Congressman Derek Schmidt Talks Infrastructure, QBS, and the Road to D.C.

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Welcome, listeners, to the QBS Express, the ACEC Kansas podcast.
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I'm your host, Executive Director Scott Heidner.
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We have a lot of things that are special about today's podcast.
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We're normally doing audio only, but today we have video because we're being
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hosted by our friends at ACEC National in D.C.
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And don't usually have a co-host, but today our ACC Kansas President,
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Rob Crewson, has joined me.
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And together, we're extremely excited to welcome United States Congressman from
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the great state of Kansas, Derrick Schmidt.
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Congressman, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me on, Scott.
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Appreciate it very much. Absolutely. Once upon a time, the Congressman had joined,
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an ACEC Kansas podcast years ago, and apparently the experience was survivable
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as it came back. I had forgotten that. No, I'm kidding.
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Well, Congressman, I appreciate your giving us some time tonight to talk to us.
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You might just, most of our members, I think, are familiar with your background
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and the support you've shown our industry.
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But you might step back and give us at least the click of this version of your
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career service at the state level, even in industry, right? And you're practicing
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professional in the day. And so we are kindering spirits that way.
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But you might touch on those things.
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Well, I was born in a long cabin somewhere on the frontier in the 10 to 100.
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Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I'm quite that granular as that. Maybe more true.
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Very good. No, we've had the chance to work there a long while.
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I, uh, I, uh, I came up as a staffer, both, uh, in our congressional delegation
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and then put a governor for a while and litigated for a little bit for the state
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And then did a, did a long run in the state Senate in 10 years ago.
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That's when we first got connected on policy issues. We were there for the,
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that'd been the O2 transportation bill in Kansas, I think. And also the,
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as I recall, the bailout of the transportation bill with the gas tax adjustment.
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It's about that year. I may be off by a year at Airbidden. And then in 2010,
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I went over to the AG's office, thanks to the voters. They were nice enough
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to let me do that. Spent three terms there, 12 years, and ran for governor and
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lost in 2022. Thought I was done.
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My wife would point out, went up and got a real job with a paycheck that actually
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had a little more heft to it.
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Was practicing law for Hush Blackwell. I was a partner at Hush for that year
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and a half or so, and thought I was done with voting service.
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And then our congressman decided to call it quits somewhat abruptly.
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I had little kids and life just sort of caught up with him and said,
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well, maybe I'm not done. So here we are and been doing this now about a year
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and a half and thoroughly enjoying it.
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Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, very good. I want to take a moment to just say
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thanks for a few things, and most of these are from the past.
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But A, it doesn't mean we've forgotten. We still appreciate them.
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But B, I think just as importantly, these are policies that are going to come up again, again, again.
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So I think by recognizing some of the efforts in the past, we're also appreciating
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the fact that we have somebody from the delegation with awareness in support
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of these things moving forward.
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The first one is not a policy issue, but one of the things we're proudest of
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is we have an emerging leaders program.
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And that happens every year. We have 20 young-ish professionals,
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got a mid-career, and we asked you, my gosh, a thousand years ago,
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it seems like, if you would come and give the government affairs presentation.
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It is a sacrifice to do it. It's a time commitment, and it takes a real effort,
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and you said yes, and just never stopped saying yes. Yeah, you're trying to get rid of it. What?
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My gosh, he's still going. Come on. Come on. No problem-less.
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No, when you switched from Senate to Attorney General, I thought for sure, well, it was a good one.
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And you still said yes for years and years, all the way until you came to D.C.
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So let it not go unnoticed how much we appreciate that.
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Your name is still comes up with all of our ELB brands. It contributed a lot
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to the program and we're great.
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Cool. Thank you. I appreciate it doing it. It was a lot of fun.
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And yeah, you know, in case folks don't know, Scott often plans ahead and he
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would typically contact me or my office or usually both.
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He would put in a request with the office and then he would see me and just
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mention it to me about January to, to commit to a time and day in September
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to come talk to the leadership group.
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And I think we almost always did. You might not have done it in January.
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We appreciated the foresight, too. Thank you. Thank you. See,
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I was hoping I was going to say no at some point, but I didn't get it.
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Your staff was always incredulous. I was getting that far ahead of time.
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You're also very popular. Oh, my gosh. Well, on a policy perspective,
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there are two things in particular that throughout your career,
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you've been very supportive of them that are very meaningful to us.
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And one is infrastructure of all kinds. Transportation is the most evident of
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that because it takes up such a large part of the budget and it's more press.
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But you've been supportive of the infrastructure across the board.
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And I know we've talked in the past when you're a child of southeast Kansas,
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you have a richer appreciation of infrastructure, I think, than a lot of folks do.
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But it's also a district where voting for new revenue is, well, not an easy vote either.
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And you always did a great job of finding ways to be supportive of infrastructure,
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even with the pressures you have from your constituencies about the revenue side.
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Again, really appreciate your commitment in that area since it's, it's awesome.
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Yeah. Well, you've kind of appreciate it. It was, you know, it is,
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we, the Kansans understand that you got to invest in capital today in order
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to have what you need tomorrow.
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They get right for lots of reasons, not to stereotype everybody in Kansas as
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a farmer, but we are an agricultural state and we have those roots and folks
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understand you got to plant now and be patient in order to harvest later.
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And that, that's, that's true certainly in investing in infrastructure.
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And we still work on that a lot, even in this role. We have a lot of communities
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on trying to help them upgrade bridges or road projects, just did one of those
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in Junction City, came through.
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Water plants, sewage treatment plants, hospital buildings, university buildings.
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We still get it. So, there's a lot to say to that.
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Well, it's funny you should mention Junction City. We have a,
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we're listeners, we're out in D.C.
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There's a series of events we have, and there's a short reception we'll go to after this.
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We have a couple members that I think intend to bring up Junction City and a word of thanks to you.
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Go ahead and get up there. Yes, absolutely. Well, the last thing,
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lest this feel like a gravy train of thank yous and appreciation.
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Here it comes now. Here it comes. This is the big one. Yeah,
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this is it. Do you want to say more? No, no, no. I ain't even spelled it.
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Well, as our listeners all know, our biggest issue and the one that is the most
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important to us is procurement, and it's the use of qualifications-based selection
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for design professionals.
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But as a licensed attorney, I know you work in a similar world where most of
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those arguments transpose from one profession into the other.
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And it's not something that comes up often, and it's not often what it does.
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It's not often in the form of an actual statutory change.
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But you have shown a great appreciation for the public policy reasoning for using QBS.
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And it's hard to get legislators to invest in that enough to even really know
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what it is. So we're appreciative of that too.
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I appreciate it very much. I mean, you want to get the best deal for taxpayers.
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The best deal isn't always the cheapest price. That's obviously a factor every
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single time, but it's not the only factor.
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You know professional services generally they're not a commodity right that's
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true the practice of law it's true the practice of engineering it's not a commodity and so,
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you want qualifications you want outcomes you want proven abilities you want
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the best possible design at the lowest possible price not just one of those
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two factors and so appreciate it yeah absolutely well i'll quit reminiscing about uh,
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golden days and things you've done in the past and let rob ask you about the future.
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Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Congressman.
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We might move to what's maybe on the docket for infrastructure.
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I mean, we talked a lot about funding. Sure, that's important to us,
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but we just talked about some other things are maybe regulations,
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taxations, things like that. And so anything down the near horizon that our
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members might be curious to hear about?
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Well, it's always, it's continual. It doesn't just, it doesn't just end,
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especially in the regulatory world.
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We've spent generations building out this federal behemoth, and we chip away
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at it, but you're not going to just dismantle it, and nor perhaps do you want
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to just dismantle it, but you do want to trim it wherever you can.
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And modernize it. And so, that's a continual process.
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You know, I think I'm pretty optimistic we still have a shot at getting a service
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transportation bill done this year. I realize the days are getting thin.
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But there are several factors suggest maybe we can still do that.
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And a lot of us have really pushed for that for a lot of good reasons.
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From the industry side, certainly having the certainty of not a gap is important.
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I mean, Congress went three years overdue on the farm bill.
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And we now have a farm bill extender out of the house. We got about 75% of it
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done and signed into law a year ago in the summer, tucked into the so-called
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beautiful bill or the reconciliation bill. So a lot of the big farm stuff is in there.
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But a lot of other parts didn't get done in there, couldn't for procedural reasons.
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So we still need to do the rest of the farm bill. And it's three years out of
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date. We got it out of the House. We're waiting for the Senate.
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I say that because we want to avoid that problem in the transportation world,
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service transportation world.
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And, you know, to get a next service transportation reauthorization in place
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before the current authorization is gone and there's a gap, it's not just helpful
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to the industry, although it certainly is.
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It is helpful to the taxpayers because you can get certainty and get planning.
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Folks that are going to be doing the work can sort of right-size their expectation
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and deployment of their assets, resources, and talents.
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And whenever you create risk and uncertainty, the cost goes out.
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And in this case, it's taxpayers who pay that bill.
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I'd rather spend a dollar on improving bridges, roads, and railroads than to
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spend 70 cents on that and 30 cents on, you know, helping the folks that do
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the work mitigate the risk.
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Right. Yeah. Well said. Well said for sure. Yeah. Not everybody appreciates
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how much certainty in planning plays a role in what our members do in the communities
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they serve and maximizing the tax pay the dollar.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Most valuable about that's the goal.
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No doubt. Absolutely. Well, let me ask you this.
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You and your staff have been extremely gracious in the time allotment you've
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given us, but we don't want to wear out on welcome. So let me maybe close with this.
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On a more personal level, you had so many years of service at the state level,
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two different roles, you've already gone through one pretty substantive transition,
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But I have to imagine going to D.C. is probably even a more substantive transition in a lot of ways.
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Share with our listeners anything that you think they'd be interested in that
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has changed in your life, moving from the state to the federal level.
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Well, my office is 1,200 miles from my house, and that has more implications
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than you think about, right? You can't just run out and do things with constituents
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or friends in the evening because you're not there.
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And you have to build it all in transit time and and and all the life stuff
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that comes with that that's a big deal.
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You know 435 which is the number of members of the u.s house that is a big number
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of people that's a lot of people that's a decent sized auditorium in a lot of
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our communities and i think i've maybe underestimated how much the sheer size of the house,
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influences how you have to operate to be effective in the house you know this
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is a relationship business it's a trust business and.
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I still turn on the television from time to time and see a member of the House
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of Representatives talking and say, I had never seen that person.
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I don't know who it is. I never heard their name. I don't know anything about them.
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And yet I work with them because it's just a big and fracturing place in terms of the daily schedule.
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And because we're 1,200 miles from home, we're all gone on the weekends back
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home and you don't have the time here in Washington to sort of build those relationships.
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And so I'm still learning on that front.
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You have to make accommodations for those facts in order to be able to do the
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fundamentals, which are based on relationships and trust. And we're making progress,
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but that's been a bigger transition than I expected.
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Do you find taking an idea from conception to conclusion, I know the perception
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is, the perception I have is
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that typically it takes longer at the federal level than the state level.
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Do you find that to be true? Yes, it is. And especially, you know,
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near the end of my time in state service, I've been around a long time.
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You've built up the relationships and the trust. You need to ever burn people.
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I mean, if I went to a Republican in the legislature, even when I wasn't in
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the legislature and hadn't been, you know, went as attorney general and said,
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this is a good idea. It's not going to cause you any problems.
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This is a good idea. Here are the problems it's going to cause you.
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You go to the Democrats and say, I think this is a good idea.
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Here's why we need to do it. Here's how your folks are going to view it to the best of my knowledge.
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They knew I was going to shoot straight with them. Right. And,
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and so you could do that and help people get in the position to assess and act quickly.
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It's a lot harder here. Bigger body, less opportunity to build and use that trust.
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Just a slower process. And so, yes, that's certainly true. Other things got
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that kind of along those lines, although a different point.
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You know, no disrespect to the coffee shop quarterbacks. We've all been there,
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right? Where you sit around with your buddies and your friends and you either
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drink coffee or you drink something else, or maybe you smoke something waffle.
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I know you like to do that.
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I'm glad you said that. Yes. And you know, you solve all the world's problems
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and by gosh, this is what, you know, if I were, here's, I mean,
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the reality is you're not going to show up as a brand new member, very junior in service.
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And be at the center of the discussions on the great issues of our time.
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You'll have your vote and you'll advocate on behalf of the people you represent,
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but you're not going to be the fulcrum that gets those 435 people lined up and moving.
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And if you try to be, you're going to wind up with your name in the headlines
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and people out of the country have heard of you and nobody here trusts you because
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it's clearly, you know, you're building about yourself, not about trying to
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get something done, which is a little different than the Kansas dynamic.
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But there are things you can do that on right from the start.
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Smaller matters, issues that are important to constituencies back home that
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the district need to represent, not the big headline issues of our time,
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but important issues for the district you represent.
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And we've really worked over my first year in office, really,
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to figure out which is which, which of the things I really have the ability
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at this position at this time, this level of seniority,
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to influence, and which of the issues I just have to make my position known
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and cast my vote on behalf of my people and move on down the road.
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And then we're spending more time on that first group because we can get some
00:15:20.944 --> 00:15:24.834
of those things. We've gotten bills signed into law. We've gotten bills through
00:15:24.834 --> 00:15:27.617
both chambers, signed by the president, inactive.
00:15:27.872 --> 00:15:30.954
They're not going to set the world on fire, but they do make the difference
00:15:30.954 --> 00:15:32.226
for some of the people we represent.
00:15:32.447 --> 00:15:36.487
So try to figure out where you can actually make the difference and deploy your assets.
00:15:36.731 --> 00:15:40.664
I'll say this too, and if you want to apply it on this, please do,
00:15:40.664 --> 00:15:45.177
but we cannot expect you to. one of the things that I'm not sure everybody understands,
00:15:45.554 --> 00:15:49.432
and it's more true for us at the federal level than it is at the state level.
00:15:50.047 --> 00:15:52.834
We don't call on our delegation all that often.
00:15:53.031 --> 00:15:57.827
We really don't. I mean, we want supportive, simple things like service transportation
00:15:57.827 --> 00:16:03.927
bill. We had some tax reforms a few years ago, but we don't just flippantly use that connection.
00:16:05.348 --> 00:16:09.313
But when we do, as often as not, it's not legislation.
00:16:09.626 --> 00:16:12.897
It's regular, yeah, agency stuff.
00:16:12.897 --> 00:16:20.367
And what we find, excuse me, what we find is that our delegation over the years
00:16:20.367 --> 00:16:25.487
through many iterations in the delegation have been a tremendous asset to the
00:16:25.487 --> 00:16:27.009
state and to our industry.
00:16:27.520 --> 00:16:31.367
In terms of just create a fictional scenario.
00:16:31.367 --> 00:16:35.279
But the Department of Interior puts out a procurement for engineering services
00:16:35.639 --> 00:16:39.105
and it's asking for a price. It's a violation of QVS.
00:16:39.447 --> 00:16:42.637
Something like that. Or they're proposing something like that.
00:16:42.637 --> 00:16:46.887
We can go to members of our delegation and say, hey, can you just pick up the
00:16:46.887 --> 00:16:49.356
phone and, you know, call somebody over there.
00:16:49.698 --> 00:16:52.997
Ninety percent of the time, it's not an intentional thing.
00:16:52.997 --> 00:16:57.947
It's some communication, but they might take your phone call faster than they would take ours.
00:16:57.947 --> 00:17:02.547
And that's been a source of tremendous benefit to us over the years.
00:17:02.547 --> 00:17:06.887
And if you have thoughts about the difference between that state and federal
00:17:06.887 --> 00:17:10.127
level with certain law enforcement groups. Yeah, I think that's true.
00:17:10.547 --> 00:17:14.307
And the fundamentals were the same, state and federal.
00:17:14.307 --> 00:17:17.817
It's, again, back to the idea of relationships and also just the knowledge of
00:17:17.817 --> 00:17:22.477
who to try to reach on a given matter, which is not as simple as it sounds.
00:17:22.477 --> 00:17:25.627
Okay, these are not, you know, these are not schoolhouse rock governments.
00:17:25.627 --> 00:17:28.893
There's a lot of nooks and crannies and a lot of agencies and departments and
00:17:29.160 --> 00:17:32.557
secretaries and assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries and legislative
00:17:32.557 --> 00:17:34.277
people and program people.
00:17:34.277 --> 00:17:39.277
And you can spend a lot of time and not make a lot of progress if you're talking
00:17:39.277 --> 00:17:43.527
to the wrong folks on the wrong matter. And so cutting through that really matters.
00:17:43.527 --> 00:17:48.843
And to your point, can make more difference in some cases than passing the law. And...
00:17:49.745 --> 00:17:54.092
So that's, that's a big part of it and a big, a big area where,
00:17:54.092 --> 00:17:58.032
you know, the state and the Fed differ also is the Fed's just much bigger.
00:17:58.699 --> 00:18:02.262
It is just a much bigger government. And, you know, in the state,
00:18:02.262 --> 00:18:07.780
you can, you can be about two degrees of separation from almost anybody in state government.
00:18:08.144 --> 00:18:11.682
If you're, you know, if you've been around for a while, you're a senior legislator,
00:18:11.682 --> 00:18:14.032
office holder, somebody, you know, gets to the lobbying world,
00:18:14.032 --> 00:18:15.992
just somebody who has those relationships.
00:18:15.992 --> 00:18:19.392
You can be about, I can call you and you will know the person.
00:18:19.392 --> 00:18:22.102
I will know to call you and you can call that person, or I'm going to call you
00:18:22.102 --> 00:18:25.342
instead and you can call that person and you can get to where you need to be
00:18:25.342 --> 00:18:27.871
here. It's there are more degrees of separation.
00:18:28.385 --> 00:18:35.282
And I think there's also more of a culture of using the size of bureaucracy
00:18:35.282 --> 00:18:40.136
to sort of obfuscate responsibility. I think perhaps it's intentionally done sometimes.
00:18:40.669 --> 00:18:45.679
And so, you know, figuring all that out, navigating it can really matter.
00:18:46.986 --> 00:18:50.536
That's what, you know, I came up in the Dole days, back in the 90s,
00:18:50.536 --> 00:18:56.166
where you said Dole was a political leader, and then, and it was one of Dole's
00:18:56.166 --> 00:18:59.836
great strengths, right? He had been around long enough.
00:19:00.131 --> 00:19:05.626
There were Dole staff alumni in almost every agency of the federal government.
00:19:05.626 --> 00:19:08.326
Some of them were political appointees, some of them were careerists who had
00:19:08.326 --> 00:19:12.826
burrowed in, but it was almost two degrees of separation.
00:19:12.826 --> 00:19:17.776
If Senator Dole needed to contact the decision maker on a particular RFQ or
00:19:17.776 --> 00:19:20.864
a particular regulation or whatever in the department of whatever,
00:19:21.555 --> 00:19:25.665
there was probably a person that he or his senior people knew they could call,
00:19:26.067 --> 00:19:28.916
who in turn could connect with the right person, would know who the right person
00:19:28.916 --> 00:19:29.793
is, could connect with them.
00:19:30.144 --> 00:19:33.268
We lost a lot of that when Senator Dole retired and, you know,
00:19:33.268 --> 00:19:35.686
it must have been a long time and people would know him. We had some of it with
00:19:35.686 --> 00:19:39.846
Senator Roberts, but there's a role that all of us in the.
00:19:42.546 --> 00:19:46.539
You know, that's a little bit of a gap. And so we all work to try to fill it.
00:19:46.764 --> 00:19:48.346
We're sort of spoiled in the Dole days.
00:19:50.186 --> 00:19:54.506
I think that's well said. But as you talked about Dole's two degrees of separation
00:19:54.506 --> 00:19:58.356
in November, it's absolutely true. Yeah. And not something you can generate
00:19:58.356 --> 00:20:00.046
in four years, in a few years.
00:20:00.706 --> 00:20:03.376
Right. But that's another conversation for another day. Well,
00:20:03.376 --> 00:20:06.746
I tell you what, you've been so generous with your time and thanks to you.
00:20:06.746 --> 00:20:10.386
The listeners can't see them, but we have some members of your team here with
00:20:10.386 --> 00:20:12.462
us that have been so helpful in putting this together.
00:20:13.146 --> 00:20:17.663
Appreciate all of you and appreciate the public service to Kansas.
00:20:18.453 --> 00:20:23.989
And most of all, I appreciate the fact that I can say QBS to you and your eyes don't face over them.
00:20:24.549 --> 00:20:29.169
That makes you a great American and a great legislator. It's an old fashioned shopping channel.
00:20:34.049 --> 00:20:34.449
Dan,
00:20:38.649 --> 00:20:42.039
half our listeners will laugh. Yeah. What? Yeah, we are grateful for your public
00:20:42.039 --> 00:20:44.937
service. Thank you for making time to your year. It's always nice to spend time.
00:20:45.193 --> 00:20:48.239
Rich, everybody. Thank you very much. You thank you. Thanks for having me on.
00:20:48.239 --> 00:20:52.369
Listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode of the QBS Express with
00:20:52.369 --> 00:20:54.273
our special guest, Congressman Derek Schmidt.
00:20:54.406 --> 00:20:57.059
Stay tuned, and we'll see you on the next episode.