As the 2025 legislative session winds down, we're introducing you to another new lawmaker.

Representative Aaron Thompson is from Russell and Northeastern Kentucky.

We caught up with him at Grand Beau Lake State Resort Park in Greenup County, where he discussed his passion for economic development.

As we continue profiling the freshman class of the 2025 Kentucky General Assembly and.

I was born in the early 1990s, and that gave me a really good viewpoint growing up in eastern Kentucky during that time period when the economy was pretty well.

Both of my parents had good jobs and other things.

How things should be working effectively.

I really draw a lot on my previous experience before working in government.

During college at U-K, I had a several different internships where I worked in politics, including for my state representative at the time.

I also interned for Congressman Andy Barr when he was first running for office.

Working for the congressman really helped to give me some good experience with constituent service and helping to help folks individually.

And then after that experience, I worked for four years during the Bevin administration as a field representative.

So I moved back home to Greenup County.

Been back here since then.

After graduating at UK and working for for the congressman.

I'm a conservative overall.

You know, on the campaign trail, I talked about voting from a conservative, constitutional and Christian perspective.

And those are the three things that I always try to consider and that I've considered, within my own lot.

But then also in particular, how I'm voting on things for Eastern Kentucky economic development is really one of the most critical things that we we need to be working on overall, collectively as a team.

You know, if you look over the past 2 to 3 decades, we have lost, well over 25,000 people in some of our counties overall.

And that's essentially like taking a population about the size of Carter County and just just removing those people completely.

And a lot of that has been the job loss that we have faced overall.

And you can talk about, you know, large manufacturers that have left the area, such as the Coke plant in Clarksburg or AK steel, or good corporate jobs that Ashland Oil used to have in Russellville, or a key hospital like Belmont Hospital or in our deep mountain counties.

We've lost a lot of jobs because of the coal industry, and this is by far the biggest issue facing eastern Kentucky.

And if we don't fix it, it's really going to make things difficult for future generations.

We've got a good workforce that I know that if we have more jobs in our area, that we'll be able to fill those jobs with, with, with good people overall.

You know, the first session has been very interesting for me.

I really have went into it just trying to trying to learn.

You know, I'm on tourism and outdoor recreation, post-secondary education and state government.

These three committees, we've dealt with a lot of different issues over the course of the 2025 session, but they've given me a really good understanding for how the committee process works, how it can work effectively, and how that legislation ultimately makes it down to the House floor and through the entire legislative process.

I was very excited to take my first vote on House Bill one, which was the income tax reduction, to take that down from 4% in 2025 to 3.5% in 2026.

Legislatively, I've done a couple different things this year that I'm pretty proud of.

First and foremost, I carried House Bill 191, which is actually signed into the law by the governor on Saturday.

So we have five veterans cemeteries across Kentucky state veterans cemeteries.

We get support for those from the federal government.

But there are currently some ineligibility rules for some of our veterans that were in the reserves or certain components of the National Guard if they were not deployed outside of the state, and prohibitions from them being able to be to be buried there.

Federal law was changed, but we hadn't made that state law change yet, and I was able to carry that bill with the support of some, more experienced members of the legislature.

But we were able to get that through.

It passed both the House and the Senate.

And the governor signed it really outside of being state representative.

What's important to me most is really just making sure that I'm a good dad.

And husband.

I have a two year old at home, and so, just balancing that is extremely important, but really, making sure that I continue to be involved in the community when I'm, when I'm not in Frankfort, that's something that's a that's important to me also.

Representative Thompson also says he's looking forward to the interim period that begins in June.

Over the summer and fall, state lawmakers discuss issues and policy ideas that can serve as a foundation to what they'll consider in the next regular lawmaking session.