Getting to Know House Chairman Chris Todd

Chairman Todd has served as a lawmaker for just shy of six years, after being elected to serve in the 111^th General Assembly. Growing up in Paris, Todd’s family comes from agriculture, where his grandfather raised hogs, cattle, beans and corn. After obtaining his biology degree in Jackson, he put down roots there and began to operate his erosion control business. He and his wife, Melissa, are the parents of two children, one son and one daughter, and enjoy traveling and staying involved in their community.

Was there a particular moment where you knew you wanted to run for representative? 
I think it’s probably more of an accumulation of moments. For 10 or 12 years, I was a member of the NFIB, and our small business was represented by them as an Association member. Then I became involved fairly early on in their leadership council and their Environmental Council. I got to probably be a little more involved than just the average person with legislative things, mostly dealing with small businesses. That was really such a neat introduction to me into this world and had a few very specific instances where I got to see how just an individual or a small group of individuals had a very significant influence on legislation. So this told me, you know, people still have influence from the standpoint of grassroots, influencing what legislation is passed. It meant a lot to me and opened my eyes more to state government. Just like everybody else, I’m pretty disgruntled with DC and emotionally from the standpoint of the Constitution, you know, we have ceded so much power to DC and so much of our money to DC, and our borrowing power. Unfortunately, over many decades now the states don’t have the type of standing they should have. The Constitution clearly defines what the federal government shall do, and says all other powers are left with the states. I’m a big proponent of federalism and getting us back to the point where states have the ultimate authority. I mean, again, states created the Federal Government, states created the cities and counties so state government is the center of all government in our country, and it should be because that’s where people are more accountable. That’s where the average everyday folks can have the most influence, I believe. So, once seeing the whole picture made me more interested in being a part of it, but I never dreamed I would at this stage of life running a business is more than a full-time job. But, when the Lord calls you up, you know. With a lot of prayer and supplication, we decided he was calling us into this for some reason. We won our first election and then two subsequent elections. But it’s truly a tremendous honor to be in this position, because you look at it from the big picture. Very few people in this state are in this type of position. And I don’t take this lightly. I’m very humble – I don’t feel like I deserve to be in this spot at all. I also recognize everything I do, reflects on my constituents, and Tennessee as a whole. The places we travel now, talking to other legislators, we get a lot of questions, we get a lot of comments from them, asking, “how are you guys doing this in Tennessee, you are the place to be everybody wants to be.” Again, I think it’s just going back to our foundational principles which our state is so keen on of basic human morality, Christian founding, and doing the right thing when it comes to abiding by the Constitution. Certainly, with a biblical worldview in mind, and again, counted as a very high honor to be in this position, and want to continue to represent my constituents and the folks of Tennessee, for whatever period of time the Lord kind of keeps it on my plate.

Talk a little about your role models and about who keeps you grounded while you’re up here.
You know, I think first and foremost, I would say family keeps me grounded. I’ll never forget the first piece of mail I got after being elected. It was addressed to the Honorable Chris Todd. Well, my daughter got the mail that day. And she when she saw that, oh my gosh, the eye rolls and everything was so funny. So, my family keeps me humble, because nothing changed with me from the day before I got a letter calling me the honorable to the day after, I’m still the same guy. And that’s really such, to me, such a neat part of this establishment is we’re just regular everyday folks serving for some period of time are willing to step into this role and perform those duties and, and responsibilities for the people and for our communities, and then go home and continue our life as it was. Role models in this world are numerous. I think a lot of different faces come to mind. When I think of role models, it depends on what the situation is. Again, I’ve served for five years, I’ve served with a number of folks who really stand out to me for certain things – integrity, character, honesty, trustworthiness, wisdom in just how all of these things fit together. So, I can’t name just one and I’m almost hesitant to start naming anyone. But you know, one that comes to mind is Bill Dunn. Bill is now with the Department of Education but was here for 20 something years serving in this role and was just such a wealth of knowledge and he never wavered in his grounding. He was always pulling from those foundational constitutional principles and every decision he made and every comment he made. It seemed like he was pulling from that. I had a lot of respect for Bill, still do and I still will, we’ll call him or see him and ask him a question off the record, just for his personal opinion. And several folks like Bill I have, have asked to it. Don’t wait for me to ask you something. If you see something I need to know if I’m stepping in it, and you need to get me out of it. Feel free. I’m not wearing my feelings on my sleeves. I beg you to interject when you see me going awry. Another one is Andy Holt. I’ve got a lot of respect for Andy and his perspective on things. My goodness, you know, our speaker, Cameron Sexton, and again, someone who has a lot of wisdom in this realm of just the big picture and how things fit together. Leader Lamberth, we have become close friends, and I do rely on him for his insight into things and advice when I’m facing a decision that I’m struggling with. And again, there’s so many others that I’ve served with here that are not coming immediately to mind. But if you name a specific bill or situation, I can probably immediately do that (think of someone who would be a role model). And then there are folks who represent organizations like Farm Bureau or NFIB, when something in those realms come up, I know people to call who will have their hands around it, they have the association, the membership behind them, who have determined what those answers should be. And that’s very valuable to me to know where those groups are representing a lot of people 1000’s of people who are just real everyday folks that are hard working individuals in Tennessee and are here for the right reasons and have the experience in the background and the knowledge that they’re willing to share through their association so that I can make those good decisions.

What are some tips you use to handle navigating conflict and decision making?
I see the role as Chairman as somewhat of a referee to make sure every member is treated fairly, everyone has their say, has a voice in the conversation. And even the public, you know, we want to make sure if the public is there, and they want to have input on a bill or just give a presentation, we want to be mindful of that. And we want to be respectful and accommodating to make sure they had the opportunity as much as possible. So, you know, having things go at a pace where we get our business done, but we also can make sure we hear from those voices. Because that’s such a critical part of our process. Sometimes we’re faced with difficult decisions, you know, complicated decisions, things that maybe don’t get the full vetting in a committee. And you learn of other angles and other aspects behind the scenes or afterwards that you didn’t know in subcommittee and helping share that information and make sure the committee understands those factors, and that the right decision can be made on that particular bill. There’s a heavy responsibility there to make sure the right thing gets done. You know, as a newly elected representative, the very first bill I got passed was to repeal a bad law I had discovered. I had someone in my community come to me and say, “this just got on the books a year ago and it is going to close our business in less than a year.” Well, that gets your attention. As a small business owner that really gets your attention. I looked into it, I saw how it was passed and it was someone very influential who got it passed, and it was kind of a big business favor type bill nobody really noticed. I thought you know, that’s not good for the majority of businesses in our state. I ran it up the flagpole and fortunately got it repealed. I’m always looking for that. Not only do we have any bad laws on the books that need to be changed or repealed, but also to make sure we don’t have anything bad passed, even resolutions mean something to me. I want to make sure we don’t pass something that is going to make a statement about the state that’s inaccurate or inappropriate. And we’ve had those, we’ve had some resolutions presented that, from an ag standpoint, were very negative and detrimental. We have to make sure those don’t get put forth in such a way the public thinks that’s really what we think about the state of Tennessee, because it’s really not – we’re very proud of the state and want to make sure that only the best gets passed, and the worst gets repealed or killed. So, it’s not always an easy thing to do when you have members with competing interests, or someone that thinks they’ve got a really, really good idea. And you’ve got to find a way to explain to them why it’s really not it, here’s how it’s going to be harmful. Most of the time folks can get their hands around that if you do well enough job of explaining it and, and kind of sell that point to them, where they see the results of it down the road. And then they usually can tell sometimes things need some more work, and  hold it for a year and look at it some more.

What role would you say Farm Bureau plays in the legislative process?
There’s so much that gets presented in a given year in the legislature for consideration that it’s almost unmanageable for one person or a small group of people to have their hands around it and keep an eye on it. So having folks like Farm Bureau watching what bills are being filed, what’s being put on notice what’s being calendared and run through committee on a week to week basis is so vital. I mean, it is extremely critical to the process. Because even as Chairman, there can be some things that come through you don’t notice there’s something hidden in it, or there’s a potential negative in it. So, it takes all eyes on these things to make sure, again, we don’t trip up and pass something that’s going to be detrimental. Having multiple eyes on it and groups with specific interest watching for those things, because they’re the experts. You know, I’m only an expert in very few things, and I recognize that when I came to this job, I know that on a daily basis now. I have to rely on folks in fields that are truly experts in those fields where I’m not. And then I’ll certainly you know, understand and focus on the things when my expertise comes into play. But for the majority of the time, it’s somebody else’s expertise. So having Farm Bureau who looks out for property rights looks out for the ag community and any bills which could potentially do harm, or at least not support our ag community is vital. And again, I come kind of come from a similar world with NFIB because it’s what I was doing as a citizen advocate. I understand it even better than most probably how vital that is to this system working properly. So again, things can get very complicated, you can have a very simple sounding bill that has a tremendous amount of ripple effects. And if you don’t recognize those quickly, early in the process, the train can get rolling and be hard to slow down before something bad happens.

What are some things the state is doing to address the economic situation in distressed counties? We’re headed in the right direction, but what’s something that you’d like to brag about that the General Assembly is doing?
I think first and foremost, the legislature has been very intentional for some time now, in creating a business environment where we would attract folks, not only businesses, but people to support those businesses, and we’re doing that. I mean, Tennessee is the number one drop off for U-Haul in the United States. That tells you folks are moving here, they’re coming in droves right now. I talk to realtors about it sometimes, how many of them tell me when they interview these folks, they want to find out what they’re thinking, okay, you’re moving to Tennessee, what’s your reasoning, and most of them, fortunately, are moving here for the right reasons where they’re leaving some ridiculously liberal state that is taking their rights away from them and they’re wanting to move back to freedom in Tennessee. Protecting freedoms and liberties, to me, is our number one priority, by our oath of office, it is goal number one. There’s a lot of things underneath that but to me is the first and foremost. Being a beacon for liberty and freedom in this country is crucial, I believe. It’s what we’re supposed to be kind of getting back to what our Founders intended for us to be. But then also the way of life, I think Tennessee has such a diversity across the state of individuals of environments. I mean, I’ve grown up in West Tennessee all my life, I got to spend a little time in East Tennessee working one summer and fell in love with it. You know, there’s just not a place in this state I wouldn’t want to live and retire in for a year. It just, it’s all good, every place has its own flavor. Unfortunately, in West Tennessee, we’ve been losing people for a number of decades now and our population has been diminishing. So having blue oval, and then several other industries around that are already committed to coming to West Tennessee has started to turn around now. And we’re going to see a surge of folks. I don’t know every community that is small and not growing. They’re staying rural, I don’t know those communities necessarily want to grow. I wouldn’t assume that every rural community wants to be a city, I would assume the opposite, quite frankly, that’s why most of those people stay there and they live there. They move there to stay rural and small. I had that conversation with a small-town mayor not long ago, he was talking about how we need this and that for our community to grow. I said, “Do you ever think about your community may not want to grow. That’s why they live here. They liked the small-town atmosphere”. And I don’t know he really thought about that, it is certainly something to consider. When I came in five years ago, one of the focuses I did have, along with several of my colleagues that came in with me, was encouraging the administration, especially ECD, to focus on our rural communities. When you’re citing locations for factories, or whatever kind of businesses who are looking for a good place to land, keep our small communities in mind where there’s a good fit, let’s match them up. We’re seeing that all over the state, we’re seeing the big ones, but we’re also seeing the smaller ones. Just recently we had the announcement of a boat manufacturer that’s expanding, and in a significant way, in a fairly rural area. It’s exciting to see because it’ll be life changing for the folks that live there, and there will be probably few more people move into those communities to live and raise their families. It would more than likely will be a real boom to that area, to just have a little better economic condition and still be rural. So, I think little things like that are exciting, and we continue to encourage ECD to do those things to really look at our distressed counties and those that are borderline distressed all across the state to focus new businesses and new arrivals in those places where they fit.

What is the one thing that you are most proud of as a state representative that you’ve done since being here?
How many times I have answered that, and I guess I’m probably still will answer that with the first bill I got passed which repealed a bad law. Literally a month after getting elected, I had a lady call me and said, “I need you to look at something we’ve got a law on the books that was passed about a year ago, goes into effect here in about a month, and in less than a year, it will close our business.” And I was stunned. I thought, hopefully, they’re mistaken but I went and met with them, and it was literally two employees, the owner and one employee. The lady who called me, the employee, is a neighbor of mine. We looked at it, we looked at kind of how it got passed and no one asked questions or anything. We went back and watched video, which is one of the things I love most about our legislature is how transparent things are where you can watch live stream, you can go back and watch our videos from I don’t even know how far back to kind of recreate what was going on and what happened with a particular bill was set of bills. Anyway, we watched those videos and how this got passed and did a little research and realized it was a protectionist bill, there was one company moving into the state that was in a number of states, and one of the first things they tried to do was get this bill passed, and every state they move into that would create a kind of an exclusivity for them in that field, so that no one else practically, could comply with the law and stay in business. There were 13, or 14 of the small businesses across the state that were going to be affected by this and probably have to shut their doors. Once I discovered that, and the member that had gotten it passed, was no longer here, which helped, I think. I ran it up the flagpole and presented it, told the story about how this is affecting some small businesses across the state. I don’t even think we had any of them come and testify, quite frankly, I’ve just presented what their stories were. Then it went from one committee to the next and passed and got somebody to run it in the Senate, same thing they had, we had those folks contact their Senator and tell their story, here’s how this is going to affect them. There was no good reason to leave this on the books at all, it just wasn’t. You know, it was very proud to have a constituent bring it to me and be able to take action on it and get that wrong righted, it meant a lot.

What’s the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Well, it’s definitely not through Facebook, or Facebook Messenger, I hate getting messages through that. Some people just don’t find the other ways of doing it, and they’ll send messages through there. But it’s difficult to deal with that in that format. Phone calls or emails are perfect. We get all of those, it’s me and my assistant, Rob and both of us usually are seeing them sometimes at the same time or hear the phone calls. I don’t really know what goes on in DC, but on a state level, we hear you when you send an email or you make a phone call, we definitely hear you. I have people stop me all the time at home, you know, at the grocery store, or at a restaurant or whatever and talk to me about something and I’ll jot down a note and then we’ll jump on it and give them an answer or get back with them about a solution whatever it might be. We’re very accessible phone numbers and emails are on the website easily found and we do respond, and they do mean something. It’s not like they go into some junk folder or something. We do get them, and we respond. If we ever don’t, it may be because of volume that we’ve just gotten so many. We get a lot from out of state when we’re on some hot button issues that have a national interest. We have folks in other states who feel for some reason they should try to weigh in on what things are going on in Tennessee, but we swiftly delete those, or we do not deal with those. If you’re in Tennessee, we’re going to hear you and we want to know your thoughts. They’ll be respectful, we’ve had plenty that aren’t respectful, but, you know, everybody has feelings. We all can communicate as adults, and things get done much more quickly when we act as adults and treat each other with respect. We’re very accessible and proud of that and want to remain accessible.

Any wrap up comments or any parting words of wisdom for the folks who may be listening?
Well, one of the things that I’ve been more cognizant of in the last few years, are factors outside of Tennessee, but can affect us. One of the most astonishing that I’m seeing more and more of and just had conversation this week with some experts about are these ESG policies. We have investment firms and many others who are pushing the ESG scoring of businesses, and I think ultimately, their goal was to have individuals scored with ESG scores. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, so it is rating how a company is environmentally friendly, how they’re socially engaged, and also how they’re governed, how diverse their governance is. For example, their board of directors are their ownership, what kind of diversity does that include? They have scoring for each one of those categories. If you’re scored fairly low, then it can be difficult for you to get loans and to have your business thrive or to get contracts. That’s where, where it’s headed anyway. But I think, because of efforts we and other states have made in the last couple of years, and I’ve had a constituent bring this to me two years ago, and I didn’t know where this came from. I mean, it’s just like, “What are you talking about what is ESG?”, and they sent me an article and from then on, it’s just been a snowball of information. It ultimately, on a high level, what it really is, is very liberal ideas that cannot win at the ballot box, they cannot get these people elected who have these ideas. So, let’s do a back end around the government let’s force this on businesses and people by bypassing legislatures that are representative of the people. Let’s do it another way, and it is basically forcing this type of mentality and the thought process of being environmentally net zero by 2050. This means zero carbon emissions by 2050. If you don’t think that’s going to affect agriculture, let me explain the ways. You’re talking about how you even put a crop in harvest a crop physically, how do you do that, if you don’t have machines that can run on fossil fuels, diesel, or all the way to fertilizers, you might not be able to utilize the commercial fertilizers we have now. If this plays out, like they hope it will, its effect on agriculture is staggering to me. I think this ultimate control that this group of people want to have, again, I think their interest is they say is protecting the environment. I believe ultimately, it’s about controlling people and habits and what we do on a day-to-day basis, which to me is fairly evil. We cannot stand for it. I’m doing all I can right now to educate myself to find out how they’re doing it. What ways we have as a state legislature to push back on that we’ve already implemented some and we will probably be looking at more. It’s already had an effect just in a year, literally one year, folks that are big money managers that were bragging a year ago about ESG and the effects they’re having on this environmental ultimate goal. Now they don’t even talk about it in their in their public statements. It is not even mentioned. So, they’re realizing that it’s getting attention, not good attention, and that we are going to find ways to push back on it financially and legally. I think with these money managers they have a fiduciary responsibility to get the best return for their investors. Not a specific type of return or return based on certain ESG scoring, it is strictly to make more money. We’re looking at potentially laws, maybe to be tweaked to make sure those folks have a financial and a criminal liability attached to that, if you have such responsibility. If you decide to go a different way for your client and your client hasn’t directed you there, then you’re responsible for that, ultimately. There are things we can do more, and we’re going to continue to push on that. I know that’s kind of an almost a black box type thing you try to describe and folks kind of glass over and wonder what in the world are you talking about? You may surely think that’s not happening, but I’m telling you, it’s happening. It is so evil and dangerous we have to attack it and we will continue to attack it both from an education standpoint, to learn what they’re doing, their tactics, and then how to push back on that very strongly. So that’s one thing I’m continuing to try to educate myself on and I will continue to strive to do so and find a way to get some of these counter measures in place so that we can thwart their efforts as much as we can. Otherwise, it’s just making sure that our policies in this state align with the values of Tennesseans. We have a number of folks in the administrative world who make rules and do all kinds of things to oversee certain areas of our state. One of those is environmental. You know, that’s my business is in the environmental world. I used to be a regulator many, many years ago. I see both sides of the coin, I see how we need to strive to protect our natural resources we know that those natural resources are here for the benefit of people, plain and simple. People are the ultimate focus in our state, and they should be always should be. How do we balance that protection of resources, but also utilization of those resources for the most people, and we see a number of ways where the administration, folks inside the administration can go different directions than the average Tennessee and would want to go, and also want to make sure we don’t hit in those wrong directions and we stay aligned with what our citizens want us to do, and how they want us to protect their structure of life, and their way of life in the State. We’re constantly seeing, I don’t say attacks, but we’re seeing gradual drip drips of infringements on people’s rights in that realm. I want to make sure that we look out for that, and then find ways of offsetting those or even negating those if we can, from a policy standpoint, I don’t think we need bureaucrats making policy in this state. That’s what we’re elected to do. They are there to carry the policy out, and I’m always looking for those opportunities. I’m working on some right now, as a matter of fact, both in my professional life, I’ve got clients who are dealing with specific problems, but they have a higher policy level attachment to them. I’m also working on that with the department to make sure we get things back to where they are supposed to be in this state from a regulatory standpoint. So that’s a kind of a big picture type view. But it really can make a difference where the rubber meets the road, even down to the point of possibly even restricting what some of our municipalities do. You know, I had a situation in the last few weeks to where my local city council was looking at passing an ordinance that was going to be very detrimental to farmers. It’s matter of fact, they’ve already fined one farmer for spreading organic, natural fertilizer on his field in the city limits. He’s going to court this month and I feel like it’ll be thrown out because of the state laws we’ve already put in place just while I’ve been here, that makes sure that agriculture is not hindered, and we can continue to produce the food and fiber and fuel that we need to live. So, I was able to share with our city council what that state law is, and how their new proposed ordinance was going to be in violation of that law and put them in a situation, possibly a class action lawsuit. Fortunately, it got tabled very quickly once folks realized what it was about and understood the bigger picture. I’m always glad to play that role and help inform people and make sure they know what the rules are and kind of what sandbox you have to play in. We’ll always continue to be looking out for the ag community, to protect our resources, but to make sure that we can produce those things that everybody needs to live and enjoy life.