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Interview with Ronald R. Cyrus, February 4, 2004

2004-02-04 Interview with Ronald R. Cyrus, February 4, 2004 Leg001:2004OH039 Leg 074 02:43:31 Kentucky Legislature Oral History Project Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries Cyrus, Ronald Ray, 1935-2006--Interviews Legislators--Kentucky--Interviews Kentucky. Governor (1971-1974 : Ford) Kentucky. Governor (1974-1979 : Carroll) Kentucky. Governor (1983-1987 : Collins) Kentucky. Governor (1979-1983 : Brown) Kentucky. Governor (1987-1991 : Wilkinson) Kentucky. Governor (1991-1995 : Jones) Kentucky. Governor (1995-2003 : Patton) Lowman, Harry King, 1913-1977 Robinson, Albert, 1938- May, Woody, 1929- McBrayer, W. Terry, 1937- Chandler, Ben, 1959- Garrett, Helen Marie Rickman, 1929-2006 Kenton, William G. Richardson, Bobby Blandford, Donald J. Right to labor--Kentucky Open and closed shop--Law and legislation--Kentucky Freedom of information--Kentucky Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) Kentucky. Education Reform Act (1990) Toyota Manufacturing (Georgetown, Ky.) Workers' Compensation Lungs--Dust diseases Black Lung Health care reform--Kentucky BOPTROT Capital punishment--Kentucky Cyrus, Billy Ray, 1961- Key Legislation: Right to work law; workers' compensation ; right to know law ; mine safety legislation ; black lung compensation Term/District: House (1976-1986), 98th district Leadership Position(s): Chairman of the House Labor and Industry Committee Counties in District: Boyd County (Ky.) -- Greenup County (Ky.) Ronald R. Cyrus; interviewee Eric Moyen; interviewer 2004OH039_LEG074_Cyrus 1:|32(4)|75(2)|95(10)|120(3)|138(3)|155(11)|173(8)|194(10)|211(13)|244(5)|274(6)|296(13)|336(2)|368(6)|393(6)|427(14)|462(4)|480(6)|495(10)|511(9)|536(12)|580(2)|595(5)|612(8)|634(1)|653(4)|675(12)|705(8)|718(14)|747(10)|773(9)|820(8)|834(6)|860(3)|886(9)|909(7)|928(10)|955(7)|978(7)|994(14)|1019(2)|1033(7)|1074(2)|1108(5)|1127(2)|1150(12)|1175(8)|1192(2)|1205(1)|1218(2)|1243(8)|1278(8)|1312(1)|1349(12)|1370(5)|1386(4)|1422(3)|1446(1)|1465(5)|1505(5)|1533(7)|1555(1)|1580(8)|1604(4)|1623(7)|1642(11)|1663(11)|1699(12)|1722(3)|1747(14)|1777(6)|1803(4)|1821(9)|1845(5)|1861(8)|1892(7)|1920(1)|1932(7)|1953(7)|1969(10)|1989(5)|2015(3)|2036(10)|2054(6)|2072(4)|2098(10)|2120(11)|2150(5)|2177(10)|2209(2)|2232(4)|2250(10)|2272(10)|2302(6)|2320(9)|2354(13)|2366(3)|2385(2)|2409(10)|2425(1)|2446(10)|2468(12)|2496(11)|2524(4)|2561(7)|2604(1)|2640(1)|2651(11)|2671(11)|2690(7)|2718(2)|2740(12)|2757(9)|2785(2)|2809(4)|2831(4)|2853(2)|2873(3)|2891(3)|2925(13)|2953(3)|2993(3)|3018(11)|3043(4)|3062(3)|3080(3)|3102(10)|3128(1)|3153(7)|3183(5)|3207(1)|3227(9)|3243(2)|3263(12)|3289(9)|3311(5)|3345(9)|3374(6)|3392(2)|3418(6)|3450(11)|3489(5)|3523(4)|3549(2)|3571(11)|3596(6)|3616(3)|3635(9)|3669(2)|3696(8)|3728(7)|3758(14)|3773(5)|3788(8)|3813(6)|3839(2)|3875(10)|3899(2)|3920(3)|3943(6)|3961(4)|3978(4)|4004(6) audiotrans Legit interview MOYEN: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Ron Cyrus who served in the Kentucky House of Representatives. The interview was conducted by Eric Moyen for the University of Kentucky Oral History Program and the Kentucky Legislature Oral History Project. The interview took place on February 4, 2004, in Wellington, Kentucky. [Pause in recording.] CYRUS: --tool(??). MOYEN: And when, when was this? CYRUS: Let's see, we wrote the, uh, work, the unemployment laws in, uh, about nineteen and, uh, when did Martha Layne come in? Nineteen, uh-- MOYEN: --[Nineteen] eighty-four-- CYRUS: --[Nineteen] eighty-four. So it was about '84 we wrote that. Just, she hadn't been in (??), uh, and then, uh, workers' comp must've been about '86 or '88. MOYEN: Um-hm. All right. CYRUS: Didn't work out all the problems but we -----------(??)-------- ----. But what it was, but anyway, Penny Marshall wrote about that in that book. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: About the change that it brought to the legislature. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and, and a different, uh, attitude with labor management. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: That's why I mentioned it; that has nothing to do with what you're doing. MOYEN: Sure it does. Sure, well, it has to do with, with, um, your legislative career, so that's what we're working on today. CYRUS: Why'd you pick me? MOYEN: I picked you because, well, I was looking through, um, I don't what to say it on tape(??)-- [Pause in recording.] MOYEN: --get your story going. CYRUS: Well, you want to ask a question. MOYEN: Let me, let me just, uh, say, I'm here with Ron Cyrus who served District Ninety-Eight in the House of Representatives from 1976 to '96, is that correct? CYRUS: Yes. MOYEN: Okay. And, um, we were, we were just talking off the tape about the, uh, money that you lose when you serve in the legislature. I, I don't know if you want to continue. You were saying involved with labor and management at-- CYRUS: --well-- MOYEN: --UK, -------------(??)-- CYRUS: --yeah, that's one of the reasons that, that, that kinda kept me from, uh, uh, a case of half-to, of having to resign that first time. Because if people don't have other income coming in, of some, some form, I, I don't see how anyone could exist being-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --a state legislator, because of the expenses, uh, that you have to pay out, uh, uh, lodging and meals and food, besides all the expenses to constituents that's, uh, such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, funerals that, that legislators pay out that, that there's no way of recouping that money. MOYEN: Um-hm, right. CYRUS: It's, it's, but it, but it certainly a part of staying reelected. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: And, uh, and legislators sometimes just don't realize, number one, what the salary is; number two, what the expenses is gonna be; and number three, the time that's it's gonna take that keeps you from doing something else that you, where you can-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --uh, sustain your family. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Although, uh, but it, yeah, it creates a, it's an educational process, for sure. MOYEN: Did you that, from the beginning of your time of service in the seventies through the end in the, in the nineties that the role of a representative took up a lot more time? CYRUS: No doubt about it. What, uh, when I first went down there, I was on three committees. But as the legislature, after they won their legislative independence created the biggest change in the legislature, uh, probably in the history of the, of, of our constitution in Kentucky. Because the legislators wanted to have equal, uh, uh, say- so, as the executive branch and the judicial branch. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And therefore, you couldn't come down there every other year, sixty, for sixty days, and stay on top of things. So, they started putting more, it used to, you, you was, years ago, you was put on a committee, and, and if someone drafted a bill, uh, that committee, if it was transportation or labor or whatever it was, that committee would meet during the session. And, uh, and, uh, go over that bill and pass it out of committee-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --or have hearings on it or whatever. Well, once you start not only reviewing bills that's posted, but reviewing budget review, uh, cost overruns, ramifications of, of, of, uh, different, uh, regulations, uh, and staying on top of, now, they have say-so in, when, uh, when a bill is passed, regulations has to be written-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to, uh, make the statue. Well, uh, now, the legislature is, is meeting shortly after, uh, usually June, following their April recess, of, uh, draf-, of, uh, regulation overview. Okay, so all of these bills, they not only just those, the committees that, that, uh, the standing committees, but then they started appointing all the budget review, regulations overview, all these things-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --that went over all the, with the different cabinets. So normally, instead of, uh, if you was just on your standing committee, three committees a month, three meetings a month, then each one of those committees you might be on two or three subcommittees. So, it was ten, twelve, sixteen meetings a month. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, where, where that really got to bothering legislators, say, teachers, teachers don't have any way of getting their money back. Uh, a guy that lays off at Armco, like me, there's no way of you getting that money back. So, instead of you losing the difference between, uh, $75 or $80 a day, and $50 a day, uh, uh, was, where, you was losing that much, say $25, $30, $40, $50 for each meeting, now you're losing that times twelve or sixteen instead of three times a month. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, so that made it, uh, that made it, it makes it very unhandy for a blue-collar working person, or a teacher, or someone that's-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --hourly, uh, to be able to, uh, to give up the money. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. Um, let's step back just a minute. Why don't you tell me a little about, um, your family, your, uh, your parents? I, I read somewhere that you were the youngest of eight-- CYRUS: --um-hm-- MOYEN: --to a Pentecostal minister. CYRUS: That's right. MOYEN: Tell me a little about your family and growing up, when you were born, where you born. CYRUS: Well, I, I, well, I was born in 1935. I, I tell that people that was a pretty good year. That was the year of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, uh, creating social security, you know. Uh, so, it come by it was a pretty good year. Also, uh, wouldn't know, uh, until years later, but it also, that was the year Elvis Presley was born. (Moyen laughs) But, uh, but anyway, uh, there was eight. And he was a small country preacher. Uh, that, um, and, and Dad was a fulltime, from the time I was born, he was a fulltime minister. Um, a few years after I was born, he'd become the bishop, general overseer of the Pentecostal church, and it, it, uh, and then it was fulltime for sure. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Besides his evangelistic work. But anyway, uh, very, very, um, country. Uh, simple. But a, but a religious family. A very happy family. Very close. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Knit. And, uh, and probably some of my earliest brainwashing was from my dad that, that he'd come in and stand me up against, we had a Philco Radio that was about three or four feet tall, and he'd stand me up to see if his, his Democrat had grown any. (Moyen laughs) And we had little knife marks on that radio where he'd, if, uh, mark any. So, I was kinda indoctrinated into being a Democrat with, because Dad believed very much in, in, uh, in social systems, such as public education, uh, uh, help for the needy, and the help for the elderly. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That sort of thing, that, because of being in, being a minister he was called in so many times with people that under stressful situations that he'd seen all those needs. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, that's, that's kinda made me a, uh, liberal. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and I like the term. That's a very, very good term to me, being a liberal Democrat. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, there's been a lot of Ronald Reagan's spin masters, uh, made it into a, you know, politically a dirty word. You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I can, I can, if I had the spin masters and I was running a presidential campaign, guarantee I could make conservative, politically conservative, a bad word. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, I've got it, and no, I don't want to share it with you. No, I'm not gonna put, I've got the money and I want to keep it. If I want it, let it trickle down, I can let it trickle down to help a needy person, but don't have to. Well, that's being conservative, isn't it? So, uh, from, on my part-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --I'm being a conservative that way. I'm conserving my resources, right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, that's, that's, I don't think that's the way God intended us to be. Uh, and, and, uh, the framers of the Constitution certainly wasn't, when they talk about equality, they certainly didn't talk about, if somebody gets it, why, let them hoard it, and keep it, and, and let the needy worry about themselves. I think, uh, I think they talked about it equality. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um-hm. CYRUS: So, I pretty much a, I call myself a flaming liberal. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Front and back. (Moyen laughs) Uh, I don't believe in giveaways. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Just like I, like I was telling about the injured workers, if they drew, uh, workers' comp, I want them to be hurt. If they want to draw unemployment, they had to truly be unemployed. Not a voluntary quit or playing like they're hurt. Uh, uh, but, if they were, then they need a respectable, uh, resources to take care of their family while-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --they're unemployed, or, or hurt on the job. But liberal, where it comes to education of our children, it's, uh, infrastructure, uh, of our state, uh, help for the elderly, help for the, uh, uh, sick, uh, those things, I, I could, like I say, I think when people talk about being a conservative, they're-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --uh, they need some -----------(??). MOYEN: Um-hm. So, it sounds like you definitely got this liberal influence from your father and from your background. CYRUS: Yes. MOYEN: Um, some of that. What about, um, the other side of the liberal, you were talking about Ronald Reagan, which doesn't use the term so much in terms of helping people, but may focus liberal as a bad word on things, like, can't say the Pledge of Allegiance because of it's got God in it, or what, on social issues would you consider yourself-- CYRUS: --social issues, I'm, I'm a liberal there, too. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I believe we ought to, I believe we should be able to have, uh, uh, uh, prayer in school. I was raised with prayer in school. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I don't think that's what made me a liberal. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But, but we had prayer in school, we pledged allegiance to the flag with "Under God" in it. Uh, you, you know, and there's so many things that you hear every day, every coin you got in your pocket has got "In God We Trust," well, that's, that's government currency you're carrying-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --that's got that. So, I think they speak out of, uh, uh, kinda, like, as Indians used to say, they speak with fork-tongued. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That's, that's the, the right hype by, by people that's got personal agendas. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, I look at it from the other side. If I'm an atheist, and I don't want my kid, uh, to, to hear about God, I'm making the decisions for my kid. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: In, in the first place-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --and so, the guy is actually playing God. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If you've ever heard the woman(??)-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --for saying, "No, I don't want my kid to," you know, that kid, if they didn't want them to pledge allegiance to the flag, or, or recite some kind of prayer, well, they wouldn't, they, they can just, number one, if they went to their parents, the parents could, uh, then make other arrangements, you know, but. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But to try to force that issue on every person that goes to that school or that church or whatever, uh, I think that's playing the conservative role to the ultimate. MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. Uh, tell me a little about, um, some of your other background, your, uh, work for Armco Steel, and your time in the Air Force. Did, did that, um, why don't you tell me a little bit about that and then did that influence your political philosophy, or just-- CYRUS: --no-- MOYEN: --your moral-- CYRUS: --well, that, the, certainly the Air Force didn't. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, the Air Force, um, made me realize the, the importance and the duty that, uh, that we have, uh, to protect this country. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, that is, to me, that's, that's one of the ultra-liberal--now, they, you know, they try to, and this is another spin that some people will put on conservatives, he's wanting(??) a stronger military. I'm, uh, the, the more liberal you are, in my way of thinking, the, the stronger the military you'd want. You know, I, I'd, I'd, I'd put it out there. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If I had the means and the, and the, uh, the resources to do so, people would not be going to military because they couldn't find anything else-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --they'd be going to the military, such as a whole a lot of it is today's(??) times, uh, because now, look how liberal we've been. We're giving them college educations. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, is that conservative or liberal? MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: That's liberal. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, we've giving them, we're giving them, uh, I don't think they still make the pay they should make. But, with what we've got, uh, they, it certainly gained since I was in the Air Force. And truly, and-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --like everything else. But, uh, I think we should be more liberal when it comes to, uh, our re-, our military pay. Uh, stationed on little 2x2 island, two miles long, two miles wide, island, uh, off the coast of Korea, and not really having the, the resources to do what we was being asked to do. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, man, you know, uh, how can they expect to do this with what we got. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, that, that can influence you that way. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and I sponsored, I sponsored a lot of bills over, uh, my, my sympathies and, uh, love for the military. I, I sponsored the bill to get the, uh, veteran's nursing home in Wilmore. Had General Westmoreland, I was chairman of the committee at that time, had General Westmoreland to come in and speak for me. And one of my, the, there's a few things that kinda influences you to think, My goodness, God really blessed me to allow me do that. Meeting General Westmoreland and, and, and his testimony before the committee, and, and, uh, passing that bill was a huge thing to me. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, so, so. With my spin on it, the military would be much better off. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, the more liberal-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --Congress we would have, you know. Other people's spins are different-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --and, and that's what makes this America. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. Um, when you returned from your time in the service, you got involved in organized labor. Um, can you tell me about, uh, this center that I believe you helped set-up for labor and education research at UK? CYRUS: Yeah, well, that's where I said, I went to work for the univ-, the, the Center for Labor Education and Research. Um, um, because I would, I would take, uh, time off at Armco, if I had vacation time, I'd take vacation time to go to labor schools, go to West Virginia, and, and places where they had classes you could take, because Kentucky really didn't have those kinds of resources-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --at that time. Uh, Wendell Ford, when he was governor, uh, worked with some of the labor leaders. Scotty Smith, uh, who was over the AFL-CIO then, and they thought the more educated workforce they had, uh, and back at that time, we used to have some long, lengthy, hostile strikes, especially in the mines, and the coal fields, and, and, uh, auto industry, and, and, uh, General Electric, and places like that. And, and under Wendell Ford's intelligence and, and foresight, he thought if they had classes to, uh, have a better informed workforce, where some people can have gripes and complaints, and can get--it's according how popular there(??) on the job, they can blow things out of proportion and cause a lot of disturbances that maybe not what's in the contract. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, if we all understood the contract better, and on the other hand, maybe foramens and supervisors, they're so used to having that unyielding power that they'd say, "Well, you'd do it whether or not." If we'd all understood the contract that we're working by, you're management and I'm labor, and if we'd all say, "Well, it says I got to do this, here's what"-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --that cuts down on strikes, cuts down on work stoppages. And that's what we all want: productivity, you know. So, so, they, Wendell decided to put, uh, not a lot of money, but put some money into the creating the Center for Labor, Education, and Research. Uh, whoever the, I don't know how they, uh, contacted Dr. Robert Winn. He's a PhD in, uh, in, uh, come from, I think he'd come from Alabama, if I'm not mistaken. But because I had taken these labor schools, and all that kinda stuff on my own time, uh, while I was a steel worker at Armco, they contacted me to see if I would want to be his assistant, to, uh, setting up this, uh, center, and, and really out of that center, uh, they would be going into local unions, to put on a contract interpretation class-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --or a collective bargaining class, or labor law, or, or -------- ---(??) and, you know, uh. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: A lot of different things, so that they would be, uh, better informed. And that really interested me. And that was another time-- (laughs)--that my wife thought I was crazy-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --because I, I took that personal service contract in for, uh, uh, I, I think it was about eleven thousand dollars a year, is what, I couldn't go over that. But at that same time, if, uh, if there was three or four weeks that, uh, that I had the time I could work at Armco. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, uh, so I, I didn't lose a whole lot then and didn't make much, but I, but I didn't lose a whole lot. What time I was off for the university, I certainly wasn't making what I would made at-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --Armco, about like the General Assembly. But still, it, it, that got me into knowing all the labor leaders and-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --and, uh, setting up these classes and teaching classes. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And all that, and, uh. MOYEN: And so(??)-- CYRUS: --and had a little office on Maxwell Court, there at the, the College of Business and Economics. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, now, it's over across the street, uh, at the College of Business and Economics. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But. MOYEN: Did that fit right in with your position that I think you, you took in '76, as, uh, director of research and education with the AFL-CIO? CYRUS: Well, well, yes, it did. And that's where, what, uh, where, when I got that job, well, then I didn't, that was a fulltime job. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, I didn't have to worry about the money I was losing at-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --Armco anymore. Once again, it didn't pay what I made at Armco. But still, it was, uh, representing working people, it was still what I loved to do. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, so that come along, and, and, uh, in '76. And, and, uh, and that, now that was, uh, like, I was elected in '75, it actually started in first of '76, and I didn't get the, uh, AFL-CIO job until, up in the years, spring of, uh, June, July, or something like that(??). And that was Senator Tom Easterly. He was a senator. And he'd resigned, uh, to run for Congress, I believe, at that time. And he didn't make it. But, uh, he was a senator. And, uh, that left that opening down at the AFL-CIO, and they, uh, asked if I would be interested, and I took it. MOYEN: Okay. When in this process did you start thinking, I think I'd like to run for office? I think I, I might try to get into the -------- --(??)-- CYRUS: --well, I tell you what, I done that first. Yeah, I done that first. I, uh, now, I was working for Bob Winn at the University of Kentucky in '74. Uh, but I had always, old Carl Perkins, not young Chris, but Carl Perkins, and, and, uh, Alben Barkley, and, and, uh, people that I believed in, especially if the union endorsed them and supported them. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I'd go out and nail up those posters, and, and, uh, and go talk for candidates, if the labor endorsed them, I'd go into local unions, and say, "Here's why we're endorsing this person." Uh, our county judge one time, I would, he'd, some people would just call it windy, but, but, but other people say that I could, I guess enough of them, maybe coming from a preacher, uh, I could always try to use a little common sense but I could have something to say about anything(??) MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, if our county judge was gonna go meet, meet the candidates night, I wasn't nothing but just a steelworker(??) but they'd say, "Ron, would you go with me and, and answer some of these questions for me?" Uh, and I'll never forget one time, one of my dearest friends in politics back then was our county, a guy running for county judge, and I'd go with me, and he'd chew tobacco. And he'd have a little bottle or can he'd be spitting in, and the news reporter would say, "Candidate, uh, how do you feel about, uh, dogs running loose in this county?" He wouldn't say anything, I'd just stand up and I'd say, "Well, let me tell you how Candidate Owsley feels about the, you know. We're a country county and everybody loves their dogs here. But certainly they can be a harassment to people"-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --"if, if they are, uh, get out of hand. So, here's what the judge, uh, if he's judge, here's what he plans to do." (both laugh) And the judge, he'd be sitting there, saying, "Yeah, that's it, that's what I." (both laugh) But, "What do you think about landfills or coal tipplers?" I'd just stand up and tell them exactly, things that, I didn't know what they was gonna ask, so they wasn't-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --but anyway, that, that kinda got me in good with especially him and his commissioners. Well, when I, when, uh, Terry McBrayer was, uh, a good friend of mine. Personal friend, we used to double date a little bit in high school and stuff. He was Greenup and I was from Russell. But, uh, he'd come out for, uh, Bert Combs for governor. And I loved Bert Combs. And I loved, uh, I still today, I talked to his wife, uh, Sarah, here in the last few weeks. She doesn't live too far from here. Just, uh, of way the crow flies-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --over here, and she's got, raises some old, miniature horses. Anyway, uh, uh, my friends was backing Wendell Ford for governor. And we, and Terry was Bert's co-chairman, uh, state chairman at one time. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, they thought, Boy, we got to have some way of quieting him down. You know, and, and the only thing I had(??), that my dad was well known in the county, but other than me being, uh, in a little gospel quartet singing around the county and stuff like that, I wasn't known in politics too much. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Other than my union, where I'd go volunteer to go put signs and stuff. Uh, so they decided they needed somebody to run against Terry to, uh, where he couldn't be so wide opened against their, their guy, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And I got real good acquainted with Senator Ford through that. And, uh, and I ran. Now he beat me, 755 votes, but he didn't, he had to give up the chairman of Bert Combs. Well, that made our side a winner, see. And I felt real good about it. And I put a bumper sticker on for Terry the day after he beat me. Uh, cause we was good friends. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: He knew we're good friends. And, and some of the politicians back in the day wanted me to play hardball, some information they had, and "No, I won't do that. In the first place, he's gonna beat me." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "I may vote for him myself." (Moyen laughs) "But we're, we're trying to accomplish something here. I'm not gonna use anything personal against his family." My goodness, his dad was a gospel singer, and we, Ward McBrayer, we used to sing some together. Not right in the same quartet, but. But anyway, uh-- MOYEN: --and now when was this? CYRUS: Oh, this was early, like, from 1960, from 1960 to 1970. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: Yeah. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: Uh, I joined, started the Crown Quartet in, uh, 1960. And, uh, uh, and so, all in between there I was a gospel singer. But anyway, uh, uh, that accomplished, so all those people in politics knew me, and well, in nineteen and, uh, when, when, uh, let's see, who was--oh, the governor, uh, uh, when, uh, Wendell Ford went to the Senate, and Julian took over, he was making Terry secretary of commerce. What they'd call secretary of commerce. So, Terry called and got in touch, touch with me, I was running for county commissioner at the time, and he said, "Ron, you got to lose that race or drop out of it." I said, "Oh, I don't want to drop out; people think I was a quitter." He says, "Well, I'm gonna be resigning state representative, and you know the people in the county. And you'd have an awful good shot at it. But you can't enough gravel for people and you can't rebuild the bridges and you can't do everything as a, so you'd lose a lot of your support." And I was in Washington. This, this was a funny thing. I, I was up there on an union trip and stayed eight days, I think it was, and had to call all my supporters and said, "Now, look, I'll explain this to you when I get home." I wasn't even home politicking. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But I was, "You tell our supporters they need to vote for my opponent," at the time was ----------(??) Wilson. "I want you to vote for Mr. Wilson." "What!" I said, "I'll explain it to you when I get home. Now, you got to vote for Mr. Wilson." And then he just beat me a 111 votes. But I, I had all my supporters working for him. MOYEN: Um-hm. (both laugh) CYRUS: Oh me, we had a good time. Well, anyway, then soon as Terry took that job and resigned, well, I, then they all got behind me to-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --be state representative. So that's the way it come about. MOYEN: Okay. Okay. CYRUS: But, uh, I had a lot of very, very good friends. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Political circles then. And one, another one of those big values that I told you about before, through in politics was, uh, I got to have lunch with Bert Combs and Tip O'Neal one time. Uh, Tip O'Neal was coming into Louisville. He was speaker of the House. And shoo, I though, what's a little guy from Flatwoods doing with a private, private lunch. Martha Layne Collins was governor, but she got, uh, Bert Combs, and, uh, myself-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to have, uh, a private lunch with the speaker. And I got him to autography my book, Speaker of the House, but, but, uh. I thought my dad would be so proud. (laughs) MOYEN: Um-hm. (laughs) CYRUS: But anyway, that was, that was a big deal that come out of that. But that's, a, a person doesn't realize, you know, Eric, that, today's meeting, uh, as, as unimportant as I am anymore, and all that, how this will influence you down the road. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: In some way. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: People that you're presenting this to, it will, not just meeting with me, but the work you're doing. Every day things happen to people that, that influences their way of thinking down the road, you know. MOYEN: Right, right, absolutely. CYRUS: Uh, so a lot of those things was the influence that, that, uh, changed a lot of my thinking. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, but this is about you, personally-- MOYEN: --okay-- CYRUS: --see, you might not want it on tape. MOYEN: We'll--(both laugh). [Pause in recording.] CYRUS: Well, you, you could probably come up with better solutions, but, but there's other, there's other creative ways-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --of handling a lot of, of things that we go through in this country, and, and ours is kinda set up capitalistic. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: We're a capitalistic country and everything is depending upon how much it's worth. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know. MOYEN: So, let, let me ask you about the beginning of your legislative career-- CYRUS: --yeah-- MOYEN: --you get elected in '75. What, uh, what was your platform, what, uh, did you have, what opposition did you face, what was your platform? CYRUS: Well, I had, there was five people in the primary up there, and mine was, uh, I'm, of course, we're, we didn't have, uh, let's see, we had, uh, Holy Family, a private school in Ashland, a Catholic school, but we didn't have many private schools. So, my, so my platform was, uh, uh, kinda what we hear now on the national level, that, that we couldn't leave, uh, kids behind. Now, this was in, this was, my first race was 1970 or '72, before. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Yes, '70, and then I run for the, uh, commissioners job in '74, and that's when I threw--(both laugh)--boy, I hope that wasn't taped. Uh, but anyway, uh, uh, but it was decided it was best for me not to win that one. Uh, and then I won it in '75. But, uh, but education. And, and workers, uh, workers' rights. You know, our union was created in, uh, the thirties--no, '44, I think, was when they got a contract at Armco. And see, I was, I was, uh, there in '55. So, I hate date myself this way, but it was still relatively new. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And there was still a lot of the hindsight that, that has always worked before in a lot of workplaces, but, but at Armco, too, that, that, uh, hey, if you can't do the job, we're sympathetic that your baby's sick. But if you can't be here, we've got a guy standing out here at the gate that will be here to take your job tomorrow. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: The, there was still a lot of, so, workers' rights was a lot of. Naturally, I come from the union(??)-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --so, it it, uh, and that. But workers' rights and, and unemployment, workers' compensation, those kinds of things that I knew a little bit about from going to these labor schools. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, uh, and, and then the, when I went back to college, uh, University of, uh, Ashland Community College at UK was, I'd learned, uh, my degree was in political science. And I'd, I'd taken logic classes, and, and that, so I could, I could, uh, at least understand a little bit to where I could discuss it, about ----------(??), uh, welfare cases-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --stuff like that, but where I told you that I'd helped the judge-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --and all that, that, that kinda, those kind of issues, was kinda at the forefront too. MOYEN: Um-hm. Now when you won the primary, did you even have opposition in, in the general election? CYRUS: Um-hm, yeah. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: Yeah, I did. Now, there was times after that that I didn't have, I used to say there, kinda at the end of my career that if someone run against me, they'd beat me because I'd forgotten how to politic. (Moyen laughs) Because I didn't have enough opponents. But I, I always tried to be, I said, a, a representative--and you wouldn't understand this coming from a Lexington area, because I've called other legislators. One of my good, good friends was Louie Johnson from down in Owensboro-- MOYEN: --right, Owensboro. CYRUS: And I happened to be down there one time, and I called him, and played like him. I said, "Congressman, are you congressman, or something like that?" He said, "Well, I'm a state representative." I said, "Well, I got a pothole out here in front of my house that you could bury an elephant in." I said, "Would you come out here?" He said, "Sir, you've got the wrong office. Now, I'm a state representative." Said, "Now, if you've got a problem with a state route, or something like that, well, I, I welcome your call. But you need to call road commissioner or street commissioner." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: In Greenup County, you didn't think of doing that. If I had, I've had people that they didn't think their brother was embalmed right, they'd call me. (Moyen laughs) And, and I would go and see what, see if there was anything that I could offer or get people to compromise, to try to-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --try to keep, uh, hard feelings down. Uh, but in Greenup County, you, uh, you was a shop steward for, for everything. Everything. So, so, uh, I, I was, and so I tried to do that. I tried to, if, if, whatever the issue was, if people wanted to talk to me, I, I'd, uh, I'd go sit down and sometimes I'd, I'd try to take the easy way out and say, "Look, you know, I don't see where the state's got a part in this. But, uh, but let's get, I'll tell you what I will do; let's call the mayor," and, and if it was a fuss over them putting a coal tipple in downtown Greenup-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --uh, I'd say, "Let's get the county judge and the commissioners. And let's get the mayor. And let's see if, if, uh, if, through their regulations, if they want to allow this." Well, naturally at that time everybody wants jobs, and that was gonna be jobs. But at the same time, there was some harassment of people who lived close by, noise, that the city and the county could do something about, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And I said, "If it, if it, uh, if it's something that is gonna border on environmental, or, or something like that, well, then I, I'll get the state people to come in and be involved," you know. So, I've weaseled out of a lot of it. MOYEN: Right. (laughs) CYRUS: But, but at the same time, uh, I was always involved with them. So, it, Republicans would, wouldn't(??) let Republicans run against me. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: No, I mean, I had a, I had a pretty good rapport with my people. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um, now, when you got to Frankfort, what was what you thought it would be and what was different, being a representative-- CYRUS: --uh, boy, that's a good question. Well, what I thought it would be, because I had participated some, was the effects of lobbyists. Because I went down there and lobbied-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --for working people before as a volunteer. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, uh, and, and, and something that really had a bearing on me, when, at the creation of, uh, daylight saving time. Well, people would come into our union, union members and say, "You know, if this thing passes, our kids, what is 6:30 in the morning, they have to get out and stand for the bus, they're going actually be out, uh, at 5:30 in the morning, so that these bankers and the lawyers and politicians can have time to play golf in the afternoon." Well, and if you look today, if you go out here to when that, when that time changes, these kids gets out there on that road, uh, they're out there at 5:30, instead of 6:30. Right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, no doubt there's some economic, I think. I, I, I really don't know that much about it. But there must be some good reasons for daylight saving time, but the main thing is it gives you more daylight hours when you get home from work. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, that's, that's really what the, though(??), uh, so I went down and lobbied. And I'll never forget, I had to go over to the hotel to get two or three people that I, I'd been assigned talk to. I couldn't talk them. They was intoxicated. I couldn't, they wasn't even going to over to the Capitol. And I thought, Is this what it's all about? I, I can't believe this, you know, it just. And some people, some people that you'd talked to would say, "Well, you know, uh, this is a big issue, uh, Ron, with, uh, with Kentucky Power. Uh, and, and, uh, and they want this, it's gonna reduce some costs, you know, and all that." I'd say, "Did they contribute to your campaign?" "Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with"--(both laugh). "That has nothing to do with it." So, so, uh, I, that gave me something that I thought, My God, if they can do it, I can do it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I made up my mind, I'd go back, and I went back, and I thought, What I need to do? So I went back and reenrolled in college. So, I thought, I can't, I've got to have some, there's some things I've got to put on my pedigree. So I did. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, uh, but that was one of the things, the lobbyist influence. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And you'd be surprised how much the lobbyist influence is. I mean, it, you try to get along with everybody. That's the, the way politicians stay in office is trying to compromise, trying to get along with everybody. But, uh, but for the most part, if there's, if there was a hearing down there today, they would be more attorneys lobbying to say how much the cost would be, uh, or how much savings could be incurred with a cap on medical practices than young fathers that said, "Hey, this happened to my kid." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now you all tell me how this is gonna be, you know. We have to sit up there and look sympathetic and, and, and, but knowing them attorneys, the, they have donated to your campaign. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know, and, and, and there's gonna be other bills, you're gonna need them for, the, to speak for you. I mean, it's, uh, it's one of those situations were, were, uh, I think, you know another, another little, uh, suggestion that--and they do it to some extent--but to check and have an overview, if they had some system where lobbyists would have to report to some public advocate, just what bills they were interested in and why their interest. And if, if inquisitive minds like you-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --could weigh the differences in the lobbyists, pro and con, and that was open to the air, you know-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to television, news reporters, it could make a big changes. MOYEN: Right. (both laugh) CYRUS: In the way that the General Assembly works, you know. MOYEN: Yes, it could, um-hm. CYRUS: If, if there was ways to do it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, uh, it wouldn't be too difficult. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I mean, you could have a public, you've got the Commonwealth of Kentucky--now I didn't like them when I was there. I mean, I liked them because they was everyday people trying to do an everyday job. But, uh, have you heard of the lobbyist group, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, they're usually an environmentalist group. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Like the Sierra Club. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, there're things that you absolutely can't agree--well, I couldn't agree with because they would say, "Well, no, don't mine that coal at all, because that's, because, uh, that's gonna tear up the terrain." I was thinking about fifty mineworkers that was working over there that was feeding their family out of that mine. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: So, so I was kinda in a, but they still do a good job. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They do a great job and the Sierra Club does a great job, even though, uh, there's gonna be certain groups that's gonna be against it. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Because it interferes with their agenda. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, uh, it's, it's, it's that tight rope you have to walk. MOYEN: Can you tell me a little bit about Julian Carroll, his leadership style as governor when you-- CYRUS: --Julian Carroll was, was a, what I had always heard and what I found out to be true, a perfect gentleman. A very, very, uh, I considered him--of course, he was there my first governor. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: And, uh, and I kinda looked at him in awe, because he was so sharp. And he had this, a charisma. Uh, kinda like a John F. Kennedy, or someone that's got a lot of charisma, that whatever they say is gonna get your interest, and you may not completely agree with what they say, but the way they say it, you think, Well, I see their point. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know. Julian Carroll was that kind of a guy. But he also was very hardnosed. The old timers(??). He had a guy named Bill Cox that sat up in the office, up in the gallery. And if you didn't vote exactly the way the governor wanted you to vote, you got a red line and you had to explain that to somebody. Uh, the Democrats did. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and I got on his, I, I was so independent, I was his buddy. Now, I would've died for Julian Carroll, if, if I had been called on to do it. But he come up with a couple of the stupidest bills that-- and it was strictly political. They was a guy that fought him tooth and toenail, down in western Kentucky that was a bail bondsman. Well, he wanted to put the bail bondsmens out of business. I, me, being a union representative at Armco steel, I know that, that the times that, uh, that one of my steelworkers stayed a little too long over at -------- (??) or something, and get put in jail. And I know they was gonna lose their job the next day, or something, if they's locked up in jail. So, I say, "Well, here, I'll call a bail bondsman for you." And, and the bail bondsman happened to be the chairman of our Republican Party in Greenup County-- [Pause in recording.] MOYEN: Okay. ---------(??) CYRUS: So, when they asked me about it, I said, "I can't support that bill." They said, "Yeah, oh yeah, this is very, this is one of the governor's pet projects. I mean, he needs this bad." I said, "Well, I can't help him. I'm gonna vote against him." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and I said, "Let me tell you why." You know, and I'd explain it to them. I'd say, "Now, what are you guys gonna do? You give me a recourse, so that I can go up there and when, if, if, if I don't have somebody to call, that means I got to go pay bail. I got to get out of bed at two, three o'clock in the morning, maybe, fifteen times a week, to go pay somebody's bail, to keep them from losing their jobs. Now, you all tell--can I call you?" "Well, no, you know, you can't call me. I, I." "Well, who am I gonna call?" "Well, you tell them not to get in jail." I said, "Well, that sounds good. But we"-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --"we live in a real world." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, so, "No, I'm not gonna vote for it." Well, they'd, they'd tried to take things out for me. You know, all, but I'd go to the governor. And I say, "Now, governor, you know, let me tell you what they're trying to do." And, and, I'd, I had, uh, he come out. There's a nursery down there in western Kentucky that had, I heard ten thousand, but that didn't, that didn't make sense. Ten thousand little seedlings for the coffee bush. He come out with this bill wanting to make the coffee tree the state tree of Kentucky. Now, there ain't ever been a pound of coffee produced in Kentucky that I know of. And I said, "What? You, you got to be kidding." "No, no, this is important, now, this needs to be done." "Well, it ain't gonna do it on my vote. I thought, My God, out of all the history of, of, uh, all of our leaders that, that, that built their cabins out of oak. Uh, my author in Greenup County, Jessie Stuart wrote about the mighty oak trees, and the, and the, the Indians that used hickory to make arrows out of. And so much history to regular trees, we gonna make coffee bush a state tree." (Moyen laughs) Well, that, that's probably, well, they gonna do it without me. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I just can't(??). So, uh, boy, they try to retaliate and I'd say, "Now, let me tell you something," uh, the guy that was Democratic Bobby, uh, whoever the Democrat chairman was, "Tell you what I'm gonna do; I go around and let's call him and tell him get over here. Cause if a Democrats is gonna try to"--I had one guy that worked for labor cabinet called me, and said, "Ron, they told me to clear my desk by this evening." I said, "Is that right?" He said, "Yeah." Said, "You was supposed to be their boy, and you've turned out to be kind of a rebel, and, and, uh, this guy is gonna lose his job." I told him, I said, "Don't you clear out that desk." I said, "You just," told him to sit right there a few minutes. And, uh, I went down and Bill Cox was the guy, and I went in. It's a wonder he hadn't call the law, but I went in, I said, "Now, Bill, I tell you what I'm gonna do. Now, this guy happens to be from Boyle County, but I'm gonna get a hold of the press. And you're gonna be invited. And we're gonna explain to the press and we'll tell them that it's because I, you red-lined me on a making the coffee bush the State Tree of Kentucky, that this man that's providing for his family, that's why you're firing him. Now, I'm telling you upfront; you better find other reasons for firing him, cause when I leave here, I'm going over to call a press conference and they'll, the reporters will be calling you to invite you to sit in. Now, you can ride and hide, but I'm being man enough to tell you upfront." And I said, "But I'm gonna have a press conference to let them know what the governor wanted, and why, why you're doing what you're doing, and we'll both have our say before the reporters." And I went back upstairs. And we didn't our offices then but they got in touch with me. And it was Julian. "Ron," he said, "I hear that my friend is having some problems with some of my people." I said, "Well, Governor, if you're talking about Bill Cox, we got a big problem." And, uh, I said, "Now, I was serious in what I was gonna, what I said." He said, "You, let me tell you something." He said, "Now, I just heard about this." (Moyen laughs) He said, "Certainly I'd like for you to vote for me on my programs." "But," he said, "there ain't gonna be nobody fired." He said, "They ain't gonna mess with my friend." (Moyen laughs) Talking about me. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "They ain't gonna mess with my friend." He said, "Now you just forget it and I'm," I said, "All right." So they called. This friend of mine over in the labor cabinet, said, "Ah, that was all a mistake, don't worry about cleaning out your desk." (both laugh) Ah, me, but me and Julian was friends, and like I said, Lord, I, I've tried to get him to run for Senate and the governor and everything else since then, cause he was a true, articulate, a little, he, he wanted to run by the old rules-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --like that, but. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But other than that, he was, other than a couple of them pet projects that was strictly wasn't right, I'd stick with him. But I didn't when he was wrong. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: In my opinion, he might've been right about the bail bondsmen, because it did pass. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But not on my vote. And that Republican, from then on he wouldn't, he wouldn't let Republican file against me. I mean(??), he knew I would, I'd done the right thing. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I had a chance to put him out of business right there. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, but it was the right thing. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I think, uh, and I don't want anybody, it's like sickness, or, or malpractice suits, or anything, I don't want anybody, want anybody to ever go through it. But if you happened to get in jail over something that sometimes it, it's not just drinking or fighting all the time, it could be a neighbor could press charges against you over a fence line or something. And if you're in jail, and you're supposed to be work at eight o'clock in the morning, or seven o'clock, if you ain't there they can fire you. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: And, uh, a bail bondsman can really be a lot of help sometimes, so. Uh, yeah, that, that was a, that was a bad deal too. MOYEN: So, that's, that's a good story to, uh, contrast with, explain the changes, you mentioned it earlier just briefly, and it dealt with workload. CYRUS: Um-hm. MOYEN: But from Julian Carroll to John Y. Brown. CYRUS: Okay, well, yes, see, in, in, in that legislative independence, you would never have this redlining now. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I mean, that legislative(??), because there's too many ways that the legislature then can come back and say, "Oh, Governor, I hear(??) that your people asked for a cost overrun on this, uh, highway building, you know, that's coming before our committee." Those, those committees now, and that's opened to the press. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If there was something that I wanted known where they were absolutely given a gimme to somebody, I'd invite my reporters in, people that was closed to me. Uh, even Al Cross and, uh, uh, what's, what's his name? Jack Lambert. But, but especially my Ashland Daily Independent-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --reporters, I'd invite them in. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, uh, I'd say, "I want just to come and listen to this, see where eight million dollars is going that, there're no reasons for it." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and, a lot of it got cancelled real quick. Well, man, all legislators can do that. So, they've got, they can't be shoved around. MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. CYRUS: Governors are still very powerful in Kentucky. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: We're one of the most powerful governors, uh, states in, in, in the country. Or, at least, the last accounts I had, but still nothing like it used to be. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Nothing like it used to be. MOYEN: When did you realize, when did you yourself realize or when did people in the legislature start talking about, that things were different? Was it as soon as you all got to choose leadership, or what-- CYRUS: --well-- MOYEN: --when did you know-- CYRUS: --well, see, it wasn't, it, it happened during John Y. and he fought the heck out of it. Bill Kenton, speaker of the House, was a blessing to Kentucky. He's the one, uh, uh, as far as I know, he's the one that started talking about it, and, and I was a--let's see, maybe I was just a vice-chairman, I don't know whether I was chairman of any committee, other than subcommittees. But Bill Kenton had the foresight to, uh, come up with legislative independence. Just happened to be under John Y. Brown. And maybe we'd come up with the idea and was started to passing the bills to create it, uh, and then John Y. come in the office when it got passed. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, so, uh, uh, but they, naturally the executive branch didn't want to give up their gimmes, their power. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, but legislative independence is, I think it's one of probably one of the best things--there's a few things that a legislator can look at, uh, that, that you really think, Boy, that's really, that's good for the state of Kentucky. Legislative independence was one of them. The twenty-year plan on road plans was, uh, uh, oh, what was her name? Uh, lady senator from, Dolly, now, let's see. The lady senator from Paducah come with, uh, a plan that you put roads on a plan. You know, you used to, a new governor coming in, all the road projects that you'd paid millions and millions of dollars for, uh, buying right-of- ways, and, and paying utility changes, and, and all that stuff, a new governor would come in and just scrape all that and go over here to his projects. Well, this twenty-year plan, they can't do that anymore. MOYEN: Um-hm. It wasn't Helen Garrett was it? CYRUS: Helen Garrett! MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: Helen Garrett, who it, thank you. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Um-hm, yeah, Helen Garrett, come up with that plan. And, and, you know, that's revolutionary. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Because now they can still, a governor can kinda bypass and all that, but if you've got the right team of senator and representative, saying, "Wait a minute. Here's my project, you know, that's that project that goes in my territory. Now, why is this project going around it?" There can always be some emergencies. If you're building a Toyota, you need a road to it, if you need, you know, there're some exceptions. But you, but just the outcome of the gubernatorial election can't change it. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Right? MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: So, uh, that was a, that was a very revolutionary for Kentucky. MOYEN: Uh, you mentioned Bill Kenton, and his role in this, how did, how important is the speaker of the House and, and kind of explain the difference between, say, Bill Kenton and then when Bobby Richardson comes in, and does that change any dynamics-- CYRUS: --sure(??)-- MOYEN: --in terms of-- CYRUS: --well, to some extent, it does. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, now I was great friends with Bill Kenton. And I was great friends with, uh, I was, I've been good friends with all the speakers. But their roles are, the, the way they, Bill Kenton would sit down, just like the legislative independence and, and would look for not input, cause he pretty much had it thought out, but he would give you, uh, uh, an option for controversy. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: He'd tell you(??). Uh, so he done kinda on bringing the people in, reaching out, and bringing people in. Uh, Don Blandford, on the other hand, was, he was an old union member. Probably the best personal friend I had as, as a speaker. Uh, uh, he was just a good guy. Hated the problem he got into, over the, over stuff that shouldn't have happened. But anyway, he was a guy that would, that used a little bit of the Julian Carroll theory. Well, you know, Ron Cyrus really likes, he's a labor person, like to be on labor committee. Well, we won't(??) reappoint him to that committee. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I mean he used a little power. A little authority. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, when I voted against KERA, uh, there was some talk about all the, Jim Bruce got taken off his bankers, he was chairman of the banking committee, and he got taken off of for voting against it. I was chairman of labor. And, uh, but I went about a little different. I said, "Don, I'll tell you what. Right in here is ten teachers that votes for me in Greenup County. Now, you, all you got to do is go in there and convince them. Now, you just step in there, you're the speaker of the House, convince them that I should vote for KERA, and I'll vote it. I'll tell, I'll give you my word right now. I don't have that big of a personal thing. My teachers and the people that votes for me that paid me to be down here to represent, I'm their mirror. I'm supposed to mirror their thoughts. Uh, uh, not some court decision down here in Frankfort, I'm supposed to be their mirror. Go in there, and, and change their opinion, and you've got my vote." And he went in--(laughs)--and he went in there, he come back a little bit, and boy, I could tell he was just pissed. (Moyen laughs) But he said, "You better just stay where you're at, Cyrus." (Moyen laughs) So, he had seen to me(??) that there was no discussion about-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --taking me off of chairman of labor and industry. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, might've been some discussion about it, but, but they didn't do it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, but some of them they did. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: So, he ruled that way. Yeah, but, uh, legislative independence don't necessarily mean that it's legislators independence. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: There's a difference. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: And you got have it. MOYEN: -------------(??) CYRUS: You've got to have some leadership. Now, this state's in bad, it's, it's in a bad, bad economically situation-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --right today, Eric, that's gonna reflect, you're a young man and your career is out there in front of you, if you stay in Kentucky, and I hope you do. Your kids is gonna need to be educated here, they're gonna need to be, uh, uh, medically taken care of, they're gonna, they're gonna have a lot of needs. And right now, this state's getting in a situation where they can't do it. How do you correct that? At some point we're gonna need revenue, aren't we? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know money's the name of the game. So, you got to have a somebody, a legislator down here there ain't(??) got the guts, and I was one of them, to go in and recommend a tax increase. Cause, you know, it's gonna get you beat probably(??). MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, unless you can justify it. And right now, if, if the legislators, where they're cutting out these family resource centers, some of the most important things, if you go down here in this county, and go down there, and watch a kid getting off the school bus, that, you'd say, "Look at that stupid kid out there, doesn't have a coat on. It isn't(??), uh, four degrees." Well, that kid don't have a coat to put on. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That's the problem, if you'd inquire, that's the way it is in some of these counties. Family resource centers made sure that, one way or another, they might have to ask for contributions, they might have to go to the community leaders, call Ron Cyrus, and say, "Can your son donate something that we can raffle off to get some coats for these kids?" But one way or another they come up with, uh, the resources needed to help, try to help these kids that's in need. Ernie Fletcher just taking all the money away from them. Somebody, even though they try to go out and get private money in auctions and stuff, but they got have, you got to pay that person to lead that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? Yeah, he's just cut them out. So, I, I, cut them way back to-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --not, not keeping them funded and now they're having them to let them shut, shut them down. So, at some point, Kentuckians will have to say, "Well, wait, wait a minute. Yes, that is worth me paying ten dollars more a month, and I'm willing to pay it. Or I hate it. Don't want to, but, but, uh, yeah, I'll pay that, cause we're in need." This county here, after I come down here, I couldn't understand it when I come. But they had these garbage trucks coming, my buddy, just as prompt as clockwork. And didn't charge a penny for it. I thought, How can do they do that? Well, when this new county judge took over, he said, "We're gonna have to have, uh, ten dollars a month to," but they come by every Friday, and Monday, and, and pick up stuff around my box up there, where the road, I mean, if there's stuff that gets torn up there, if a dog gets in it or something, they're the best in the world. It's worth ten dollars. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, I just, I go down and pay by the year. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: I, it don't bother me, I go down and pay them, I say, "Hey, I'm not planning on leaving. Here, let me pay you up for a year." It's worth it. Well, at some point you got to be able to, go to the people, and say, "Do you want to give away family resource centers? Do you, you don't want anybody watching out for the kids' meals?" Me and you right now, we, if we thought there was a kid that was having to come to school without breakfast, me and you'd donate to them, so they'd have money, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But you got to have somebody that knows that kid's hungry. That's family resource center. So, all these things, that's just one little item that somebody has got to have the, uh, statesmanship. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And the, and, and there's no doubt he's gonna have to have the tact, uh, and the charisma to stand up and say, "Here's where this state is in need. And here's what we can do about it." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And if there's a better way, I, uh, this is coming from me, if there's a, a tax that you all would, uh, rather see, here's how much revenue we need, now, you all help me come up with, with, uh, if you want these family resource centers. If you want to keep our roads up. I voted for a tax one time, a tax increase on, on--this is very hard politically--under Martha Layne, again, but I voted for a nickel tax on, uh, gasoline. Uh, and it failed. If a tax passes, you go back and say, "Well, we had to do this." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "So, we can get this and this and this." If it fails, your people back home, you ain't got nothing to go back with. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But I was vice-chairman of transportation and we was gonna lose, we didn't have the matching money, I-64 work, uh, I-75, uh, all the interstates, the federal government pays 90 percent, sometimes 95 percent, of all repair. We didn't have the nickel to pay. We was down that much under Martha Layne. Uh, uh, like, uh, 1274 out here, that's usually, uh, you get 40 percent or something; state has to put up 60. We didn't have the 60; there couldn't be no road repairs. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and, I, so me being a chairman, looking at all the paperwork, now, I went up and told people. That's, that's another thing. I say, "You know, you all may get mad at me, and you may want to, uh, vote for somebody else, but it, just tell me, and I'll, I won't run. But look, here's the situation we're in." And so, I'd tried to stay, keep them informed of where they'd say, "Well, Ron," they never say, "Go vote for that tax," they'd say, "Well, you know, you just got to do what you feel like you have to do." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "If we didn't trust you, we wouldn't send you down there. You do what you have to do." And, uh, so, I, I kinda cover myself that way. But, but right now, there's a philosophy that, that, uh, everybody, especially Democrats, because we've let, from the time of Ronald Reagan, put the liberal term on everybody, uh, they don't have enough guts to ask, to say, "Hey, if we're gonna keep family, if we're gonna keep teachers paid, to keep good teachers." If you're gonna teach that college class, you ain't gonna make in Kentucky what you would over in Ohio. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Or Illinois. Now, for us to keep quality teachers, you either gonna pay a little bit here to keep good quality teachers, or you're gonna pay a whole lot of out-of-state tuition to send your kid to Illinois or Ohio. If you want them to have to get that quality education, right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, so somebody has to have the courage, number one, to say, "Here's the problem: our teachers are making 30 percent less, uh, than, than Illinois, uh, Ohio." West Virginia, we're probably pretty much equal with. I think Tennessee went around us now. But you've got to stay average to, you probably wouldn't move your family to California. But Ohio ain't that far away. You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "Uh, for us to keep quality people, you, you got to be in the game." MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Somebody's got to have the courage to say that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I don't know. And we don't, it seems like we don't have that right now. MOYEN: Um-hm. You talked about voting for that, doing(??) that tax that didn't pass. CYRUS: Um-hm. MOYEN: During Martha Layne Collins's terms, a couple other things I wanted to ask you about under her tenure as governor, um, can you explain, uh, the, uh, right-to-work legislation? CYRUS: Um-hm. MOYEN: And I, I don't exactly understand-- CYRUS: --okay-- MOYEN: --but what-- CYRUS: --well, right-to-work, I always after I took over the AFL-CIO, the, the thing that I was most interested in, the backbone of--well, you look at a, a city, a state, uh, a fire department, a fire, uh, municipal district, a tax, a, a, a library district, it can only operate on everybody paying their fair share. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, in right-to-work states, there's a federal law that says a union, if they win an election and go in to represent employees, they have to represent all employees. There can be no discrimination. Well, that sounds, me and you would say, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with that." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Sure! But under a right-to-work, it says a union has to represent the employees, but if there's any amount of those employees, uh, that don't want to pay union dues they don't have to. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Union dues can't be forced. Well, number one, it has to be that union that votes their dues increase. I mean, I, Ron Cyrus, as head of the AFL-CIO, I couldn't come in and say, "Hey, I'm gonna raise your dues," you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That union has to. But, uh, if, they, if you had to pay, now, that's lawyers, once again, if you had a grievance, that union lawyer has to come in and file your grievance. Pay all the costs, but you're not paying dues. Well, that makes all your other brothers and sisters that you're working with, say, "Well, why should we pay when they're getting for nothing?" MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know. So, that's a union buster. That's what breaks unions. And if you pick, uh, if you pick states--and Kentucky's not very strong--if, if you get into Pennsylvania, uh, Michigan, places like that where you have strong, uh, they're much stronger politically-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --because they've got, uh, they got more money to work with. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: More people. But if, if, if all those people had the right to just, to just say, "Well, you know, sure, I'm gonna, I'm gonna to, I want you to represent me. I want you to, if I got a gripe or, or if you, uh, gonna negotiate me, or other people a raise, you're gonna be negotiating me a raise, or increase in retirement or hospital"-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --"but now I ain't gonna pay you." Well, what if I tell this county down here, "Oh, well, I want you all to come collect that garbage, but now I don't want that ten dollar a month bill. Don't send me that." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That's what, that's what a right-to-work law is. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, it's a, it's a, it's a, it is a right actually, it's a right to get all the benefits that a union can get for you, as much as anybody else at that workplace, but you opt out of paying them dues. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, once again, that, all those members of that union, they have to get together to vote what their union dues are. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, uh, uh, but, you know, once it's, it's like a General Assembly on taxes, what if I tell the state, "You know, I want all the, I want everything you got, that you give everybody else, but not, you know, I don't want to pay you no taxes." Well, that's, that's the same way as a right-to-work law. MOYEN: Right, um-hm, okay. Another, another right law that, um, came about during Martha Layne Collins's first session, um, was a House bill you sponsored, 271, right-to-know legislation about toxic substances that-- CYRUS: --yeah-- MOYEN: --people might, why would anyone be opposed-- CYRUS: --you know, well-- MOYEN: --to something like that? CYRUS: It's, number one, uh, I had a lot of opposition to that bill. MOYEN: I know. CYRUS: Because, uh, you think of the, now, now, it's kinda common knowledge, but look what was happening right over at Maxey Flats. We was taking nuclear waste, rad-, radiation material that will last, they, they, they go by half-life, five thousand years half-life. That stuff's gonna be there long after me and you are dead and gone. It can eat through the barrels. It can into wells, it can get in the water, it can get into the air. Uh, well, those people that was dumping there didn't want nobody to know. You didn't, well, you was too young, but old people like me, we didn't know all that stuff was going on over there. You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and, and, if, if, uh, that deal just made common sense, if they're gonna bring in any hazardous material, if there's gonna be a truck go down this highway with, uh, with ammonia nitrite, or, or something that could, if a little bit dribbles out, out there, it could, uh, be very detrimental to people's health, or cancer-causing. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: At least the leadership, law enforcement, they ought to be out there protecting that truck, to make sure-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --there ain't no accidents, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, so, it just made, it made sense to me now where that's not just, uh, anything that just popped in my head; that, that really come, and, uh, from, uh, going to legislative meetings that--and, and if you hear the press, they think, Boy, that's a waste. Them legislators was out there in California, hobnobbing with people. And, and if you go legislative, that's where you hear what other states are doing. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And you can talk to that guy, I go up and say, "Eric, you spon-, sponsored this right-to-work bill, why did you do that? What, what does that do?" You can inform me, like I'm feebly trying to inform you. I thought, My God, who, that's what we need in Kentucky. You know, you hear about those things there. The, one of the things that I sponsored, uh, creating the Kentucky Employers Mutual Fund, KEME. Uh, that's one of the corrections we put, uh, on workers' compensation. I was going, I was hearing from all these other states when I was there, that, uh, maybe they was paying, uh, $13 for a $100 in wages for a coal miner. "How, how do you that? We're paying $109. An employer has to $109 for every $100 that he pays his employees." "Well, we've got this, uh, we've got this state-run, uh, insurance company. The employers pays into it; it's their mutual fund; it makes all the profits. Uh, that stays in the fund, it doesn't to, uh, Hartford, or it doesn't go to all these other big insurance companies"-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --"out-of-state; all the profits are kept within that fund, and the more they can, uh, work together to cut down accidents, and all that, uh, or, or get them resolved without litigation, that money stays in this fund." So, we've, so, I thought, My God, we need that in Kentucky. I sponsored it about four sessions before I ever got it passed. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But finally got that thing passed and now it's, if you'd ask all the employers out in the state, it's been a lifesaver. MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. CYRUS: But, but, uh-- MOYEN: --when, when did that pass? Do you recall what session? CYRUS: Yeah, it passed, uh, let's see, uh. I think, I think, if I'm not mistaken, either '92 or '94, not too long before I come out of. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They just sent me some new ball caps the other day. (Moyen laughs) KEME, yeah. I tell you. But that, that, that's just a common sense-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --you know, there're certain things that's common sense laws. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, I thought a bill that I passed one time, and finally got it passed, nothing's ever been done about it. But if your dad or mom, like what happened in my case, or a child, got, uh, cancer, and they said, "Well, you know, Ron, this is a perfect case of where laetrile could be of help." Uh, I know a lot of cases where this is been, uh, successful. And you say, "Well, fine, what, why aren't you doing it?" Well, it's illegal here in Kentucky. We have to send them to Mexico. Why do you have to do that? Well, it's just not legal here. It's a vitamin. Made out of apricot seeds, you know. "And you can't get them?" "No, I, no, it's illegal here." And of all things, it's, it's one of those common(??), if somebody got that, why make a financial disaster out of a, out of a physical catastrophe. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Give it to them here. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, if you think that's your advice, and the doctor told me that about my dad. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: He said, uh, "Well,"--I said, "Doc, are you telling us take him home to die?" He said, "Oh no," said, "If he gets enough strength, we want to send him to Mexico. To try something out there that they say is very good on account of his condition." "Well, why aren't you doing it here?" "Well, it's not legal." So, uh, and, and of all things, Eric, check the records when I was debating that thing on the floor, we had one guy come in from, from the petroleum industry. And he said, "You know, those nurses that testifying for you could be arrested this afternoon." I said, "They could?" He said, "Yeah, they're acknowledging they're using illegal drugs." One of them happened to be the widow, the wife of Harry King Lowman, used to be sp-, speaker of the House. And, uh, I said, "Is that right?" He said, "You're right." I'll never forget; he had a little black moustache. He looked like one of them little sinister guys in the cartoon, or something. And, uh, I said, "Well, let me tell you something. They may be, and you do whatever you have to do, but I'll guarantee you this: when I walk away from you, I'm walking downstairs. And the Capitol police will be after you for trying to threaten a legislator. Wherever you're from, you ain't gonna back. You're gonna stay in Kentucky a while." And he said, "Well, I was just telling you for the good of them nurses." And I said, "Well, I'm telling you for your good." I just turned around. Buddy, he, he went a hightailing out of there. (both laugh) But here's the petroleum industry in there fighting me. You know, you'd expect, well, the cancer, uh, uh, society or something could come in and say, "Well, that's not really a proven. You know, there's no statistical proof that that helps." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, there's absolute, there's a lot of things you take that, you take chemotherapy, people still dies of cancer. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know, I mean, you can take a lot of things. But still, we have an awful lot of testimony, uh, from California and every place where--and we had Harry King Lowman that went out there on a stretcher and they'd given him six weeks to live. And he'd come back, riding first-class on an airplane. And lived for several years after he went out and took laetrile. But, but here we have the petroleum industry fighting the bill. And you stop and say, why? Well, why? Chemotherapy. Chemicals. It's chemo. They use petroleum. You know, it seems stupid, right? MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: It seems stupid. But it, it, but, uh, but, uh, I couldn't get over it. We passed it, they never did, right when they started writing, we didn't have the, uh, uh, health oversight committees on regulations in the, uh, to help write the regulations. Man, they wrote the regulations, how it could be manufactured in Kentucky. That wasn't the issue. They, they, you know, that was just night and day. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I wanted it legal to where you could order it, these nurses talked about ordering it from Mexico. And it comes in, and they could, they could give it to their doctor to administer to them, or anything else. They could administer themselves, like taking a, a, uh, a vitamin pill. But, uh, we didn't need it manufactured in Kentucky; we needed it to be able to be legal. Well, the way it passed, it could be used as long as it was, uh, knowledgeable by the doctor, so that he could track it and see if, if it was doing any good. Well, that's fine, you know-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --I, I agreed with that. And, uh, but when they wrote the regulations, it was, they was trying to put together how it could be manufactured. And one of, I guess, '96, '94 or '96, the people over at human resources called and said, "Ron, uh, do you still, uh, we're still trying to be able to put these regulations. Should we just discontinue it, or, or what?" And I said, "Well, it shouldn't be discontinued. There's a bill that's being passed, read the bill." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, it, and, uh, but they, I, I, I guess, to this day, once I was gone, the fly in the ointment was out of their hair then. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I doubt if, I doubt if one sentence's been wrote on those regulations since I left. MOYEN: Hm. CYRUS: Now, if somebody gets cancer, and a doctor, we had a, we had a, I had one of my doctors and, uh, he was from Chile. And laetrile was their prime, uh, resource against cancer in Chile, in countries like Chile. MOYEN: Huh. CYRUS: But here, Fred McCurry and all these people know, you know, celebrities that have went, some went to Germany. Uh, Harry King Lowman went to Mexico. But the, but when they come home, they have to, uh, smuggle in their laetrile. Now, why do that, if, if it's worth more than a pot of chrysanthemums. Why smuggle it? Let them pay for here at home, instead of-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --going to Mexico. It's not a dope. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Nothing, nothing, uh, nothing hallucinogenic or anything about it. I mean, just a, a vitamin that, that, and along with, uh, no red meat and some stuff, there's a diet that goes with it, too. But, very successful against cancer. If one of my kids right now got cancer and was a candidate for laetrile, I'd take them to Mexico. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, I think there's certain clinics in, uh, and it's called, you hear about it sometimes now that, that some hospitals are trying to use it kind of quietly, it's called alternative medicine. They don't use the word laetrile; they use alternative medicine. Uh, so there's some states you don't have to go all the way to Mexico now. MOYEN: Right. Uh, let me, uh, switch subjects here-- CYRUS: --okay-- MOYEN: --back on something that we talked before the tape recorder was on. And that was discussions about labor and management and working together. Can you tell me a little about how that transpired during Martha Layne Collins's tenure, and who you worked with? CYRUS: Well, it really started a little before then. It just, uh, it took leadership changes. Uh, I, I can't remember--oh, what a minute. I can see him, uh, Ed Holloway's boss at the, uh, Associated Industries of Kentucky. A little, little short, bald-headed, hardnosed businessperson. My boss when I hired into, as director of education for AFL-CIO was Scotty Smith, but who was just as, it was, that's always been the philosophy, he was hardnosed against Chamber of Commerce. And you didn't have the leadership that would, uh, Terry McBrayer, when he was, uh, with commerce, and, and, uh, Yoakum. Uh, oh, not Danny--yeah, maybe it was Danny Yoakum. Danny Yoakum, uh, from Louisville, they was friends and Yoakum was with labor and, of course, Terry was kind of from Greenup County and so he had some background with labor(??). MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: His dad was a C & O worker. Uh, and it was kind of, they, they was friend enough to, uh, to, uh, start some of the paperwork-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --on labor management relations. But you didn't have the players. Well, when Ed Holloway took over Associated Industries and I took over the AFL-CIO, that made the players accessible to really get down to, we started the labor management conference in, uh, western Kentucky, where you go down, you don't get to pick who you're gonna golf with; the labor cabinet, the people that's over the conference, they, they usually try to two commerce guys or two labor. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And so, you're out there buddy with somebody else, buddying and you're gonna win some pretty nice surprises. So, you, so, you and your flight is, is against these other flights, not that it's labor and management, but it's, you're just people. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know, and trying to win. And some strong friendships was made there. And, and it, it shows that, you get right down to it, it shows that there's, uh, you get away from the negotiating table and you get away from, uh, conflict, that we're really all in this thing together. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And if we can, if we can, uh, concentrate more on productivity, uh, safety, uh, dignity on the job, and, and profit for the employer, it helps us all. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They, it, uh, you know, oh, you, there's gonna be times when they're gonna have to fight. They're gonna have to go into those rooms and negotiate how the pie's gonna be split up. But there's also another world out here, too. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, where, where, um, doesn't have to be conflict. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, uh, out of that, you, you think of some of the contracts that we got started that outlawed strikes. That, that the, or, or extended, extended, say ten-year contract. You never hear of a ten-year contract, but it had in there reopeners(??) maybe once a year. Like Phillip Morris at, uh, Louisville, they had reopeners(??) every year for wage increases. They had quarterly meetings on anything that could come into contract that needed to be looked at to, uh, to, uh, combat foreign imports, or something. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, that labor and management could work together and understand how maybe things needed to be change, but other than that, they would know they was gonna go ten years without a strike. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, the employees got some bonuses out of that. They knew that they could start buying that house and they wasn't gonna be on strike to, they's gonna be able to pay for it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, it, it benefited both parties. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, the, the, those kinds of things could come from a good labor management, uh, philosophy in the state. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Or anywhere else. It, it, it has worked well. And I, I hope that, I hear now that they've done away with secretary of labor. So we're not on equal footing anymore. Uh, Ernie Fletcher done away with that, I think. Uh, um, Martha Layne made the first secretary of labor who was Dr. John Wells. Um, so you had someone that could be at the secretary's table talking about labor management, talking about health care(??), occupational safety, uh, workers' comp. Well, now, now that's not there anymore, I hope they don't weaken labor management relations. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um, you know, talking about this, I guess it, it is House Bill 274, the omnibus unemployment(??), or does, do you recall House Bill 274, the omnibus, unemployment insurance bill-- CYRUS: --that's it; that was the bill-- MOYEN: --that was the bill, okay. Um, around that same time you also sponsored House Bill, I believe, it was 132. That would close a loophole where employers classified workers as partners to avoid paying workers' comp insurance fees. CYRUS: Yes. MOYEN: Why in that(??)-----------(??) CYRUS: Yeah-- MOYEN: --I, I saw that somewhere and I don't completely-- CYRUS: --well, it, uh,-- MOYEN: --understand all the pieces of that-- CYRUS: --okay, well, employers at one time could, uh, could, uh, they, when they hired you, it was a condition of your employment to say, "Well, I'm gonna hire you as a, uh, contract partner. Now, you're gonna make so much an hour, you're gonna be doing this, but I'm, I'm gonna classify you contract partner." Well, he could work you until, uh, and that usually happened, uh, in, uh, strip mining and places like that. And, uh, and if he got up and run out of that vein of coal, or something, he'd lay them off. And well, then he had repealed, when the guy go file for unemployment, oh, well, he wasn't an employee; he was a contract partner. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: I just, it, it was a way they was ripping off working people, that we kind of-- MOYEN: --okay-- CYRUS: --closed that little door-- MOYEN: --that makes sense. There's this little blip that I read about it-- CYRUS: --well, yeah, I had forgotten that. I'd even for-, uh, I'd forgotten that bill. MOYEN: Um, let me-- [Pause in recording.] MOYEN: --you, um, uh, Toyota, and, and some of that, and how AFL-CIO union dealt with that development. But, um, we're talking about newspapers. Did you feel like you had a good working relationship with the local paper in Ashland? What was the-- CYRUS: --yes-- MOYEN: --uh-- CYRUS: --Ashland Daily. MOYEN: Okay. Is -----------(??) how, how was that-- CYRUS: --the, the reporters would always come in, you, it took, took several years before they'd ever support, uh, endorsed my candidacy. MOYEN: Okay. CYRUS: They, it was kind of, uh, and sometimes they wouldn't endorse my opponent either. I guess, they thought that I wasn't going to(??)-- (laughs)--get elected. But I was, I was considered being, leaning too closely to working people. MOYEN: Okay. Um, did you feel like your relationship with that paper, or any other press, is that an important thing that as a, as a politician, if you're thinking, I need to get reelected, is that something that you really have to cultivate? Was that something that you can just kinda-- CYRUS: --well-- MOYEN: --lay by the wayside? CYRUS: You know, you can, uh, to me, and, and I'll, I'll say this, and this, this is kind of a cliche that you hear, I never was a good politician. Politicians, yes, they would try to cater to that press, because they say you can't beat a person that buys ink by the barrel. And that, you know, that, there's a lot of truth to that, I guess. But, either I wasn't smart enough or I just, I was, I was, uh, independent enough, I tried to keep my voters, number one, I would try to offset, if Ashland Daily was gonna write against me, I would go to my voters and say, "Here's what you gonna hear. Here's what they're gonna say. And here's the reason I done it." Like the five-cent tax increase, where I voted with Martha Layne. Uh, we had, uh, we'd had little one-lane bridges, had several people killed, uh, going out Route 1. Uh, going around a curve and all of sudden you're right at a little one-way bridge. I had those in, in, uh, to be widened to two-lanes. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: We had a lot of people that, several people that was killed there, several people that was crippled, and on, uh, a state highway, a major state highway. Uh, Route 1 from Greenup to, to, uh, I-64. And, uh, but we didn't have the money to put into state's share then. We was getting a lot of, uh, uh, bridges, uh, money from, oh, from, uh, U.S. government, but we didn't have our share. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, I was on the committee that knew that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I knew we had to increase taxes. So, I would go and explain to people, and, and say, "You know, we can't get this improved, we can't, because here's where the resources are and we, we, they're, we don't have the matching money." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "We could get several million from the federal government, but we don't have the matching money. So, uh, so you're gonna hear, 'Yes, Ron Cyrus voted for this five-cent increase. Ron Cyrus believes that, that, uh, that we got have it if we're gonna get these improvements in our county.' Now, and if you, if, if you really are against it, well, just tell me and I'll resign. I'll help you elect whoever you want to elect. If somebody could do better, I'll help you." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "You won't have to run against me and beat me, spend a lot of money, just tell me and I won't run because, you know." So, well, they said, "Ron, you, we know you, you're gonna make the, the decisions for us." And I would try to. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: There's times you got to have taxes. Now, that's all there are to it. We'd like to say, "Well, we're a nation, we don't pay no taxes at all." Well, what would you have? You wouldn't have that road to drive up here on. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You wouldn't have police protection to keep somebody from running over you. You wouldn't have air, you wouldn't have water, you wouldn't have military, you wouldn't, you know, we all know when you try to elect people that's gonna try to keep down the waste, to try to be as, as, uh, if you can keep things open to the press, keep it open to the people, so that they don't get spins. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You listen to any of these candidates now running for any office. Uh, I really get a kick out of, uh, of, uh, it's the spin that they put on it, but, but, uh, but every one of them know--Alice Forgy Kerr saying that, that, uh, she's absolutely not going to vote for any tax increase. Well, that's, I guess she really figures that taxpayers want to hear that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, at the same time if we're, if, if we knew that North Korea was gonna, and now that we know that they've got nuclear bombs, and they was gonna declare war and come after us next month and we don't have a, we don't have the artillery to go after them, but we know our Congress lady is gonna be up there and she ain't gonna vote to give them any money. Makes you stop and think a little bit. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, I, you, uh, that's, in other words, you know sh-, she'd have to do it. MOYEN: Right. Um-hm. CYRUS: Because she ain't gonna want Lexington, Kentucky, bombed and blown up, so she's gonna vote for that tax increase. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and then she'd try to come back and say, "Well, you know, yeah, I told you I wouldn't, but I did." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Like George Bush done. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, read my lips. If he'd had just been straight with the people, and, and, uh, not gotten himself out on that limb in the first place, because you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, but you what you, if you can always be able to go to the people and say, "Here's why, here's why we need it, here's how it would've hurt you, if we hadn't." I still can't believe that the state of Kentucky didn't support Greg Stumbo's bill on litter in Kentucky. Walk right down here is the lake. Uh, if you're out on my deck out there, you can see the water, uh, if it's up. Well, I think they got it down right now. You can usually see the water. But if you go down there, there'll be all the headwaters that'll have plastic bottles and junk in it. Uh, uh, but mostly plastic bottles. Why our legislators wouldn't have the courage to put, whatever, a quarter, a nickel, or something, deposit on those things that, that, uh, number one, you might say that don't affect me none, that's down there(??). What about the waters that they, out of the Kentucky River that those things are gonna do? This Licking River runs into it, so. MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: That you're drinking your water out of it. Uh, uh, and if we can keep that cleaner for, for, not just for looks, but for safety, and, and environment, for so many reasons that, that. So there's, there's, there's just, I, certainly it would cost me to, to, uh, you've got have the resource centers to collect that stuff back and all that. But, uh, that's one of the things that's gonna happened if somebody's got the courage, and the, uh, and the, the know-how to explain to the people to get the people to say, "I want you to do it." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If you're go leave these neighbors right here, I don't care, because they see it every day, and they, they go down there, and try to fish, and you can't, there's times you can't cast a lure without hitting garbage. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, uh, that's, I don't know, -------------(??). All right, somebody's got be the banner carrier(??). MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. Let me ask you about Toyota. CYRUS: Um-hm. MOYEN: And, um, being involved with labor, what concerns did you have with Toyota coming here as that deal developed, um, won't you tell a little bit about that? CYRUS: Okay, well, number one, and a lot of my, the image was given to me by the contractors that was brought into initiate it. It was all from Louisiana and Arkansas. You can go over there and drive through and look at the license plates. And it was all people doing the work of, uh, from out-of-state. And there was, uh, there was, uh, my concern was that there was, that we didn't give any of the, and this, this actually wasn't an union-nonunion issue-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --it was a, just a workers of this state compared, if a person was hired out of Louisiana, where they didn't have a minimum wage, they made the, they made sure their check was written from Louisiana to those workers, and they're working for sixty-five cents an hour. Uh, and they'd bring a lot of Spanish people, which, which I'm not against them having a job, but it, it, it's Kentucky putting up the $222 million, or something, that, that was voted in, uh, the budget of Kentucky taxpayers' money going to pay that to send that money out of the state, but our minimum wage at, wasn't much at that time, like, a $1.65 or something, was the minimum wage. But they was hiring people for a dollar less on the hour to do the work with Kentucky's money building a plant for Tokyo. Uh, so, that was the image that, the negative image I got. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, there was a positive image. You know, the positive image, well, at some point, uh, it's gonna create jobs, and it certainly we've, you know, we want jobs in Kentucky. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It's paid off very, very good; I'm very proud of Toyota. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, but the, the way it started out, we tried to get, and I sponsored the bill for prevailing wage in Kentucky. Now, prevailing wages, that was brought about by either Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover, because so many states was, uh, and, and, uh, school districts and counties was getting ripped off by people that always tried to make the low bid on how little they could pay their workers. Everybody's gonna pay the same for a 2x4 or an I-beam, uh, concrete. But you could bid less if you could pay your employees less. Well, they'd take, uh, contracts back then, a lot of big jobs, and the people then couldn't, uh, get the people for-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --for thirty cents an hour, or sixty cents. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: And, and then they'd go bankrupt. And it would leave the, the, uh, leave the entity hanging. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Like a big school down in Paducah that happened right when I sponsored that bill. Prevailing wage is actually a, uh, a monitored by mainly the county judge of the county. Now, there are, the union has a part in it that they'll say what a contractor, uh, would pay a union carpenter. The county would say, "Well, what a minute. We've got contractors down here that's nonunion that pays theirs, uh, two dollars less on the hour." Well, then it's up to that county, or whatever that district is, to come to what that prevailing wage is in that area. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It's not a union wage. And it's not, uh, a Mexico-wage, or something. It's a, it's what they, him and their, uh, the people that's helps him that wage together, of what the normal wage, or the average wage, or that, what they call a prevailing wage in that area. Menifee County is different than Bath County; Bath County's different than Fayette County. I mean-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --it's, it's whatever that region is, they set up, it could be more in one county-- MOYEN: --sure, sure. CYRUS: Well, they come up to what a, to what a prevailing wage is, say for a carpenter in that area. And if you get a person, if that company, well, then they know that's not one of the factors; it's the guy that is gonna be the smartest at scheduling, at having the material to work with at the times he's got the workers there, and all. Its management-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --uh, is gonna decide how much profit they make. But you can't just do it by seeing how much you cut that worker's wages. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: So, prevailing wage, uh, uh, that's one of the bills, I--now, we passed it under Paul Patton. That's how late it was coming by, but we got it his first term. MOYEN: And these things, I mean, you just don't think them up right then, they just take years to-- CYRUS: --yes-- MOYEN: --eventually get passed, right-- CYRUS: --sure, yeah. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Like that, uh, competitive state fund, I was elected in '76 and I guess, or went to work in '76 and I guess from the first time I ever went to, uh, any of these legislative meetings, I found out that the employers in Kentucky was just flat getting ripped off. Took me, uh, maybe eighteen years. And I tried every time. If you look, if you go to the legislative research down there, I'd probably had a competitive state fund every session, trying to get it passed and, and with, have all the directors come in from other states. And they would tell our people, "Well, we pay, we only pay, uh, $1.30 for every $100, uh, up to $13.00 for some of the window washers that has to climb, they was dangerous, underground coal miners dangerous." So, it's the danger and all that of the job. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But how much cheaper they were than we were. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And number one, just pure, they don't pay taxes. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They, uh, where an insurance company have to pay taxes-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --and they're non-profit, uh, the profit stays in that, within that fund. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, uh, the private insurance company, they fought the dickens out of that, because naturally they wanted to keep the business. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But we finally passed it. And that solved a lot of the workers' comp problems(??). MOYEN: Yeah. CYRUS: Always before, the whole time I was there, you'd come in and say, "Well, you know, we got a, we got to put a longer waiting period. A guy, instead of seven days, let's make a guy be off, hurt on a job fourteen days before he draws any workers' comp." It was always those kind of things. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Let's go cut the worker more-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --because we don't want to mess with profit. You know, that didn't, that didn't set well with me. MOYEN: Sure, sure, um, and I think some of that the cutting, uh, um, benefits to the injured, was some of that, um, was this part of the discussion in, I believe, it was '86, um, '87, there's a panel to deal with workers'-- CYRUS: --yeah-- MOYEN: --comp-- CYRUS: --yeah-- MOYEN: --okay-- CYRUS: --well, that was one of those deals. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: They got a panel of, of, uh, we set up a bill to create a workers' panel, workers' compensation panel. An equal amount of management people and labor people-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to sit on this panel. Uh, and they could hear all this testimony and then that panel would bring their recommendations to the General Assembly and see it took the heat off the General Assembly members. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: In other words, that wouldn't a bad vote or a good vote for labor; it was a good vote for both sides. MOYEN: Right. Um-hm. CYRUS: It didn't put you in the middle. MOYEN: Yeah. CYRUS: So, uh, that's, that's the way we got the legislators go along with this, say, "Guys, you know, you don't want that record out there." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "Oh, he's only a 60 percent or his 80 percent." Let's put it on this panel. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And that's business and labor coming to you to ask you to work for it. So, it's kind of win-win situation. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Yeah. Uh, let me talk to you about Wallace Wilkinson, his election, and obviously the, the big vote during his tenure-- CYRUS: --um-hm-- MOYEN: --was the KERA, but, um, what, uh, what interaction did you have with Governor Wilkinson? CYRUS: You know, I liked that little son of a gun. (Moyen laughs) He was, uh--(laughs)--he was, he was a pistol. I, I really thought the world of Wallace Wilkinson. He, uh, he was probably, in some ways- -(pause)--the least knowledgeable about some issues to be governor as anybody I'd ever saw. I give you an example: we went in, and, and, uh, you may have the record there, but if, if the, uh, minimum wage was $2.15 an hour, or something--it might've got up a little higher than that--then $2.35, or something, at the beginning of his term, whatever it was, I told him that one of our major, major concerns was the minimum wage. It needed to be address. "Why certainly it does," you know. But when we got up into committee--(laughs)--Carol, uh, Palmore was the, uh, let's see, I don't believe we had--yeah, I guess we had a secretary of labor then, maybe she was secretary of labor, but if, if, if not, she's was the commissioner of labor. But she'd come over to speak on it. And he, and she'd come in, and it was gonna raise to maybe $3.65, whatever the federal government was, we just gonna raise the state minimum up to what the federal was. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Wallace was gonna fire her. And I said, "Governor, what, what in the world would be your, what's your reason for firing Carol Palmore?" "Well, she's up there trying to increase minimum wage. Trying to make it higher." I said, "Well, you agreed to that." "Well, I meant that you could make it lower." (Moyen laughs) "What in, what, what do you think a minimum wage is, governor! Minimum means the minimum." He said, "Well, yeah, I want to see, make it more minimum." (both laugh) I says, "Governor, that ain't the way it works." (both laugh) You know, you'd have to laugh, because there's kind of, almost on the realms of being, being not up to date. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? Talking about increasing minimum wage don't mean to make it lower. (Moyen laughs) Increasing means make it higher, you know? (laughs) Oh, God, I had to laugh at it. But that, that, a lot of those things he fought those things about. "Buddy," I said, "why do you think labor unions would want to lower the minimum?" He said, "I don't know. Maybe to create jobs or something." I said, "Well, that wouldn't create any union jobs." But that, it, but he, but he was, he used to come up to my neighbor's house, Woody Isaac up here, used to be known as the best sorghum, when Menifee County was the "Sorghum Capitol of the World" and--uh, they let Morgan County take it over--but Menifee County here used to be the capitol. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And Woody Isaac up here was one of the, he makes, he, his, um, sorghum looks like it's gold, like honey. You know, where you see a lot of molasses, what I call blackstrap molasses, is as black as that set. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Uh, and, and I bought some, Morgan County's now supposed to be the "Sorghum Capitol of the World" and you can buy them jars of sorghum, looks, looks like it's got used oil in it. But anyway, uh, Wallace was a, he come up here for the sorghum. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: He loved sorghum. And Woody would always, Woody May was, uh, state representative, and he'd always come up and to by Woody's to take, uh, Wallace Wilkinson more sorghum. He liked sorghum and biscuits, I guess. But anyway, uh, but I, I, you know, I liked Wallace. He, he, you know, in a lot of ways if you could get him, I had one of the thoughts, and I took this from the Ohio competitive, uh, they've got an exclusive fund over there. They don't allow private insurance companies to sell workers' comp insurance; they got a state fund and everybody buys it. So, they got one of the cheapest in the countries. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They, because they've got all the business. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And they can monitor, and they can make changes and it, you don't have to, there's not a hundred other-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --okays you have to get. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, well, they've got, they have the cam-, what they call the Camera Institute. And if a person was hurt so bad, they would send them to this, uh, clinic. And they had the most professional, uh, pain, uh, um, where they record pain and, and kind of pain treatments there and all that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They can tell what kind of pain a person and how much mobility they have and all that. And know how to correct it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Their theory is, correct it, and get that guy back on the job, or the, the job closest to his wage-earning ability. I couldn't, I couldn't agree with anything more. I mean, you know, the, so, uh, I went to Wallace. First, I went to the Kings Daughter Hospital up in ---------(??). And I, uh, I had one in my own county, but it's, uh, it was a Catholic hospital, Our Lady of Bellefonte. Well, all their, any okays and all has been to done by the sisters of somewhere-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --you know, and all that. Can't, couldn't get anything done. So, I went to Our Lady of, uh--Kings Daughter, and I said, "If you would, it's gonna cost some bucks. You're gonna need some rehabilitation, uh, what they call occupational therapy units and all that. But we could make this a workers' compensation center of, of maybe all of, at least all of eastern Kentucky, but maybe all of Kentucky. If there's a discrepancy, if there's an argument about how seriously a person is hurt, instead of being admitted to any other hospital, they'd come here. If you'll invest this upfront money to do some of these things from the Camera Institute). You don't have to take my word for it; call Ohio, check what they do, and if you're willing to go that route." So, I took it to Wallace, and, uh, and I, he might've called the governor of Ohio, or something, and the governor, "Well, oh my God, that's, that's the only way to go, if you're really wanting to, uh, keep from getting"--they used, at that time, they called it doctor shopping. You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: The employees would go to different doctors to get the highest percentage and all that. I said, "If you want to cut all that out, let's have one place to send them to. And then have a committee, a labor and management committee that oversees what they do, so that one side don't feel like they're getting screwed. And, uh, and let's have one place where you send them all." Well, he went to Ashland, des-, designated the, Our Lady of Bellefonte as an occupational center. Boy, they had a great one for many, many years. Now it's, several years, and now it's, uh, other, other areas started saying, "Well, we'll just do that voluntarily." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, they wouldn't do it before; there's too much money in it. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But it, and, and it now it's, their occupational therapy unit is, they still got it. It's not like it used to be. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But Wallace went up and, and, uh, after he had the facts, he went up and designated it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I mean(??), everybody seen how much money they was gonna make out of it, I mean, they were sending coal miners down from Pikeville and people from Toyota--well, maybe Toyota wasn't even--was Toyota there then? But, uh, all over. They were sending patients into Kings Daughter, all these other hospitals thought, We'll --------(??), we're losing business. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So they just kind of voluntarily conformed. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. Um, can you tell me a little bit about, you mentioned, uh, Don Blandford, anything else about his leadership style as speaker, uh, particularly with, they're some that would say--and I, I'd like your take on this--that Wallace Wilkinson tried to reassert through his push for gubernatorial succession, other things, really tried to reassert gubernatorial power, and fell short. Wasn't able to do that. Can you tell me a little bit about, if you think that's true, and, and what role, uh, the House leadership, particularly Don Blandford made, made ----------(??)-- CYRUS: --well, Don, Don was a, he had the charisma and he had the, the personality that he could hold things together. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, now, like I said, he would, he, if he had use to a little bit of strong-arm--and wasn't, see, Don just couldn't do that on his own. The speaker, you got that LRC in the House right now, you got the LRC that's Democratic. You know, um, a majority of Democrats. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Over in the Senate, now, it's turned around. So, all the LRC has to, it's not just that one man that could do it, but it's, it's the persuasive power he's got to get the majority leader. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, uh, when Bill Kenton was there, he had Bobby Richardson as, uh, majority leader. Well, they was two of the most knowledgeable people in the, they could've run Kentucky as well as the governor as we had then. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, uh, but they had the, uh, they, they were liked well enough that the legislators went along with them. They, Bill Kenton, I don't guess he ever strong-armed anybody. Or Bobby Richardson either that I know of. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, but he would just, uh, use, um, intellect. You know, he, he, he would sit down and talk, they'd all sit down and talk to you about things. And Don Blandford would do that, too. Don, I told you, Don come down, went in, and talked to my teachers. And he's the one that come out and said, "I believe you better just stay where you're at." They, they, he knew that it wasn't just my feeling; it was the people I represented feelings. So, uh, but he had the persuasive power. He, he not only used persuasive power but he also used, he had, he had the, uh, ability to, to communicate, too. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, Don had, Don, Don was, uh, he, he was a sharp, sharp leader. MOYEN: Um-hm. Can you elaborate a little bit on KERA and, and this meeting--which I guess you already did that--but what were the concerns of the teachers? What was your concern with KERA, and, and your opposition to ----------(??)-- CYRUS: --well, the number one thing about KERA, the state was given them the regulations that had to, where they had to perform to certain regulations-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --and things had to be at, on the students, had to be at certain levels, had to be all this, had to be set up by, by, uh, and it sounds good on paper. But you also have to have the resources to get that done. You have to have the, some kind of ability(??) for parents, um, well, I, I don't know a good example other than to say, you probably know some people that if, uh, if a teacher was going to, back when we had capitol, if they was gonna give a kid a whipping, you had to whip that parent first. You know, you know, or if you was gonna expel that kid, not, then, then you'd better be ready to fight. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Cause you have gonna--you got to have the, you got have the community in tune for KERA to work. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and, uh, and the resources had to be there. They, they wasn't, there wasn't anything going to that teacher, that said, "You're gonna absolutely have every pamphlet, you're gonna have every working, uh, tool that you need, that this kid is gonna be able to read these things when they're at this level." And you would say, you know, to that teacher, "Well, it all sounds, well, I'd like for that student, but what about the tools that I'd need to get it there." "Well, you're gonna have to work this out, cause there's gonna be a"--what do they call it, a, uh, site-based council. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And that site-based council is gonna see to it that you have all this. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, once it was turned over to the site-based council, they said, "Well, wait a minute; where do we come up with the money? We can't even enact any taxes, we can't," you know. So, the teacher was left out there in the middle with a few promises. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If you do these things, we're gonna pay you bonus. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And a few teachers would get that bonus. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But it also gave teachers the, the, uh--I got a dog knocking, uh--it, it gave them the, uh-- MOYEN: --here, I'll pause this-- CYRUS: --say wait a minute; I've got to make--Get away, Jake. Jake, get away, come over here and lay down now. Come over here. Uh, that's one thing about getting old, your animals gets to be your kids then. (Moyen laughs) Uh, it gave them, the, the ones that was smart enough to think through these things, to show sometimes artificial increases when the increases wasn't there in the kids' abilities. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, but there was bonuses out there for them, uh, as enticing. Well, my teachers, I don't know whether they were smarter than other teachers, or whether they, whether it was just the, the, the force that was put upon, threats, but, but, um, my teachers said, "Ron, that ain't gonna work. You, you, uh, if these site-based councils is gonna have the right to get the money, to, to get these things done, we don't see where that's gonna take place." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And--[telephone rings]--it didn't(??) take place. MOYEN: Right, no. [Pause in recording.] CYRUS: Do you like Ale-8? MOYEN: Yeah, I like an Ale-8? CYRUS: Billy Ray's, uh, oldest little girl, if I go down, I got to take her a case of Ale-8. (Moyen laughs) And, and she always say, if, if somebody asks her do something, she always say, "Well, my Ale-8's not kicked in yet." You know, it, it, she loves Ale-8. When she comes up here, any of the kids, they have to have that Ale-8. MOYEN: Yeah, um, when I was in school out of state, my parents would do the same thing for me, so. CYRUS: Yeah. MOYEN: I'm hooked. What can I say? CYRUS: Well, that's, uh, ----------(??)--(Moyen laughs)--I like Ale-8 too. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: In the summertime if I'm out there, mowing, digging, working, sweaty, I'd, I'd rather have Ale-8 than anything going. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um, you were explaining KERA, uh, pretty well and, and the different concerns-- CYRUS: --yeah, well, that's it. Those, the, the main thing about KERA, it set out a lot guidelines, it set out a lot of have-to's, but it didn't have a lot of how-to's. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know? MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: That, that, that put all the pressure on the teacher. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, my teachers was very concerned about that, and I, I think they had, uh, and not just the teachers, the superintendents, the school boards. Uh, the one thing about Kentucky--and we've not changed this; it's, it's up to the people to do it--but you have a lot of school board members with maybe eighth-grade graduation, or maybe sixth-grade graduate. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, that, no doubt, I'm not cutting them down; they probably had a lot of common sense and was well liked by the community or they wouldn't been elected probably(??). But, uh, but at the same time, to know all the requests that KERA was requesting was a little bit out of that level. MOYEN: Um-hm, right. CYRUS: Well, then how was the teachers gonna--in other words, it was putting the, all the monkey(??) weight--[telephone rings]--on the teacher's back. [Pause in recording.] MOYEN: All right, um, let's talk a little about, uh, Brereton Jones and his, his time-- CYRUS: --okay-- MOYEN: --his tenure as governor. Um, one of the big, uh, reforms during his time was health care. CYRUS: Um-hm. MOYEN: And his push for health care. Um, as someone who's been a legislator, who's seen all these different problems. Let me just ask you in general. How in the world--I mean, uh, I, I don't think this legislation has solved our health care problems--how in the world would you address the health care issues that we're facing? CYRUS: If I, if, if it was me, it may not be word for word, but this state would've been tee totally a 100 percent better off if we had adopted Brereton Jones's health care plan. Now, they're all saying that. If, if, if you hear legislators talking about, "Well, if, if we had," it's like workers' compensation and me creating a competitive state fund. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If we, uh, health care for a single pair plan or something, it would be the state paying it, and they would, would, like I pay, I pay, uh, forty-seven dollars a month now for Medicare, uh, Plan B. Uh, if we would've had something like that where the state would've been the collector, had the fund, and, and a doctor, a hospital that'd been regulated some, like Canada. Why Canada comes down here and fights a single pair plan is that a doctor can't make over five hundred thousand a year. Well, that ought to be enough. You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Cause they're the ones paying. Now, they don't keep them from making that, but they're not gonna work for the state and make that kind of money. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Uh, it, so they got kind of, can dictate what they're gonna pay, uh, doctors and hospitals, providers. Uh, but I went to Canada. And I went by some of the clinics, to, uh, when I was over the AFL-CIO, and I'll tell you what, it's all spins there. It can, if you talk to anybody that knows, there's no waiting lines in Canada. They don't have dumps for hospitals. I mean, they got some of the most beautiful hospitals and clinics. And, and, now, if I was gonna go in and have some, uh, cosmetic surgery, or, or, uh, or, uh, elective work, you may have a wait time. But you have that here on, on non-elective. My wife, with, uh, uh, glaucoma and pressure from diabetes is going blind. You can't call down there and go in and see a doctor immediately. You know-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --sometimes you got a two-month wait. You, you may have a month wait to see a dentist here in Kentucky. Right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, that's the way it is up there on, on hospital care. But the emergency stuff is just like it is, man, they take them in and they, there, there's no hang-up whether, right now, you go in the hospital, you take that kid of yours in the hospital, and you may spend the first thirty minutes filing out the forms, to make sure whether they know where they're gonna get their money from. In Canada, they don't have to worry about that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They're gonna get it. The only concern they have is screening through to make sure there's no Americans slipping in there to get the free health care. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That's their big concern. They've got to watch for that. Uh, because they're gonna get their pay. The people that, there's not, they don't have to worry about insurance companies, by, uh, claiming that's too much or this or that. I get my forms right now, Medicare wants to say, "Well, we pay this much, and your supplement is, is gonna have to take up, make up the rest." Well, see that hospital or doctor has to worry about who's gonna pay what and they have file all the forms to pay people to do it, try to get as much as they can here, try to get as much as they can there. In Canada, they don't have to have that. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They gonna get what, what that service calls for. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, Rochester, New York, you got the state of Hawaii, we've got so many places where that works, and works, uh, very, very good for the people that's getting that coverage. Now, naturally we're gonna hear the spins, uh, about dirty clinics and about, uh, that's all spins. If we had --------(??) 20 to 22 percent a year, and in some cases, higher, health care goes up. What(??) out of the pot that you got, and 20 to 22 percent of it increases every year to go to health care, tell me what that leaves. Five years down the road. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Ten years down the road. Tell me what, you know, everything else has to give up. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Roads, law enforcement, teaching, education, everything else has to go down because you've got no control over health care. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Somewhere along the lines, uh, and you're in a position to find out this even better than I, but check to see the most progressive countries that's going around us now, like Japan, economically, like Germany, uh, see what kind of plans they have. They got the single pair plans. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That you can control. And, and, and if you don't get, if, if like us on, we usually talk about jobs or education, if you don't get it, we, well, you vote in somebody else to take over. That gets to be a political issue. Uh, but it gives the people some voice in it(??); right now you don't have any voice. At all. You know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I don't, you don't. It's, uh, it's, it's up to the insurance company to tell you what coverage they'll give you and, and what they'll pay for it. And even you pay, you don't how much they're gonna pay on any of it. You took your baby--and I hate to keep using this, but it's something close to you--you didn't know what that, uh, anesthetist(??) was gonna charge you. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They didn't give you, say, "Well, this is gonna cost you this much, and this much, and this much." They do what they is and they send you a bill, and then whatever insurance you got, they'll say, "Well, we'll this pay much of it." You, it's all blind right now. You don't have any idea what health care is gonna cost. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Or what a procedure is gonna cost. You just duck and they tell you what, how much, uh, and then it's up to you to come up with the rest, right? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, you really don't have health coverage. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: If you've got coverage, it ought to cover your health. Well, if you paid into a health plan, and, and what Brereton Jones was trying to, if you got into, maybe it was gonna be more than you could afford, but then you had health coverage. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And the state was gonna pay your bills. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They was gonna pay them providers, uh, the, the bill. Now, that's what Brereton Jones --------(??). And other states are going to it; other communities are going to it; some whole nations are going to it. Uh, it, it really be something for you to investigate and see it's kind of like my workers' comp bill. Compare their health care and their costs as to what we're paying. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, or doctors. We had a, we had a doctor come into Our Lady of Bellefonte one time and they said, uh, "What would it take initially?" He said, "I liked to have a"--let's see, it was a Mits-, I believe it was a Mitsubishi; it was a sports car that was three hundred thousand dollars. Now, he wanted that to come in and talk about whether he would take the job at Kings Daughter's hospital or not. I mean, he, he come on and talked about it and he did. But, but they talk about, "Well, will you pay my country club dues? Uh, my, my, am I guaranteed five hundred thousand a year? Do I get the Mitsubishi sports car?" Well, where does that come from? You, you, it's, it's, that's all on what you pay when your little girl's sick. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Now my, I mean, it's, uh, right now we got no control over it. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, and, and that's, you talk about free enterprise, and I believe in free enterprise, but in health care, it's working right now but how long will it work and us keep a quality of life in all the other areas that we want a good quality life. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Can't do it. So, so, Brereton Jones had a terrific, good idea. Libby and him had, had, had, uh, taken expertise from all the places that were working well. Kind of like I did taking the expertise from, uh, Colorado, California, Ohio, uh, all the states that had state funds for workers' compensation. Seen how theirs worked and picked the best. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: See, when I was writing the bill, I had the directors come in, and they say, "Well," Colorado would say, "Well, we got this in our bill but now California's got, theirs works better because they do it this way." Uh, Ohio, even though I had some of their people come in, but they were a little bit different because they have an inclusive fund; they didn't have to worry about looking good, or whatever it, uh, with the private community. But, but, uh, but that's the way Brereton and Libby did about putting a health care plan together. Uh, I wish that, that he counted on it being the right thing to do, kind of like I did with, uh, workers' comp, and people would just go along with it. Well, you, there's gonna be a big community of lobbyists out there against it, because you're cutting into their big, big money. You, if I was that doctor in, in ----------(??) chain hospital get a Mitsubishi out of it, and then guarantee me more than five hundred thousand a year, I wouldn't want some old legislator voting on a plan that's gonna limit that ----------(??)-- MOYEN: --um-hm. CYRUS: Now, that's what, that's the system we got in Kentucky and America. I know that worked because I was right there, and watched, uh, and this was a good friend of ours. He's been down here at the ca-, when we have the cabin over here, he come down and visit us, nice fellow. Chuck. Uh, but, but the thing he demanded to come in and talk about taking a job was this nice Mitsubishi. And they paid it. Uh, you, uh, you know, that's, that's the system we got. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: That's free enterprise, I guess. But, but when it comes to people's health care, and how much we can afford to pay, it'll be good for them as long as it lasts. Somewhere it's gonna, as you go up 20 percent a year, some, our per captia, our productivity, our new jobs is not going up 20 percent a year. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: So, somewhere you have to hit the end, bottom of the barrel. MOYEN: Yeah, um-hm. CYRUS: Brereton Jones had a plan to correct that, and, and, and, uh, the lobbyists were strong. Maybe the people wasn't, uh, maybe he didn't put out enough education on it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But he, but he had the answer to the problem. MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. CYRUS: Now, legislators, if you go down to the new legislators, they can't say that. Because there's people that, that pays into their campaigns. And no legislators gonna say, "Well, I, I vote for the right thing, no matter whether I get a contribution or not." But that's not, it's, uh, they all want people to have insurance, all, you know, and all that. But, uh, but that's the real world. MOYEN: Right, right. CYRUS: That's the real world. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Of staying elected. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And it's, uh, I admire every one of them. I admire them for the time it takes and, and for what little they make out of it. Uh, I was amazed, I'm amazed now that Ben Chan--, I think, what a phony. Him talking about that bill that was gonna double pensions. What, my wife and I paid a $141 dollars a month out of that little pay we got. (laughs) From the very beginning, we put in $141 dollars a month, so I'd have a retirement when I left there. At, at the point I first went in there, didn't know there was gonna be a retirement. But from the time they created it, we put in $141 dollars a month out of, out of what we got to go into that retirement fund. And, and their words that, I asked Albert Robinson one time, I said, "Albert, would that affect us that's already retired?" And he said, "Just as much as anybody else." I said, "Well, actually, what we getting a month?" He said, "Well, it's according to the, how much the cost of index goes up. But right now, it would probably be about $40." And, and I could use the $40 dollars, but, but they're saying double it. Nah, that's, that's all political speech. MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. Um, there are examples of that where it's, where it's political spin and then there are issues like the whole BOPTROT thing-- CYRUS: --sure-- MOYEN:--that broke during it. CYRUS: Well, that wasn't what, you know, that was all undercover-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --shouldn't been done that way. But, but, uh, but that's the way he, I mean, I don't even know what he done. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Like, uh, we had a legislator one time that was trying to help denturists pass a bill. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Denturists is a non-dentist that can make false teeth, or whatnot. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: And he put the ability to, uh, complete bridges. [Pause in recording.] CYRUS: Paid what the, what they would pay them, and got retirement for what the, paying(??) there, but, but I wouldn't, as all the other costs goes up, I know now when that legislator buys, uh, a, uh, wreath of flowers for somebody's funeral, it's probably double what I paid back in the seventies. So it's costing them a lot more-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to be representatives now than it was when I was there. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, uh, so, yeah it's. MOYEN: When, when the whole BOPTROT scandal broke, was that a complete shocker to you, or was that something where if you're a legislature, legislator, you sit back and think, couldn't see it, wasn't gonna on in front of me, but I did-- CYRUS: --yeah-- MOYEN:--I'm not surprised-- CYRUS: --well, that's, uh, no. It was so, what was kind of, uh, the way everything worked, that legislators would, uh, oh, if it, if it, if they was gonna have a rally in their area, there'd, there, there'd be certain lobbyists you, that you can say, "You think you might be able to give me some help up there." And, and, uh, and they would do it. So it, so it was so kind of common that, uh, I never did have a--and, and in Greenup County we didn't have those kind of races, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I'm might, a race for me up there might be, uh, six to twelve thousand dollars. Well, me and my wife put on, uh, put on a little reception out, uh, Greenbo State Park and, and, uh, Congressman Dick ---------(??) come in to speak for me. And, uh, but he was planning on running for president later. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And a friend of mine said, "I believe Dick Keppler(??) and you would get along well. We've, if, if you'd call him." And we got in touch with him. He said, "Well, I'd, I'd liked to come into Kentucky." But he'd come in and we made enough money there that the whole time we'd run, we'd run out of money we made there. MOYEN: Huh. CYRUS: Uh, off, off that dinner, I didn't, but six to, six to eight thousand dollars was your, something in that neighborhood-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --was what we'd paid to run. Like I said, we wasn't big-time politicians. And, and didn't have the competition that other legislators had. I was amazed to find out that some of these races cost fifty or sixty thousand. I thought, How can they do that? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, they ain't gonna make it! MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Even that today, I think, I think today that, if I'm not mistaken, they get $75 expenses, and $75 salary. Or maybe $ 50 salary and $75 a day expenses. Something in that neighborhood is what they get paid. They don't make $50,000 or $60,000. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: So you, so you can see where they have to, where they have to, uh, count on, uh, campaign contributions-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --to stay elected. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and what they make right now, if, if it's like it was in Greenup County, people would call and make sure that I knew their brother was laying a corpse(??) or something, I mean, all over the county, or that, that somebody's kid is graduating from high school, or, you know, you always supported you in your campaigns. Well, supporting you in your campaign didn't mean ten-dollar contributions or anything like that; it meant they was gonna vote for you. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They'd voted for you and would come to your rallies and all that. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But it didn't mean campaign contributions. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, so you, so you wanted to have an anniversary, or graduation gift, or something like that, and, and if, if all the others are like mine was up there, I'd say whatever they make down there during the session, it's gonna cost them that--(laughs)-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --back home. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You, you don't go into a representative legislature to make money. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Now that, I, I would, and that was just as true then as it is now. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It's, it's, uh, the challenge and the compet--I, uh, I have to admit I kind of miss it in a lot of ways. Not over(??) the money. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But, but over the, the challenge. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: The, the trying to get people to agree with you, or you trying to understand to agree with them, or whatever. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, there's, there's certain things like that that I guess just gets instill in your mind that you never get over. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: But you're talking about BOPTROT, after BOPTROT, one of the big changes was you never knew who was wired. Not that you was gonna say anything out of the way, but what they could make it sound like. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You know, you could take blurbs from this tape right here, and make me sound like a socialist. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Or a, or a-- MOYEN: --whatever I wanted(??)--(laughs)-- CYRUS: --traitor or something, you know. If you just took that one little bleep. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, well, you never knew--used to, legislators, when I went down there, we didn't have offices. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, you're standing out in the hall, or, or something, talking to people, and, and had fun. Laugh and talk, and, uh. After BOPTROT, uh, if you had something very specific to mention to a legislator, you, they said hi to you, or you'd say hi to them. Otherwise it's not that fraternal organization, it's not fraternal now. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It's, uh, it's more on guard. You know, it got to where everything was on guard now. And that's when me and my wife just decided, this is, uh, I wasn't worried about doing anything that, that gonna be questionable; it was just the fun was out of it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And when it come filing time, we didn't even discuss it; I just didn't file. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: That's the way I left the legislature. MOYEN: That's something, my next question was, what lead to that decision? Was it just that it kind of lost a lot of it's-- CYRUS: --well, no-- MOYEN: -- -------------(??)-- CYRUS: --no, now, my decision exactly was, uh, because of our hectic life at home. There was always, uh, twelve, fifteen, twenty cars lined up in front of our house, waiting for one to pull out, so one could pull in, after Billy got a little notoriety. And it left Joan there all to herself to, our kid; our youngest kid was in college at that time. And, and, uh, there was always, my neighbors would call and say, "Ron, uh, the van, there's a van over here on, next street over." And, uh, we could see the, somebody with, uh, camera and telescopic lens. They was always trying to get a shot of me and Joan. And then it would come out in the Enquirer or something, "Achy," they'd have a shot of me and Joan, you could tell it was made in the distance, but it, it, "Achy, Breaky Dad Tells All." Well, when you read it, it wouldn't be nothing. But the headlines was like I was telling a big story on Billy. And it talked about maybe something about me saying about, nobody interviewed me. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Stuff they'd get, kind of like you got from Herald-Leader or something. Uh, and, and the article itself wouldn't be, uh, all that derogatory or anything; it would be the way they got it, and, you know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And so, we couldn't walk outside. And we couldn't, uh, it, and so we had such a life up there that was, uh, pretty hectic all my life(??). MOYEN: Um-hm. So, this wasn't, uh, your, your son having to deal with all this right there, this was you all, having to deal with-- CYRUS: --my son was never there-- MOYEN: --right-- CYRUS: --he was gone. You know, he was on tour and, and all that. And, uh, no, it was just them people wanting to come by and see his home place. MOYEN: Huh. CYRUS: You'd be surprised, uh, uh, I found out there that women have so much more nerve than men. (Moyen laughs) Women would come up to that door and they'd say, "We want to see his bedroom. Now, I want to go in and see where he slept." And, and you'd have to say, "Well, we, you know, this is not a tourist facility." Uh, and, and, they'd say, "Well, we'd come from"--we've had people here from Australia, California, from Germany, all over the country. And, and you hate to be impolite to them. Now, if I was there, I'd go out and stand and make pictures with them and stuff like that. But Joan didn't, you know, you, women don't stay made up all time. And, you know, and so, she just have to hide, not answer the door, not go out. So, kind of got kind of hectic. And we started spending more time down here in that little camping trailer. MOYEN: Um-hm. Did, did your son's celebrity status change any of the dynamics of your being a legislator? CYRUS: Yeah-- MOYEN: --at all(??)-- CYRUS: --yeah, quite a bit-- MOYEN: --how so? CYRUS: Well, uh, everybody that was in office, and till today, if I was friends with them at all, well, they, "Well, now, you know, I'd certainly like to have your son come up and appear at a rally for me." And, uh, I tried to keep Billy out of politics. Now, George Bush last time, and a lot of people today say, "You know, that was so narrow, his campaign song," but they bought that song from, uh, Sony. Sony cut a tape, a video of "We the People." Well, Sony sent a shot of that to both campaigns. They tell me they sent it to, uh, to Al Gore and Bush, and Bush claimed it within thirty minutes. They called Sony back and, and, uh, paid the price. And Billy didn't get nothing out of that(??). Other than Sony had paid him to make the record and to, and then it's theirs, you know. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Well, uh, George Bush, that was his campaign, that was his rally song, all the way through the campaign. "We the People." If you seen them commercials of his where it showed different crafts, about we got the vote, we got the power, well, that was Billy Ray. (both laugh) Uh, somebody said, "You know, that was so close, that song might've made the difference in him, uh, becoming ------------(??)"-- MOYEN: --yeah-- CYRUS: --I said, "Well, I don't know how; Al Gore got the most votes anyway." But, but it, it, it changed in that respect. And, and, uh, starting getting a lot of calls. And, of course, we did go; we rode the train with Bill Clinton. We went up to the National Democrat, uh, Convention. Me and Billy, I took Billy on it. And, but that, that, that changes, uh, I hate, I, I don't know exactly how to say this but it, but instead of being that, uh, shop steward for the people of Greenup County, I was kind of a celebrity's father then. MOYEN: Um-hm, right. CYRUS: So, it, it, it changed the whole deal(??). MOYEN: Um-hm, um-hm. CYRUS: And, uh, I mean, it was just time to get out of it. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um-hm. Now, when Paul Patton was elected, uh, I guess you probably didn't think that the worker's comp would go the direction it did. CYRUS: Well, I was going by his word. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And not just to me, but, uh, to an awful lot of people that worker's compensation would not be changed, unless it was at the request of that panel. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: The workers' comp panel. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: No bill would be--and Paul Patton made this in--and I am so glad it wasn't just made, I took him at his friendship. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, uh, but to other people, he made this statement, and, and to, uh, especially if he was before a union, and probably before the Chamber of, I, I, I don't know. But I wasn't at those meetings. But anywhere I ever heard him speak, no bill would be, there wouldn't be any changes to workers' compensation unless it come through that panel. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Well, that panel was the Chamber of Commerce, AIK, uh, all the businesses, all the coal mining employers, and labor unions. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I didn't sit on it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I wasn't even on that panel. But, uh, and then, you know, he just completely changed courses. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And he told me, I went to him, and I said, "Paul, how can you do this when that's not?" He said, "Well"--I said, "Can you make some change?" He said, "I can't change it; this is a Republican's bill." And that's where me and him kind of got cross-wired because I said, "Did the Republicans elect you, Paul?" "Well, they're gonna reelect me." So, that's his, that's the way he looked at it. MOYEN: Um-hm. Um-hm. CYRUS: He wouldn't amend it at all, because it was a, he said, "We have to have their okay; it's their bill." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: AIK and Chamber, even Chamber of Commerce told me, uh, "You just"- -told me, oh, the head of the lobbyists, Chamber of Commerce, he said, "Ron, you know, this goes much farther than what we intended to go." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: "This is not our bill." MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: It wasn't our bill; it wasn't AIK's bill, because they served on the panel. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, this, this was, this was probably Paul and, and a few of his, uh, coal employers. MOYEN: Um-hm, yeah. CYRUS: Come up with the way they'd liked, because it mainly affected coal miners that was unfortunate enough to, to contact pneumoconiosis(??). MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: I've watched(??), I've been a pallbearer at several funerals that people died of black lung. It's a horrible death. Actually cancer of the lungs. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: They can't breathe. Uh, he'll, I guess, uh, in a way I feel sorry for Paul. Now, he's changed it; he come back and changed a whole lot of it. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Which shows he'd made a mistake in the first place, but I admire him for making the changes. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But to those people that was caught in the middle, he'll go to his grave knowing, he'd come, when he'd come into committee and made statements like, "Well, I've got black lung and, uh, and probably as bad as, uh, two-thirds of the people that gets paid these premiums and I'm governor of Kentucky." He'll go to his grave worrying about those statements. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: You know, I don't care what kind of person he is; he'll, that that will bear on his mind. MOYEN: Um-hm. Looking back on your legislative career, what would you say was your best vote, the vote you're most proud of and, and say the vote where you could say, "Looking back, I wish hadn't voted that way." CYRUS: Yeah, you know, there's a lot of votes that way. That's a, that's a tough question. I know, one of the hardest votes that I ever made in my life was voting on the death penalty. Because in my layman's, you know, I, I know the scripture says, "Judge not lest you be judged." But my dad was a country minister and he'd passed away. And I called my mom, and I said, "Mom, if Dad was sitting here, uh, and making a decision on this vote, how, how would, how do you think he would vote on it?" She said, "Well, son, I think your dad would look at Corinthians II. And he'd say, 'Those who lived by sword shall die by the sword.'" And, and other scriptures, "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth." And she said, uh, "Your, your dad would say, 'If, if someone lives the way that they're asking for that type of a penalty,' he'd vote for it." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I said, "Well, then, I'm, I'm gonna for it." That, that was a hard vote. You, you, uh, you, I went down and went through the death chamber at Eddyville. Horrible thing to do. And probably one of the most aggravated times that my people in Greenup County got at me is we had a guy on death row up there at that time. His name was Wallace Boyd. And he was a estranged from his wife and he went over and him, her, and her mother, maybe her father and one of the children was kneeling on their knees, and he shot them and killed him. He was on death row down there. And had, I didn't know he was there. You know, I, I wasn't paying any, I was there, looking at the electric chair, and all that stuff, with all, the whole committee. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And a state government committee. And, uh, as we went by, the warden, Beerdoff(??), or something like that, was his name. He said, uh, "Representative, uh, that's a from Greenup County person, that guy was,"--you looked down at them, you're, you're walking by this walkway and they're maybe from here up-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --is behind the bars and the rest of it is below the ground. You know, below the walkway. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And that guy had that blue dungaree shirt on, and he just stuck his hand up, shook, I shook hands with him. That, that's, they said, "That's Wallace Boyd." Well, he already had his hand up there and, and he's, he made a statement, he said, uh, "If you talked to people from Greenup County, you tell them I've, I've been forgiven by my Lord. I've begged hard for forgiveness." At, at that time he was gonna die. They never did execute him, over that decision that one of the governors made of, I, I don't know who that was. But, anyway, uh, they had to reexamine everything and all that. And I, Wallace never was, I guess, he's still serving, if he's not died. Anyway, uh, when the people back home found out that I had shook hands with Wallace, boy, that, they took that hard. And I didn't, I didn't blame them. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I, I, I told them, I said, "I shouldn't have done that." But it, it hadn't so quick under the circumstances that you're walking along and somebody sticks your hand up and telling you how they've been praying for forgiveness, it, it was just a reaction, I shook hands before I thought. But boy, especially friends of that family down there, said, "Ron, you know, we've been(??), I may not vote against you, but I'll never vote for you again." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I said, "Well, I won't blame you." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, uh, under the circumstances, I, I couldn't blame them. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: But, but that's one of the things that can happen at politics, that happens before you think. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: You know. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: If I'd been going through there, thinking, Boy, I got to be on guard, if somebody should stick their hand out, I better not, maybe I better walk right in the middle, you don't think of those things, you know? MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It just happened before, too quick to think about. But, but to the people that was involved, I couldn't blame them for feeling hard at me. Uh, now, one of the best votes, uh, well, I'd have to say for the, for the working people of Kentucky, it was, uh, getting the prevailing wage passed. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And the reforms on workers' compensation, getting the state fund created. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: That state funds, uh, you don't ever hear, read in Kentucky papers anymore, uh, employers complaining about their high rates, you know. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: Because for the most part, Kentucky is cheaper than the states doesn't have a competitive fund. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Now, West, now West Virginia's now gone to an exclusive fund, like Ohio. But other than them two, we probably got as cheaper rates as, as cheap as, cheaper than all the states that doesn't have a fund. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: And, and as cheap as those that does have the fund. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: So, that was probably a good vote, but there was, oh. There was probably some votes that I was--well, I'll tell you one, uh, an amendment to the constitution that I sponsored. And that's the, for the home state exemption act. And I was very, I was in my thirties then. Little did I have(??), it didn't even enter my mind that someday I'm gonna be old enough to get that. But for the disabled people, uh, and for people over sixty-five to get the home state exemption act on their property taxes-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --that was, you know, looking back at that helped a lot of people. MOYEN: Right, um-hm. CYRUS: Uh, you know, there was a lot of good votes. A lot of, of, you know, a representative probably gets more recognition and probably gets reelected more on what, how they can help people, uh, you'd be surprised from getting them a Kentucky Colonel, in some instances, to helping some kid. There was a kid up in Greenup County, and his family was Republican, and he wanted to be a lawyer. And he was married. I talked to the Chase school in Northern Kentucky. And, and he did make good grades, good, sharp kid. And, and, uh, not only did they take him into law school, but they got his wife a job on campus that, uh, helped him go. So, it, it's those kind of things-- MOYEN: --um-hm-- CYRUS: --that, that, uh, can keep people elected more than how they vote. MOYEN: Right. Um-hm. CYRUS: That's kind of, you know, that's kind of sad, too, in a way, but, but really you look at Robert Byrd. Robert Byrd gets reelected because he brings so many projects back to West Virginia and always has, and, and to those jobs, to the new roads. Those kinds of things keeps the people elected more than how they vote. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You can vote good on bills, on bills that people like, and that really don't matter too much. If you voted against them once, they'll never forget that. MOYEN: Right. CYRUS: If it's a single-issue person. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: You may feel very strongly about gun control. And if I vote to have AK-47, you'd have to register them, why you'd voted against me from then on over that one issue, you know. But normally people stays elected on what they, uh, do for people more than how they vote for people. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: It's like, it's like, uh, those people, when I voted for that five-cent gas tax, they said, "Well, Ron, you know we're gonna vote for you. By God, you help-, you helped me here and you helped there. We know you're gonna vote the best you can vote." That, and, uh, and that's usually the way it is. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: I mentioned that AK-47, uh, the National Rifle Association, uh, sent me, uh, a questionnaire one time, and I sent it back to them. And, uh, the, the, the director of the NRA--and it was about that, come to think of it. It was, uh, "Did I think that, uh, should the government in, in any instances, uh, ban, or, um, make any changes to the gun law?" Well, my God, I, I just put on there, "We'd have to see the circumstances. I'd have to know, uh, exactly what, you know, what they was gonna try to regulate in any way." MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Before, kind of hard to answer that way. Well, my director came to me, and said, "Ron, they didn't like that answer at all." I said, "They didn't like that answer?" "No." I said, "Have you got another one of them applications?" "Yeah, I've got one questionnaire." "Let me fill that out." And just for the meanness of it, for the, for the complete orneriness, I put, "If anybody wants to have a nuclear missile in their backyard, they ought to have the right to do that." (Moyen laughs) And you know they sent me a three hundred dollar check to, for my campaign. Now, how stupid can you be! You know? But, but, somebody, I, I, I liked to think it was Charlton Heston, even though I did like him in some of his movies, uh, I liked to think he thought, Now, that's my kind of legislator. (Moyen laughs) I, I just put on there just for pure orneriness. I put, "If a person wants a nuclear missile in their backyard, they ought to have the right to put it there." Uh, I didn't no more mean that, but I, I thought if they can be that contrary, by God, I can too. MOYEN: Um-hm. Yeah. (Cyrus laughs) So, what would you say your best memory was, in the legislature? CYRUS: In, in, in those instances were, were, uh, people would come and say thank you(??). MOYEN: So, it's really a conglomerate. CYRUS: Yeah, yeah, no, no one certain bill that, if people come up to you and say, "You know, maybe this wouldn't happen without you, uh, uh, we appreciate you." That's, that made it worthwhile. MOYEN: Um-hm. So, what I have missed? What else would you like to mention(??). CYRUS: Oh, I, Lord I don't, I've probably talked ten times more than what I should have. Uh, bored you. But, but, uh, I don't know anything but we've not covered pretty well. Covered more than what, what I thought we would. MOYEN: Well, I appreciate your time. CYRUS: Eric, I've, I've enjoyed having you up with me. And, and, and like me and you both know, we talked about it several times, and I never was against it. But like I say, Penny, is her name Penny Marshall? MOYEN: Miller. CYRUS: Penny Miller. MOYEN: Um-hm. CYRUS: Dr. Penny Miller. MOYEN: Yeah. CYRUS: If you ever get to read her, The Changes of the Legislature-- MOYEN: --I've got the book-- CYRUS: -- ------------(??)-- MOYEN: --sitting on my desk and I didn't. CYRUS: Well, you read that because I'm in there. And I always appreciated Penny, uh, writing that in that book. I was looking up there for that little blue book. Maybe one of the kids has got it now. [End of interview.] Cyrus (House 1976-1986, 98th district; Democrat) describes his early years in Russell County and his family's religious and political views. He also talks about his military service and its influence. Cyrus discusses his first campaign and involvement in local political races. As a legislator for over two decades, he discusses the personalities and leadership of Kentucky Governors Julian Carroll, Wendell Ford, John Y. Brown, Martha Layne Collins, Wallace Wilkinson, Brereton Jones, and Paul Patton. Cyrus also shares his memories of House leadership, including Bill Kenton, Bobby Richardson, and Don Blandford. He points out the difficulties of a legislator's time, pay, and committee work. Cyrus also describes monumental moments in the Kentucky legislature, including health care reform, Toyota, KERA, and BOPTROT. He recounts several memories of his contemporaries, including Terry McBrayer, Helen Garrett, and Albert Robinson, to name but a few. Cyrus also shares personal memories of his son's notoriety as an internationally known music star. insert here

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