

Brown: Mm-mm, no he didn’t leave….

White: ...aide?

Brown: ...he was there the whole time, but….

White: Was he there the whole time, okay.

Brown: ...Larry Townsend left early.

White: Maybe it was Larry Townsend, I, I’d...I’m, forgive me for mixing them up. But but was the fact that they were so intelligent and experienced and, as I say, 149:00able to make decisions...was that in itself a problem?

Brown: No, it….

White: Working with other people?

Brown: No, it was an opportunity, it was a good question, it was an opportunity because we wanted to bring about change, we weren’t there to carry on to the past, we were there to look at it, shake it up, clean it out, put it back together, and make it function better, and then that’s what we did.

White: But isn’t that a problem? I don’t mean it’s wrong….

Brown: No, but it’s not the….

White: ...but you have to deal with people who don’t like….

Brown: But that’s for us….

White: ...that kind of thing.

Brown: ...was an opportunity, we knew how to handle it, and we weren’t afraid, we were in charge, and everyone there knew I would back them up, and they weren’t afraid of getting embarrassed before the newspapers or anything else and we were just trying to do the right thing, and I abolished my public information, I don’t know, there was ninety people over there, all they did is print out press releases about curb cuts and stop lights the governor is giving the people, I, I said I don’t need that, you know, we don’t wo...work for the media, we don’t have to feed to promote ourselves, and we were just...but this is one opportunity to clean it up and we cleaned 150:00it up every way that I knew how, honorably, and I, to have a more efficient and to get rid of all the politics in government, and it was almost a daily crusade, I mean, you know, I never fired anybody in business I didn’t want to, but I felt like most of the people in Frankfort, and there are good workers, and honorable workers, they want to b...give a day’s work, all it is leadership, but at the same time, most of the people got their jobs through some political contact in the past, and so we almost had to look very harshly and, and…and it was...it was very difficult emotionally to have to lay off all these people, but if we, we felt like this was our one opportunity to get it right, and so we, you know, we were very tough on laying people off and, and tried to do this, and the sensitivity part on the part of the people of Kentucky, instead of individual emotional part when you have to lay somebody off, but, no use us being there, and if we couldn’t accomplish everything that we set out to.

White: You talked about...backing your people up, 151:00was there ever a time you couldn’t back somebody up?

Brown: Well, no.

White: Never.

Brown: No, I had to fire Neil Welch and because he had taped someone, and I felt bad about that, because Neil had taken the advice of another cabinet secretary...

White: He was Justice, right?

Brown: Yeah, and….

White: And he had been the assistant director of the FBI?

Brown: Yeah, he had been like a national….

White: Under whom?

Brown: He had been the head of the FBI office in New York City.

White: Okay.

Brown: And he was one of the top people but...without my knowledge they...had someone set up at my home and they taped them without me knowing about it, and that just rubbed against my grain and I fired him on the spot, and yet Neil on one hand should have know[n] better, and yet he thought this other cabinet secretary, Frank Metts had, you know, my approval or whatever that this was the thing to do, and it wasn’t the thing to do, and then unfortunately Frank wasn’t there, that I could put the 152:00blame on, but that was the one that crossed the line, that I just didn’t hesitate. I got a lot of flak on it, but I don’t, I think it was the right to do, because that’s just something you don’t do, at least not in our lifetime, is to secretly tape somebody in your home when you’ve invited in, and…I just thought it was wrong and fired him on the spot. But other than that, I don’t think I’ve really fired anybody--I backed everybody up, but we didn’t have much controversy I mean everyone, as long as everyone was trying to do the right thing, I took the heat, and just like Ron Gary, he came up with the wrong numbers when we were going to have...a tax change, we were going to change, change the whole tax code, and they had given me some numbers on a flat tax, it looked very, very attractive, and then he came in, the day before I was supposed to announce a date for the legislature to meet, and he said, “governor, I’m humiliated, I can’t believe this, but the Nor...North Carolina triangle came up from the wrong numbers.” Now I could have blamed that on Ron Gary and fired him there on the spot, and he would have been embarrassed, and he wrote me a letter 153:00later that it could have ruined his career because he is a CPA, and now he runs a five hundred-million-dollar company called (Rest Care?) in Louisville, and he says, thank you for saving me. I didn’t say anything about Ron Gary wrong number, I said, “we got the wrong numbers, and we are not going to have a special session, that’s the end of that.” And that was, you know, that was my responsibility to protect my people, Rob didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, the people he hired made a mistake, but that’s, what good would it have done to blame other people, you know, the governor the buck stops here, but I think we had that kind of atmosphere, that’s one reason people worked so hard and felt feel free to do what they thought, without having to run back to me every time, and, you know, get my, sometimes uninformed input...like many governors...try to get.

White: Something I came across said that you came out for...the flat tax with some sort of an adjective, modified, or something flat tax.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: Now was this before the numbers came in, or…. 154:00Brown: Yes, uh-huh….

White: ...before the numbers were found to be wrong.

Brown: ...that’s what that was.

White: ( ) Brown: And it looked innovated, it looked….

White: And so, it didn’t work.

Brown: ...it looked progressive, but unfortunately, the research they had done, in order to know how much this is going to save, and what the flat tax should be, there was an error, which would, you know, have lost our credibility to go try to get it passed, and to me, you know, it was, it was a major mistake and it was painful, because we’d worked hard and wanted this flat tax, but Ron was my lead guy, and he did a brilliant job over in revenues, he saved over, I think, a hundred and fifty million in, in back taxes he had collected, and he was just a very aggressive young man, and that was the one thing we would like to have accomplished and maybe with more time we would have.

White: So, obviously an atmosphere was not created where, you know, one mistake and you’re dead.

Brown: No.

White: They….

Brown: It was just the reverse.

White: ...and they knew that.

Brown: Yeah.

White: So….

Brown: Just reverse, you know, do what you think is right and be bold, just don’t be stupid.

White: No. I w...I wanted to ask you one other 155:00organizational question. When you came in as governor, well let’s...let me ask it this way. Over the course of your four years, there were several reorganizations, departments were shuffled, and reshuffled, and combined and separated and, and all that. When you first came in, did you sit down with your people and come up with an organizational chart to begin with?

Brown: No, what we did first is I hired the very best people to come in and take over each cabinet, and I didn’t try to change the cabinets right then, but then, once we got to know what we were dealing with, because we were all new to Frankfort, then we said, well, why is corrections under justice? I mean on one hand you hold them up and putting them in jail and then you’re going to penalize them or rehabilitate them, that’s not the sight of a law enforcement officer, so I pulled the correction cabinets out, we were, found we were the only one of four in the United States that was under justice, it didn’t belong under justice, it belonged under its own mentality, another 156:00parole board and or other kind of rehabilitation program that be productive for inmates, and…and then, as we got to look at other agencies as to the effectiveness, whether or not they belonged, they were needed, or could be consolidated into something else, it was a learning experience, but we were quick studies, and we sort of consolidated...as we grew and felt more comfortable with the decisions that we were going to make.

White: I was--speaking of prisons, I, I was intrigued by your...statement the last time that if you had had more time, you would’ve liked to have seen the prisons become self-supporting.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: Is this a, ha...has this been done anywhere?

Brown: Well, it hadn’t….

White: Is this….

Brown: ...been done like we….

White: ...a natural response….

Brown: ...could have done it.

White: ...of an entrepreneur?

Brown: There was a program up in Minnesota that was very progressive where they made certain kind of products that were serv…sold to a big company up 157:00there, and they, and then in Texas they had done several things, but we were the ideal...type of administration that wanted to take that on. And unfortunately we didn’t really have time to (effectuate?) that in a four year period, and one reason is I had a hard time finding a businessman to head up corrections, George (Vanson--Wilson?) who had been there for twenty years and knew the ins and outs and how many cameras you needed, and how to control the environment, you know, he was the best one to run that. I’d like to have someone with a business understanding that would have gotten down in the depths of our prison system to figure out what kind of jobs could be created where they could make product pay for themselves. [Long Pause] White: But--but you did have some pattern of prison industries that was going on.

Brown: Yeah, we, we started the prison industries and…but 158:00that was an area that I think still, I don’t know why people can’t be self-supporting that are, are, you know, violate our laws why we, should we support them to the extent of twenty-five, thirty-thousand an inmate, where we ought to put then either out in the fields or in a shop, or somewhere where they, A, can do something productive, B, they can have all the—instead of making a little cigarette money, or whatever, extra money they, they can make and try to build a productive life for them. I mean idle time is the devil’s workshop, and those people they get out of the prisons and go back in, because they haven’t been trained for anything. If they could be trained for a business to where they could be proficient in it, and go out on the streets and find a respectful job, you’d have a lot less crime, and…and you’d get some self-esteem with these prisoners, see I don’t think all people are just bad seeds, I think people make mistakes, most people are in prison because of drugs and alcohol, which aren’t necessarily the clean influence, 159:00and…I would like to have seen us have a program where we put these people to work, they show up on Monday morning and they work all week long and they make things that pay for their stay, and they make a little money, you know, not sixty cents a day, or whatever, but, maybe they can make ten bucks a day or something, and, and feel good about what they’re doing, so when they get out, they have a resume, that perhaps they can fit in, in our society in a productive, positive way.

White: I was going to ask you a question about prevention.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: Because you, you did have to build some prisons while you were governor.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: And I think you partially answered my question about pre...prevention, give them training and, and….

Brown: Well, I, I….

White: ...then you won’t, they, they won’t be as many prisoners. How about prevention even before the fact? How do you feel? I mean are, are programs to, to, to try to...you know, help people who do not have a lot of opportunities gain skills 160:00or education, or whatever. Are they going to help solve the problem of, of our bursting prisons, or is that just pie in the sky?

Brown: Well, I, I think if you have a thriving economy, you have less need for the...desperate role of the criminal that’s getting by on stealing and robbing and taking advantage of society in illegal means, if they had kind of a lot opportunities, you know, common sense would tell you, well, perhaps they wouldn’t be crooks, or go to crime, but I think most of your crimes are those that are without, and so if you can gain a society those that are with, you’re going to have less crime, you may have white collar crime, but not the, the numbers that we have. I just think our whole setup and mentality is, goes back to the dark ages of...prisons are only to hold people up and, and show them how much 161:00penalty we can give them, and what’s the difference between somebody in prison for ten years or four years, I mean you’ve taken a major part of their life and I believe most people can be rehabilitated to the extent that they can be trained for a profession, and some of them might have a criminal mind and will never change, but they can probably s…have a much better chance to stay clean on the streets, if they are taught a career then when they go out, you know, they have a way to make a living, where they can have a car and a house and a family, and the essential of American life, and I don’t know why we don’t do that. I mean that certainly could be done. These are people, you know, and, and they can be dealt with on a positive basis, just like a first-grade classroom, I mean, the one thing we all need in this life is an incentive and a good self-esteem, and our prison system gives everyone the worthless self-esteem and goes downhill from there, so how are you going to rehabilitate someone without trying to build him up.

White: And speaking of the drug problem in prisons, 162:00I wanted to ask you about marijuana, because there were some instances of the administration going after the marijuana growers in Kentucky.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: So, I have a few questions about that. And I guess the main question is, how do you feel...it’s, it’s twenty years later and I don’t know whether the environment is different than it was when you were governor, but there is a school of thought that says we ought to be growing hemp...in order to give tobacco farmers...something else that they can do as the tobacco industry either declines or re-directs, or, or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about first of all the growing of marijuana, and second of all, how, how, you know, hemp could, could have anything to do with tobacco, or whether it can’t, or whether there is something else we can replace tobacco with and whether things 163:00are more possible today than they would have been twenty years ago, when you were governor?

Brown: Well [clears throat] this question of the hemp [Clears throat] something that’s, you know, new and I really haven’t….

White: Okay.

Brown: ...kept up with the technology as to how it’s used and the production of products, and…you know, all we knew at the time was marijuana is illegal and we need to try to eliminate it as best you could and, and that was our job. Today, I’m not sure what I would do; I’m not up to date on that.

White: Yeah. And, and twenty years ago, how did you--did you see that, there was going to be a tob...a problem with tobacco? Down, and, and….

Brown: I think so, and….

White: But was it something that was down the road, back in, in the late seventies?

Brown: Well yeah, you’re always fearful of that, but at the same time, everybody that was in it was aware of that and, and it’s like the businessmen. They need to spread their risk, you can get into more profit producing kind of products and those are just stuck and live off the tobacco quotas, you know, they’re caught with, in the squeeze 164:00more than other farmers that looked to diversify their farming activities. But I think that was, you know, everyone was self-educated on that.

White: Okay.

Brown: and, and I think that, you know, we’ve made a lot of progress in educating the public not to smoke, I mean it’s such a strong addiction, not that few are smokers, but certainly a lot of progress has been made and, you look on one hand the, the cancer victims and what it cost us in medical cost, versus you know, what causes cancer, which pretty explicit, that cigarette is the number one cause so, you know, you have a public good to do that, regardless of what your industries are, you don’t want to, I don’t think expand or promote industries that are gone on the other hand, the...permanent...hanging (shed?) for your society, so I think there you need to be creative in finding alternate uses, now your hemp might be a good idea, it might be one that, that, you 165:00know, filled in, we could be a leader in that category, but you know, that’s were our research center at the University of Kentucky, you know, needs to stay ahead of the curve, as what our farmers in Kentucky ought to be doing with their soil and, and with their land.

White: I want to go back to the campaign for a minute, pick up a few strands. Was, was Larry Townsend the first person to suggest that you run for governor? Or was he just...one of the people that, that….

Brown: My dad always….

White: ...got excited.

Brown: ...you know, my dad ran for governor twice and ran for the United States senate seven times, and, and he was a do-gooder kind of candidate, he was a brilliant lawyer, probably the best we’ve ever had, and he was really naïve, I guess, when it came to politics, he just thought well gee, if you’re the best man, everybody will elect you, and, and without going in the backroom activities who go into organizing campaigns or all the tradeoffs and that’s why I grew up with a great distaste for government, because 166:00I sat and I, I was in the kitchen listening at my father when he met with Bert Combs and Earle Clements--no it was Earle Clements and someone else, not Bert Combs wasn’t there but they’d asked John that if he would run for governor, but they didn’t want him to endorse the sales tax, because you know, I mean Dad got to be known as sales tax Johnny, and because he proposed the first sales tax in Kentucky, and they said, no you got to run against the sales tax, and my dad said, “well, I’m not going to run,” and so he passed up an opportunity to be governor instead of Bert Combs, because they wanted my dad to run against Happy Chandler which he really sort of had a political loathing for, because they supposedly started out together and the story has it that Happy double-crossed him and so they were rivals for.… White: How?

Brown: Well, they had made a promise that if he supported Happy for...I think it was governor, that Happy would in turn support him for the United State senate…. 167:00White: Oh!

Brown: ...or the following governor, one or the other, and of course Dad ran for governor in 1939, almost won. And…he came within fifteen thousand votes of winning, and so they had a long rivalry there for many, many years and, and sort of legends of their bomb blasting speeches against each other, but that’s all part of our political folklore.

White: Did your father tell you that, or suggest to you that you ought to run for governor?

Brown: Oh yeah, every day [Laughter], and….

White: Specifically.

Brown: But Larry was the one, and, and you know you grow to finally where you feel like you’ve satisfied your father and you’ve met his ambitions goals for you when I got through with KFC, I really felt like I, I’d done that, and I really wasn’t interested in politics but Larry Townsend...you know, he had these great visions that I was one of the handful of people that would maybe could be president of the United States, and he was all carried away with all that, a lot more than I was, 168:00you know, and he talked me into getting involved and the telethons for the Democratic party that we...got them out of bankruptcy and also he was the president of Jaycees, just a real ambitious young man, and kept wanting me to do something in politics, and finally, after I got married and Phyllis and I didn’t have a place to live, I thought well, maybe this is the time, Phyllis likes this, she is good at it, and we don’t have a home, and I love Kentucky, I love going in there and kick butt one time, and...Larry is the one though, I could not have done it without Larry, and Larry called me, I remember seventeen hundred dollars’ worth of phone bills down to Saint Martins’ Island, back and forth and on our honeymoon and I had a friend, partner in the Boston Celtics that had a jet and I said, “well now Harry, if you want to sent [send] that jet for me, I’d appreciate it,” so he sent the jet and we came back home and I think three days before you had to sign up for the primary, and…and 169:00Phyllis, you know, the more they told us we couldn’t win, the more we said to ourselves, by God, we’ll show you, and we--Larry called a hundred and nineteen people, not one of them out of a hundred and nineteen said they’d be for me, or thought I had any chance of winning, and Larry had two other people, Carroll (Lat?) and Bobby (Kyle?) they were my whole organization, and [Chuckling] I had never been in political campaign, but we were quick learners, and we were pretty confident with what we were able to do, and I guess my own inner-confidence by that time was the difference in running, same thing with Phyllis, you know, we thought, you know, we thought and, and it’s basically a selling campaign, you know, and I wanted to run against politics and I am a businessman, and we had our two slogans, I made them up on the back of a piece of paper on American Airlines coming down, I said, “what am I going to run for?” and I said, “well, run a government like a business and economic development, that’s the end of the subject,” so [Chuckling] and I was ( ), and that was 170:00my campaign--in fact my first speech, Ethel, that I gave at the press conference could have been my last one, I mean, I really, I laid everything out then I was going to do, so apparently I’d, I had years of thought of what I wanted to do, and I had the opportunity to do it.

White: I want to see if we can pick up a few more specifics about the tone of your campaign and, and your political consultant, Mr. Squier.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: How, I don’t quite have a handle on how he saw his job and then how you saw his job, because he wasn’t doing what you wanted.

Brown: Mm-mm.

White: So, can you go back over that?

Brown: Yeah, can I take a break here and get a cup of coffee?

White: Absolutely.

Brown: Do you want some? [Pause] White: Okay the question was about your campaign and your consultant, and how things were being run.

Brown: Well, it gets back to the old theory [clears throat] that whatever you get involved in life, the old theory of either lead, follow, or get out of the way? And since this 171:00was my first campaign and I brought in a, a, a d...a diverse group of people that all, that had a lot of experience in campaigns, plus they all thought they knew all about campaigns, so [clears throat] about half way through the campaign, we were rolling along, not much was happening, it was before derby and where everybody really gets interested in the governor races and not much was going on, and we weren’t moving in the polls, we were about 10 percent and maybe six points behind everybody else, and all my experts got together one night at the Hyatt House, and decided that...we weren’t going to win this campaign unless I got more aggressive in calling the, the Carroll administration a bunch of crooks and landed, I needed to take the helicopter and land on the lawn and just protest all this corruption in government and, and so I listened to them for about three hours and they were all one of these (petty potty?) kind of meetings, 172:00blamed everything on me, and that I needed to be more aggressive and I thought, well gee everybody else is saying what crooks they are over there, well I didn’t get in that thought ( ), I don’t feel good about that, you know, I’m not in all that mudslinging and, so Phyllis got up, left the meeting after about half an hour because these were a bunch of doomsayers and so finally Squier spoke up and said, “John,” he says, “you don’t understand,” he said, “you know, we’ve got our political reputations on the line on this campaign, and you need to do what we say,” and I, then I got, I got hot, which I very seldom do, I said, “let me tell you something, Squier,” I said, “I got half a million dollars of my own money in this, so, you know, to me that’s serious, a lot more than you got committed,” I said, “you haven’t produced a single damn commercial, all you’ve been doing is tell me what you’re doing, and what you’re working on, and the only commercial I’ve had I had to get WH, WAV over here in my hotel room and cut my own damn commercial, and write them, and you’re supposed to be this hot shot commercial producer, 173:00I want you to get some damn commercials down here, if you can’t get them down here by next Friday, then I’ll get my own, okay? Now you go over and get your commercials and don’t worry about how to run this campaign.” I said, “now Matt (Reese?) you’re the phone expert, I paid you three-hundred thousand and where are the phone blinking? Get the damn phone working, get upstairs in that ta...in that attic at the office and get those volunteers coming in, and quit worrying about how to run my campaign, that’s what you’re paid to do.” And I went around ( ) the room and told everybody to go do their job, and quit trying to do everybody else’s job, and I got mad at everybody and sent them home, and I, I woke up the next morning, I said, “Phyllis, I felt good, you know, we’re going to win now.” But everybody was wandering worrying about everybody else’s job instead of their own job. And that’s when we won the campaign. I went out...

White: So, they weren’t taking care of the nuts and bolts.

Brown: No, they were all worried about the big picture and it, it wasn’t about a big picture, everybody had a job to do, they weren’t doing it, they were all worried about meetings and what are we going to do, what are we going to do, if they just do their job everything will turn out fine, so, you know, and, but I’d had that 174:00experience before, I had been burn, been burned by listening to committees and I’m not a committee guy, I learned not to be a committee guy and I had to make a decision, I could see they were all worrying about their overall without just doing their job!

White: Well, and I heard, I heard what you said about...Squier saying my reputation is on the line, I, is, is, is this what the problem is with modern political campaigns?

Brown: Well, much of it is, but...

White: ( ) consulting?

Brown: ...here is what I told him, I said, “let me tell you something Squier,” I said, “you know, here are the people I’m running against. One of them is an alcoholic, you know, that I’m running against, I won’t say who, another is, is someone that’s running with the support of the administration, got forty FBI agents circling the capitol now. Here is somebody from west Kentucky nobody ever heard of, here is somebody else that’s the mayor of Louisville and sort of a dilettante kind of person that really shouldn’t be (related?) by the people of Kentucky, and here are the candidates you got, you got someone born and raised in Kentucky, his dad for fifty years was in political life with no, with never a black mark 175:00to ever come against his name, and you got his son coming along now with Kentucky Fried Chicken, the biggest success in local business here and a basketball team and raising money for the Democratic party and married to Miss America, and who is the sports and from Denton, Texas, if you can’t take us, then man, you ought to get out of business, you’ll find, ought to find some other career to get into.” And so I sort of gave him confidence that, you know, they ought to go out and win with us, because we were a heck of a team, and they were forgetting, they were all, all being political, and Carroll (Lath?) who was my scheduler, you know, he’d have me scheduled at every courthouse with ten people I finally I said, “I’m not going over to the courthouses anymore, get me on TV, you know, call the camera up here and we will do, cut a commercial.” And so, I sort of ran my campaign, and I went where the people were, and I didn’t go out there just to do it like they’d been doing it for years, and, and that was the difference in our campaign, we only had sixty days.

White: Could you run that kind of a campaign today, 176:00where candidates had been running for four years, and some...or, or if not you, could a candidate run that kind of campaign today, where they sail in, you know, six or eight weeks before the election and just kind of scoop it up?

Brown: Sure.

White: The times haven’t changed so much that this….

Brown: No, but it was….

White: ... could be done again?

Brown: ...it was also that I was well known, you know, my father was well known, and so I was, I was a, a part of history that was known and accepted, where usually a new person coming in, like this Charlie Owens, it’s too hard, who is Charlie Owens, and who is this guy on TV and, and plus Charlie Owens didn’t have any issues, I had issues or, you know, throwing politicians is out...

White: And name recognition.

Brown: ...and they had ( ) had credibility, you know, they thought gee that guy must be smart, he’s rich, you know, [Laughing] and so not that this got anything to do with it, but all that sort of fit in, I started out selling encyclopedias so I had only ( ) anybody…I remember Ed (Hahn?) said, he got up there, he was a c...county judge ( ) using 177:00one of our commercials and that’s when they had all those scandals and the governors and you know, Louis Nunn taking a hundred thousand and they, they were after Julian and then the par…last part of the commercial they used “I’d rather have a millionaire going in than a millionaire coming out, because we know that was his money and not our money.” [Laughing] and that ( ), that was the best ad of all and, but the campaign was fun and it’s basically salesmanship, that’s really all it was and, and what we did is we captured the moment. In other words, we came in with two months so I ( ) someone else could do it too, it, people get tired of the campaigns and all the rhetoric and the back biting and the negative ads, and if you come in fresh like Phyllis and I did, and just take center stage, no one ever, no one else were looked at for the last two months, because we were the new kids on the block.

White: I think the closest campaign, as I remember, was between you and Harvey Sloan, and….

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: ...and then as your administration progressed, 178:00he had a housing deal in eastern Kentucky and there was some controversy there, he, some of the people in your administration he thought were holding back on him unless he ran for county judge, or there was something like that. What, what was your….

Brown: He was….

White: ...did you continue to have a relationship with Harvey Sloan, or was, did you simply run against him in a campaign and, and that was it?

Brown: Yeah, I just ran against him, I didn’t have, have any grudge against Harvey, I think he was just trying to make a living and, and he was putting against some things that our people didn’t think were...you know, the kind of tax benefits, or whatever we wanted wasn’t anything, you know, as far as I knew, against Harvey, other than he was wanting some kind of state programs that we weren’t (religious?) for, but we treated him like anybody else, we weren’t much for state subsidizing anything.

White: You mentioned the last time, asking...W. T. Young for advice and how to control your father, which I think cam…began 179:00during the campaign. Is this a fair question, to ask you, you know, what was the problem?

Brown: Oh yeah!

White: What did you want to control [Chuckle] Brown: But Dad ran for congress when he was eighty, I mean he was, you know, he was his own man, and he was born the son of a tenant farmer and, and he is five foot six, and he had the, you know, he had the fire of a banty rooster in a courtroom and he just dominated and he loved me more than life, I mean he was a great father to me and he motivated me to try to do more than just my usual level of performance, and he was my inspiration. But at the same time Dad, as most fathers, you don’t understand how a son, like myself can go out and be so successful in business and make money, and they get a perception being lawyers or doctors that you get lucky, it’s like going in and cashing in a winning ticket, well that’s not the way it is in business, you know, you build one block at a time and you compete 180:00then you build something that you know, some day is profitable to you, he never understood how I made the money, and I guess down deep he wanted to do his own thing. And I took care of my dad but...because he was in debt, as most lawyers are, and he stood most of his life in politics spending whatever he had in politics and, but he wanted to go out and do his own thing, so he was going, you know, all these crazy business deals at eighty-one, eighty-two years of age and, in gold deals, in uranium deals and things that I just said, “Dad, you can’t make money,” he said, “oh, I know what I am doing, you know, they...researched this out,’ and I said, “please Dad don’t do it,” I mean he was going in a bunch of crazy business deals and, and so I was asking W. T. what his advice was, about how to handle my dad who I love so much, but also you know, he wanted his, do his own thing and I knew better but, you know, Bill Young gave me the greatest answer, he said, “well John, it seems to me like you’ve got an unsolvable problem.” [Laughing] 181:00and what a great answer! I had an unsolvable that problem, all I could do was minimize the damage and, I remember Dad when he was paralyzed had one of these promoters in the coal industry and their have him sign some notes on his back, you know, and he is eighty-four years old, and…but you know, that was my dad, and….

White: So, it was more the business deals that bothered you [clears throat] more than what he might say to the….

Brown: Oh yeah!

White: ...press or anything like that.

Brown: No! He was….

White: He was….

Brown: ...he was very….

White: ...doing to himself.

Brown: And he glowed in my success, I mean that was his dream come true and, and I was one of the great satisfactions that when I went in I had my arm around him and our picture taken and, it, this all represented fifty years of fighting, you know, we won, we finally won, and, and I, I know he was very proud and I made him a big part of my administration because he was my motivation.

White: I want to focus on education for a minute….

Brown: Sure.

White: ... if we can. You regretted and, and we talked about it briefly earlier, but…you 182:00regretted not being on the cutting edge of reform and you explained that the Carnegie report came out at the end of your administration, you didn’t have much to go on. But you did institute a number of initiatives, and you know, was this the result of, of a...of added funding that you were able to create, or was this simply a creative approach with money that was already there? What I am trying to ask is, did it take more money to have these initiatives?

Brown: Well, the first thing that I, I felt that we needed to do is make a teacher the centermost point of education, they are the key, they do all the teaching and they unlock the door of the schools, and they close it, and they were not being paid at the level that I felt was competitive for the type of work they were doing, and we were very conscious even in lean times of trying to advance, you know, their particular 183:00funding. Beyond that, you know, I had the idea that kindergarten is so important, why don’t we make it mandatory, just like we do the first grade, and we were the first ones and I happen to think of that, no one questioned that it was a good idea and, and we implemented that into law but that was what we considered a necessity and some of the other programs, as far as letting some of the poor counties be able to compete, and keep up with the others, that was just a given, that is something you had to do, we had to find the money for it, there were certain things that we just wouldn’t cut because they were cutting at the core of, of equality, I guess, and we wanted all Kentuckians to be supported the same, and so we put a lot of money in those different poorer districts in order to bring equal funding up, and, and thinking back, I think that was the law, or it was the spirit of the law, and we certainly made that a priority and lived up to it.

White: Why is education is--so important to you? 184:00Brown: Well...I think this, I, I think when I looked at education, I had to think, well what do I know or what can I contribute other than create an atmosphere that education is important that teaching is a wonderful profession, it’s like the ministry, you know, that’s leading the people, and building the boundaries by which people grow up and live and, and I think that’s important for a governor, is create a perception that education is a priority, for mothers and dads, as well as the teachers and the administrators. At the same time [clears throat] there wasn’t enough information that are we teaching the right thing, and are we effective in what we’re doing, and change is, is terribly...painful, and unless you got a basis to make change, you don’t make change. Now being all business people, in other things like building roads or building a school, you know, we were pros in that so we didn’t mind change, we’d been doing 185:00it this way for years, we knew we had to have to do it this other way, but when it came to education, I think we’re all sensitive, but we are all learning, you know, we were fairly new to this. But I think it was more important to set an image that you can be successful in Kentucky, you can reach your dreams here in Kentucky, but I decided, honestly with more of the big picture of motivating the whole idea of education, then specific programs by themselves. Now we had started the governor’s scholar program for outstanding students, and….

White: Yeah, talk about that for a minute.

Brown: Yeah. Well, that was just to give some recognition to students that...to achieve that they were going to be recognized and…that was just one of the programs that we had, I, you know….

White: Do you remember who came, came up with that one, or how….

Brown: Yeah, it was Russ Dozier.

White: ...it came about?

Brown: Russ Dozier.

White: Russ Dozier?

Brown: Russ Dozier came up with the idea, he used to be….

White: Was it modeled on something in another state, or do you remember?

Brown: I don’t remember that I just know Do...Do...Russ came with the whole program, and it impressed me, and I said, “well put it together.” And we had about five or six hundred of these kids at our first meeting, and I understand it’s been very successful since then. 186:00White: Also….

Brown: But there are a lot of politics in, in education, and, and if I had been able to run a second time, I would of put a professional educator, but also a professional manager, if there is such a thing, an entrepreneur, someone that can really cut through all the politics and all the bureaucracies in education that’s been built up over decades, and unfortunately, you know, I didn’t have that opportunity because the superintendent of public instruction was the constitutional officer to lead education.

White: Had you recommended that office be abolished?

Brown: Mm-mm, I think I probably did.

White: Is that because of the politics? Is there politics….

Brown: Well, I think….

White: ...in that specific office?

Brown: ...I think a governor, if he is going to have to be the main influence on education, he ought to be able to select his own person to run it or support it or build it. It’s like a political job, you know, you’re stuck with someone and that’s got their own ideas and then he start playing politics with you and, and they’re for you or against you on certain things, you don’t have any continuity 187:00of support and, I think yeah, I did, I did want to abolish that.

White: A look at the, the budgetary pie and then the educational aspect of it, tells you, tells one that there was a 22 percent increase in education funding but higher ed has the smallest share of funding since the 1960s, which tells me, rightly or wrongly, that your emphasis was on primary and secondary education.

Brown: I would like for you also, it’s in this book, Paul Patton gave it to me, that showing how much all these administrations, how inflation, how they have grown in 10, 15 percent a year and our budget grew at like 3 or 4 percent a year. I don’t know if you got that, but I’d like to give it to you….

White: Okay.

Brown: ...if I can find it on my desk.

White: Okay.

Brown: But it shows we had no new money, zero new money over four years, where including inflation these other administrations had just hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I think higher ed, 188:00we challenged more because we weren’t sure what their roles were, they were all historic roles. Morehead was the mountain college, Richmond was this kind of college, and Western Kentucky served that, and Murray served that and they all grew up as part of a, probably a political as well as serving, you know, some educational needs, but I wanted to really shake higher education up and say who are we, what are you supposed to be doing, how do we do it best, and I think that’s where we started, with the idea that the University of Kentucky is the landmark university in our state, as much as Louisville, and Louisville, you know, needs to be a different kind, it’s our urban university. So we were challenging, you know, and all these college presidents, they are all turf builders, they all build it, they all take on every program that you can throw at them because bigger is better in their minds, and yet, you know, it’s not their fault, it’s the state’s fault, it’s what are our education needs 189:00and what do we need to do to get the value for our dollar.

END OF INTERVIEW