(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.

- Hi, I'm Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE the Upper Cumberland's on PBS station because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small firm, personalized care and service.

- Money doesn't buy happiness.

What buys happiness is you loving what you do every day.

If you do that, you will be successful because you will be happy and you'll have a life that you enjoy.

(upbeat music) - Speaker Sexton, Cameron Sexton, you are the 83rd Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

You also have been a representative for the 25th District here in the Upper Cumberland for six terms.

And I believe you serve Cumberland County, Van Buren and part of Putnam County, there in Monterey.

This is such an honor to be able to have this time with you, thank you so much for that.

- Well, thank you all for having me.

It's a wonderful thing.

I've seen these shows before so I appreciate you, including me.

- We're excited about it.

I do want to ask you, it's a lot of responsibility being the Speaker of the House and you came into that in sort of a little bit of a turbulent time but you have great confidence among your peers.

And I know that you sort of entered a new, you issued that in a new era of leadership there at the house and tell me, what is your leadership style?

What's your thought about that?

- I've told members, I'm never going to ask them to do something that I'm not willing to do myself and I think that's first and foremost.

The second thing I've learned in my years there watching other people who've been leaders and see how they interact, is I'm a big believer in being able to work together, have conflict together and still be able to be friends afterwards.

And so I expect out of the members to have decorum for each other, respect for one another and respect for the process and the institution.

That's the guardrails I put in place.

We just went through this session.

We're going to finish up here in the next few days.

And hopefully my leadership style is inclusive, allowing people to be individuals knowing that we're all unique but allowing them to voice their opinions as well but also trying to make sure we're all on the same page in moving Tennessee forward.

And don't rule with the iron fist but you have to be firm.

And so there's sometimes you have to do things that people may not agree with to keep control and keep things running in order.

So you can't be afraid to make tough decisions.

- Have you had mentors that you feel like really sort of shepherded you in this direction?

- Well, when you go back and look, over all your years, if you exclude your parents, there's a lot of how you were raised about how you are.

And when you get into a certain age, maybe 40, you realize that your parents were probably right 95% of the time.

But if you exclude family members, what I would say is when I was at UT, in undergrad, I worked for a guy named Dr. John Carnes, who is a pharmacist who provided me with a lot of insight for a 20 year old at the time.

From that point, I went and did some work for a state senator who was Randy McNally at that time, who's now Lieutenant Governor, I worked on his campaign and he's been a mentor throughout.

He also knew me when I was in high school.

So when I was 16, 17 years old and it's great to have that relationship.

I've worked for Van Hilleary, so when he was a Congressman so I learned a lot of things from him.

And then I watched how Governor Haslam led and how Speaker Harwell, who's the first female speaker in the state of Tennessee, how she led.

And so I've been able to take a lot of what I've watched and learned over the years and kind of develop my own style.

But everybody taught me a little something a little bit different when I sit back and look at it.

- Can you kind of explain to us what is this role, the Speaker Of The House?

- Well, it's more than we ever think it would be.

I mean, what I will say is when any member's there and you think about being speaker, you realize you're in charge of the committees, how to shape policy, you're helping with the administration the governor, lieutenant governor with the budget and trying to move the state.

But it's like a big business because we have about a hundred and I think 50 to 175 employees in the house that's the speaker's responsibility.

You still have human resource issues that you have to deal with.

You still have a legislative budget.

You still have policies that you have to implement.

One of the things I found out when I took over speaker is we were behind what businesses were doing on sexual harassment, a lot of other things.

And so I've spent a lot of time in the early days trying to bring us up to speed with how businesses would operate.

So it's a lot more than what you think it would be.

- It really is and I watched our legislative coverage.

Across the state, Tennessee Public Television does gavel to gavel.

And I'm amazed at how you actually run the meetings.

You really can talk fast and you get those bills going through there.

Is that something that you develop a style for?

- You get it, we call it, you get a cadence.

And so you get a rhythm and sometimes you're on and sometimes you're not, but there there's a flow and you try to find the flow and people try to learn.

When I was chairman of the health committee, I had a cadence where I moved.

I didn't move as fast as I do as speaker but you kind of find the rhythm to move forward and be able to do that, yeah.

- Well, it's great to watch, I'll tell you that.

I love to watch our government in action.

And so I'm going to ask you that, you had this great career in pharmaceutical and then you move into government, leadership, public service.

Why did you do that?

- Well, so for me to get back into when I ran in 2010, there was an issue here locally in Cumberland County where the elected officials and business leaders did not feel like that the person who was their representative at the time was representing their interests, their opinions and actually there was a lot of discussions and arguments going back and forth and the person who they elected was not wanting to do what they were asking them to do as a group of people who lived in Cumberland County.

And so they grew frustrated and asked me to run and step up.

And so we decided to run against an incumbent who was entrenched, but I had a lot of local support from all over the Cumberland County.

We started off behind and we just kept gaining like the engine and got there.

But that's where I came in with, if you see anything I do in my campaigns it always says people before politics.

And that's how I came up with that message is because the elected official was not listening to the people.

They were putting politics before people and I want to do people before politics.

And so that's kind of been the ingrained part over the last 11 years.

- I love that slogan and I know that it's very true to you and I love to see that with you.

When you did your acceptance speech for the speaker's position, you talked about the importance of the three branches of government working together.

Can you share that with us?

- Yeah the founding fathers had it right.

You had three branches of government that kind of keep everything balanced and everybody could tell the legislative has a purpose.

And so does the executive and so does the judicial and our job is not to interpret laws, that's judicial, ours is to make laws.

And so our job is to make laws or make policy that we think will benefit Tennessee.

We all need to work there to get there together.

In Tennessee, probably 90% of the things that we pass, we all agree on in the general assembly.

And so we need to continue to do that continue to work together to make Tennessee the state that's thriving right now.

- You talked about coming up in different leadership roles and I believe you were the chairman of the 3-Star Health Task Force.

What was the focus of that task force?

- So that was at a point when Governor Haslam was looking at Insure Tennessee and Speaker Harwell wanting to go a little different direction.

And so I was chair of the health committee and she came to me and asked me if I would want to find an alternative to Insure Tennessee or Obamacare or Medicaid expansion, whatever anybody wants to call it.

And so I spent the summer and one of the things that I learned during that process was not to go into a meeting 'cause we met all over the state to talk about healthcare and I tried to tell the members who were on the task force with me, is let's don't go in with our preconceived notions of what we think we should do.

If you go in with an open mind and ask questions meeting after meeting, things will start bubbling up the same three or four things.

And the beautiful thing about it is we weren't really talking about expansion but we're really what came up was a need for mental health, substance abuse help or behavioral health is kind of what that term is.

And that issue kept rising to the top, no matter where we went and Memphis, Chattanooga, Tri-Cities, Knoxville, it was all the same.

And so that was one lesson I learned which is it's always better to listen and you'll find out what the true issue is.

And in that case, and that's why I've been a big proponent of trying to fix ACEs and childhood experiences.

Cause that leads to problems in school and learning things.

But also we need to be more proactive in the mental health community and behavioral health in getting people help in long-term help not just short term - You know, you also were the architect of the care plan.

Can you describe what you hope that plan can do?

- Yeah, so that goes back into healthcare.

And so another thing as we continue to talk to people and you talk to providers and independent pharmacists and just consumers or patients is we have a healthcare system that really is broke.

Meaning the people who are in charge are the insurers.

And so they're the ones who are telling your physician on what they can or can't do for tests.

They're telling the patients, well, you can't do that cause it costs too much.

Or they're telling you if you do that, you have to pay this much.

And so the doctor and the patient are no longer in charge of that patient's healthcare.

And so we came up with the care plan to emphasize that we wanted the physician and the patient to be the center of the wheel not a spoke of the wheel.

And everything goes from them out, not having insurance have everything going out.

- Wow, okay.

How's that working?

- We're getting there, we're getting there.

We've passed some great reforms in the healthcare marketplace.

We're trying to bring more transparency into it.

More accessibility, we're doing some PBM reform right now to help patients with their drug prices being reduced.

So, we're getting there, it's a tall task.

It's a lot to do but we're hopeful to get there one day, you have to have a vision on what you want to do to get there and that's kind of our vision.

- So speaking of pharmaceuticals, insulin has been an issue and I know that's something that you've been working to address.

- It is, so there trains of thought.

You don't want to go into the market and mandate price controls or what pricing is, that needs to be the normal economic process.

But there's things that we could do, things that we could do help with.

There's a lot of cards and pharmaceutical industry has really stepped up and provided cards to help lower the cost of it.

One of the problems that we've had with PBMs, is if you get that $50 card to help pay for your insulin, they won't count that towards your deductible.

And so we passed a piece of legislation this year that said if you're using that $50, it needs to count towards your deductible as if you're paying it because it was not helping the patients.

And that was the issue that we're still having with the PBMs, as we're trying to bring in controlling the price of pharmaceuticals - I know education is another area that you're very passionate about.

What do you think really are the greatest challenges our families have in the state of Tennessee?

- The one thing I will say is right now in K through 12, if you graduate from any high school in our state, you don't have the same opportunity for the same classes and for the same high level instruction.

And that's a problem because K through 12 or in our state, when you graduate high school, every single student should be able to know how to read, know how do math, be prepared to go into the workforce or be prepared to go to college.

And some school systems are doing great, some are not.

And so we really need to be able to have everybody graduate and have the same opportunity after high school being prepared but not all high schools offer the same classes because some can't afford to offer as many AP classes.

And so there's things that we can do to improve that and make sure that when everybody graduates, they're at the same place to start life and not staggered.

- You're also passionate about people who have learning disabilities.

I know you were recognized by the International Dyslexia Association.

Is there a personal story there that causes you to care about people with learning disabilities?

- Well, I mean, I think it goes back to whether people have down syndrome or any other type of disability or intellectual disability is we're all unique individuals and we all have a purpose.

I think we all have a purpose in life regardless of who you are and people come into your life and people come out of your life for purpose to help you get through certain times and you're there to help them get through certain times.

But if you realize that we're all unique and we should all have the same opportunities, I had a good friend here who you probably know, Chester Goad, who is a big person in the dyslexia community.

And we've talked about legislation, about things that we needed to do to set state policy, to allow teachers to learn more in college when they come out about how to treat and recognize dyslexia how to do better in college, but really try to understand and define it better, where they can get more resources than they currently could have.

And so there's little things that we can do to help.

We still got more to do in that endeavor just like we have more to do in third grade and fourth grade with reading and math.

And so it all goes on top of one another.

- So connectivity, we learned a lot during the pandemic about connectivity and about broadband access.

And we're in rural communities here in the Upper Cumberland.

How important is it to get that broadband expansion across the state?

- Well, I mean, it's really important because it does connect you.

I still like the old encyclopedias, not many people use those anymore.

They want to go to Google and they want to go Wikipedia and they go wherever.

You can actually go to "Encyclopedia Britannica" online, but anyway, so people get their information in different ways and bringing broadband into the work community or into the homes allow you to experience different things.

And so one of the things that we're doing as a state is investing heavily.

This year we put another hundred million dollars into bringing broadband across the state, but the issue that we're having as it comes in only about 30% of the people actually want to connect to it.

And so as we're bringing it in we need to figure out how to make it more attractive for people want to go in and actually purchase and get onto having broadband in their homes.

- That's interesting, you've also been very supportive of public television here with WCTE and we appreciate that very much.

And knowing the importance that many rural citizens have for that, what is your thought about connecting, living in a rural community?

What's great about it?

What's the challenge about it?

- Well, I remember growing up when I grew up in Knoxville and it felt like I was in a rural community because in the '70s we lived out in the country which is no longer in the country and we only would get four stations.

We didn't get cable till a long time.

And so having PBS as still part or public access TV is still part of our institution and the programming that you bring with kids programs which you don't have to worry about them sitting in front and hearing bad words or bad messages, it gives you a lot of comfort.

And then the other things that you do as well in other programs that you have is really something that we need to make sure we preserve and keep providing.

And so, as we're kind of going through this anything that we can do to continue the arts, I'm big into the arts and supporting The Playhouse here in Cumberland County and other places because people need to be challenged and learn different ways.

Not everybody learns how to sing or how to play music or perform or not everybody plays sports.

And so we need to be able to have people who are diverse, who find the love that they do to help bring them some happiness and excitement.

And so it all I think takes in together.

- You are a family man, you're a man of faith.

Can you share a little bit about your family and about living here in Cumberland County, what do you like to do?

If someone said, describe Cameron Sexton- - You're going to get me in trouble now?

(laughs) You're going to make me pick in here in Cameron County.

No, you know, I mean, I grew up where my family was really tight growing up.

Me and my brother are still really close.

Both my parents are still alive and they're still living in a house I grew up in, in the '70s.

And so living here in Cumberland County is a lot like growing up when I was in Knoxville living in a rural community, the one thing I've been here for over 20 years, have a lot of good friends seen a lot of growth on the plateau in here.

What I like to do here is we still have good friends.

I love to go play golf when I have an opportunity if I can do that.

But I like going to the Cumberland Playhouse.

I mean, I love musicals, I love plays.

That's one of those things that people look at me when I say that.

And they just think really, like seriously, but I do, and so going and watch "Clue" at The Playhouse, not too long ago, that's entertaining to me, watching people do something they love and they share it with you and it makes you a fan of it.

- Yeah, that's true.

And we have such a, I love The Playhouse too, So, we're kindred spirits there.

But you love the outdoors and I know you've been very active in the parks and our region has the most beautiful state parks - They do and hopefully, we've invested a lot of money, Governor Haslam's done that early and Governor Lee's continued.

And so there's been money to go into Cumberland Mountain State Park with camping and RVs helping to bring those up.

And then in Fall Creek Falls, a lot to the campgrounds and to the cabins and the brand new inns going to open up here very soon, which will transform that whole area.

One of the things is we have about 3 million people who visit Cumberland Mountain State Park and Fall Creek Falls on an annual basis.

And we want to move those people not to just be a one-day destination, but to a weekend, and then to a week and continue to grow and prosper and use that as an economic driver for the plateau.

- What, in this particular legislative session, and as you mentioned, we're about to wrap up and pass the budget and fortunately you'll maybe get to come home for a while.

So what do you feel most proud of that's been accomplished in this period?

- So, I mean, there's a few things, I think one is when we had the special session back in January, where we really attacked the third and fourth grade reading and math proficiency levels.

In 10 years, we've gone from only a fourth to a third, which is progress, but it's not good enough.

Coming from a mom who is a kindergarten teacher, there's a special place.

And what you realize is if we want everybody to finish high school and have the same opportunities, if the third and fourth grade reading and math levels are a high watermark and then they drop in eighth and they drop in high school, then we really need to focus.

And so us focusing two years to see if we have a learning loss in a summer program that will be effective to bring more people to proficiency, to move more people along and seeing what that does is a huge benefit for us.

And so I think that's the first step in a long-term, the other thing in the governor's budget which hasn't been talked about is we have the imagination library that goes from birth to kindergarten.

And so it never made sense to me.

And I asked the governor it never makes sense to me that to go from kindergarten but when they start reading in kindergarten the books stop, because you have kids who won't come to the library sometimes because their parents may not take them.

Although we have wonderful libraries.

And so being able to have money in the budget this time to continue books from kindergarten to first grade in the summer to let them continue to read when they're out of school and to learn and hopefully get that to a third grade book program here the next couple of years I think will pay dividends for us.

And so, there's a lot of things in this budget.

That's great, but I think those things where you can help kids find the love of reading.

And I spoke at Kids On The Rise here in Crossville last week to a graduating class.

And I think one of the things that we do in society too much is we look at our phones.

We read on our phones.

So it's not the same as grabbing a book, sitting in your chair and reading a book.

And so I challenged them to read books because that's how you gain knowledge.

That's how you learn.

That's how you continue to develop your language and your communication.

And so hopefully the reading will continue on.

- I love that.

Let me ask you also, this has been a trying year, 2020, with COVID and it seems like we're continuing, although we're getting better, Also, we've had, civil unrest over race and a number of things.

and in our area, we've had severe weather.

You had a tornado here in Cumberland County not that long ago.

And then of course the massive tornado that devastated our area.

What is it like leading in that time of crisis?

- It's trying, I mean, it is.

And so, I have a very good relationship with Governor Lee and Lieutenant Governor McNally through this because we've had to work so closely and watching Governor Lee had to make decisions and how he lead gave me a lot of life lessons and watching how he dealt with things.

I think as I'm looking at it, 2020 was a lot, I came in at the end of 2019 and we start the session and everything looks good.

Then you have the tornado.

Then you have some floods, I think, mixed in there.

And then you had the pandemic and then we had the break.

And so being able to be there and trying to keep us all calm and moving and making the decisions to keep our state moving forward while taking safety and precaution I think has led us to have better economic growth and allow businesses to continue to stay in business.

- You're an eighth generation Tennessean.

And you mentioned growing up in Knoxville, you went to school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

You live here in Cumberland County.

Have you ever wanted to live anywhere else?

- I've moved some, the eighth generation comes from Scott County, so not too far from here.

The family's up in Huntsville and Oneida area.

And so, I love Tennessee, I love living in Tennessee.

And when I get to travel Tennessee as speaker, it's three distinct parts of our state, east, mid and west.

And they all have great, great assets and great benefits but there's no better place to live.

in my opinion than in Tennessee.

- In the time that we have left, you are a very influential person in our region and in our state.

So what would you like to share with young people who might be looking at you to say maybe I want to do what he does?

- Just realize I make mistakes, And so that's the first thing is nobody's perfect.

And so you shouldn't expect people that you look at to be perfect.

The thing I would tell them is listen to their parents, listen to their mom and dad and try to build relationships with other people.

And never try to make enemies, always try to make friends.

And if someone is an enemy, try to make them a friend but never return fire with fire but always try to do something that you think will benefit, not just you, but others.

If you think of others first, if you try to do other things for other people, then you'll be able to be a servant.

And so there's different ways to serve people.

It's just not being elected official.

People serve people all day long.

And the last thing I tell people as they're growing up, whoever you're looking at, just don't look at the LeBron James and those people, that's a false sense of a mentor.

Look at people locally, like here in Cameron County like a Scot Shanks, who does Kids On The Rise.

Stay away from elected officials.

But what I will say is if they wake up every day and they love what they do.

So if you wake up every morning and you're ready to get out of bed to start your day to go do what you love to do, regardless of what it is regardless of the pay, money doesn't buy happiness.

What buys happiness is you loving what you do every day.

If you do that, you will be successful because you will be happy and you'll have a life that you enjoy and you will have great comfort in that.

And so that's my advice to young people is be careful who you try to mentor and who you try to watch out and see what they do depending on who they are.

- I appreciate that very much.

That's great advice and we're unfortunately out of time.

So hopefully we can continue this again, down the road, and learn more when you start next season in the house.

Thank you so much for your public service and thank you for all you do for our region and our state.

- Well, thank you, thank you very much.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station, because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Narrator] The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small firm, personalized care and service.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.