NCLM Southern City Volume 71, Issue 2, 2021

NCLM.ORG 17 every kind of board, I coached teams, I was president of the chamber, president of Kiwanis. I’m one of those guys, if I’m going to be in something, I want to be involved in it, and if you’re going to be involved in it, usually you’re asked to lead. So, I’d done all those, I was asked to put in for school board or county commis- sioner, and I said as long as our children are home, I would not do that, because they’re my first priority. I have three millennials, I tell everybody. When our youngest was going to be a senior in high school, I ran for county commissioner the first time. And I said I’d only serve two terms, that’s eight years. So, I won and served, and won again and served. I served as chair for three of those years. And when I got to the end, I said I’m stepping away. And many people said, Jim, we know you said it, but things are going great, the county’s good, we straightened out a lot of financial issues. I said no. This is real important, that I keep my word. Politicians a lot of times don’t. So, I said when I came here as senator, that I would only serve 12 years. This is now starting my third year. And I will honor that. I will not serve past 12 years. How has your experience in those eight years as a county commis- sioner played into your service as a senator? JB : Great experience. I really feel like if you don’t have experience at the local level, either working as an elected official in a town or a county commissioner or school board, I think you miss a lot of opportunities to learn everything from how meetings run, parlia- mentary procedures, just how to glean information, how to work in the bounds—government is not like business. I’m a business guy, we’ve got multiple businesses—I had to make a decision this morning about hiring somebody. Up here (in government) it takes six months to hire somebody. And we’ve got to fix that. We’ll never run government like business, and it probably shouldn’t, because you don’t want one person making rash decisions. There is a method. The method is, it goes through committees, goes through hearings. Get collaboration, get all that. But it shouldn’t take six months to hire folks for the state. With some processes taking so long, how do you stay motivated and on the ball to see things through? And with all the other vari- ables that demand your attention... JB : I’ve got books. (Editor’s note: The senator here has pulled out a three-ring binder, filled to capacity.) It’s my 2021 long session book of bills. It’s got bills from the first session, it’s got things that I worked out over the summer, and this is what we go with, this is what we use for everything that we do. I have this and I have follow-up lists. And if you go and look at the senate bills that were filed, the first ones that were turned in were mine. I have (bill) number 3, 4, 5. There were some bills I had been working on, right after the election—I knew that I was coming back, I started communicating with staff. [...] So, we started pretty quick and so I keep this (binder) on my desk. I also keep a running tally sheet of continues on page 18 Senator Burgin set a tone of better living through data-backed programming and in being involved enough in the important issues to make informed change. A key focus is health care, particularly mental health care , which he sees as a rife-for-improvement sector that at its most successful should lead to better, more fulfilled communities. By the Numbers: Legislator Q&A