Editor’s note: Sen. John Snow, D-Murphy, is now into his first session as a senator representing Jackson, Swain, Macon, Clay, Cherokee, Graham and a portion of Haywood.

Q: How has it been for you being a freshman senator, what are your gut reactions about how your first term in office has gone?

A: When people think of you as a lawyer and a judge they think that you already know a lot of this stuff, which is an assumption that is not necessarily true. A lot of my background as a judge and working with the laws is very helpful in trying to work in the legislature.

But going through the procedures and all the little things you have to do in drafting legislation and things of that nature are things that everybody has to learn.

My transition was made a lot easier by my background, but by the same token I still have to do a lot of the things that a lot of freshmen do to get acquainted and to get orientated and to get in the line of doing the proper procedures and doing the right things at the right time.

So I guess I’ve had as hard a transition as anybody else, helped a little bit by being familiar with the laws. Some of my committee assignments like the justice and public safety committees, I had a little a head start with that with people on that because people would come in and talk to us about our programs like the guardian ad litem program or court system. Things like drug courts and youth family court system, I was familiar.

Q: Have there been any situations where you felt that your background as a judge would be particularly helpful and surprisingly it wasn’t or sometime when you didn’t think it would and it came in handy?

A: I really can’t say that there was a time when I thought it would and it wasn’t. I think it’s helped me generally in all situations because it helps me in trying to present an idea that I might have, particularly in issues like we’re dealing with now.

This methamphetamine bill, we’re trying to take the sudephedrine off the counter and put it behind the drug counter. My experience as a judge and knowing something about how badly this meth problem is out here in Western North Carolina and how it affects our children and our families was particularly helpful to me in trying to get that bill out of the J2 committee on the Senate side. Now we’re working to go to the House side and getting ready to present in a judiciary committee over there. I think it was really helpful in that respect having that background and having some knowledge about the problem.

Q: In general you have taken a bit more of what we will call a “conservative” stance on what people call moral issues such as gay marriage or abortion. Have those come up at all in this term?

A: I’ve had people come to me to talk about issues and I tried to express my views to them in those terms. The marriage amendment I voiced support for, I’m not so sure that it’s necessary because our laws that we already have on the books. We have very conservative judges in North Carolina that I don’t think it’s ever going to come up to be an issue.

You know, I’m a Democrat but I have pretty conservative views. My feelings about (the Pop the Cap bill) are not only based on my constituency, but on my years of experience in the court system watching people coming through there driving drunk and things of that nature. We’re now at 6 percent on the alcohol content, and you run it up to, what was it, 15 or 16? You get drunk a lot quicker and in my mind it puts a lot more people on the road that could hurt somebody. So my conservatism is not only based in the sense of the way I feel about things but that’s my experience.

... A lot of times when you think Democrat, they put a label on you as being somebody from New York or somewhere that way, and I just don’t quite fit that mold and don’t like to be categorized like that.

Q: How has it been for you in terms of having to tow the party line? Have you been called out for being this conservative democrat?

A: No. I’ve had freedom to speak at all times. And that was one of the things that was really important to me was to be able to speak out and not be a freshman that had to keep their mouth shut. I’m not very prone to keep my mouth shut anyway. One of the things about our caucus and the democratic Senate group is that I’m given the option to exercise my vote in any way I see fit. They were very helpful to me in my election, but they in no way have tried to control what I do because they realize to that my views are coming from me, but they’re also a reflection of my district.

Q: How do you think industry fits in to the Western North Carolina economic versus technology and how does Western Carolina University’s Millennium Campus fit into that picture?

A: There’s not going to be a lot of big manufacturing companies like the one I’m working on over there (in Brevard) unless we can find some that are bio-tech industries and things of that nature that might be willing to come to this area. They want to go to places like our area, but a lot of times they don’t have the necessary infrastructure to do it.

One of the things that’s really important — you’d mentioned the Millennium Campus, this is not exactly tied into it, but it soon will be — I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Balsam Fiber Network. Well what that amounts to is a fiber loop that’s being put by Drake and the Eastern Band of Cherokees that’s going to go from Franklin to Sylva to Bryson City to Murphy down to into Tennessee and Georgia back into Clay County and finally back over to Franklin.

It’s a fiber loop that goes all the way around the area. When Balsam Fiber finally finishes it we’re going to have a bunch of bumps on there — we’re going to have bumps coming out of Atlanta, Chattanooga, Greenville, S.C., Asheville to Greensboro, maybe Knoxville. What we’ll have in that loop is redundancy for broadband. And that’s the kind of thing we need out there because any industry these days needs that high speed and good broadband support.

So I’m thinking in those terms and I’ve been doing everything I can to try to support Balsam Fiber and show how important they are. I was able to work with them, they’ve got a $2.2 million grant to try to hook up the schools in western North Carolina, all the six school systems in the six counties in the far west. We’re working on something like that if we get that broadband out through there where you could even use the Internet, too, off of this thing once we get it going. There’s a lot of high tech industry and research and development industry that needs that. We’re not going to get a General Motors or a Canton Paper Company, but we might get an industry that employees 50 people, 60 people, maybe even only 20 people, but if they’re doing work that needs that broadband hook up that’s going to be a big help to us.

Q: Who do you think should take responsibility for selling this concept that here we are and we have all this kind of stuff? Local economic development commissions seem to each have different ways of promoting their county. And this region’s largest economic development entity, AdvantageWest, doesn’t do retail.

A: Well, they don’t do retail, but we don’t have anybody that does retail. I don’t think we’ve got anybody who does retail working anywhere in the state. If we do I’m not aware of it, unless it’s your local chamber of commerce. And our local chambers of commerce are organized and more pointed toward tourists. That’s one of our big things out here is tourism, but we just can’t live off of tourism, we’ve got to have some real jobs.

And so I think that the key to is our economic development people with the Department of Commerce and we have one of those that’s stationed in Bryson City, once we get this fiber network hooked up then we can market ourselves a whole lot better. Perhaps even with a great big Web site that covers our area out here and touts our wares, what we have to offer. That’s what I see for it, I see something how we could do it ourselves because we’re not going to get anybody doing retail work for us. Our chamber of commerce aren’t that sophisticated. It’s not like an Asheville Chamber of Commerce that could do something like that.

Q: How do you see, in terms of jobs, in terms of the economy, the issue of the Haywood County prison factoring in?

A: I think the prison’s going to be alright. It’s in our subcommittee. I’ve not had a lot of emphasis about it in terms of jobs, but what I’ve really been getting a lot of information from is from these surrounding counties that use prison labor for cleanup and doing work. I’ve had more emphasis and more reason to try to keep the prison for that reason. I think it’s going to be alright.

Q: How do you see the legislature dealing with health care issues in the next couple years, particularly in terms of Medicaid and how it’s trickling down to the counties?

A: We’ve got to deal with that and you know I’m not sure what’s the answer to that. I don’t have an answer to that. I’m really in a quandary about. I just don’t have any good answers for that. It’s not an area that I consider myself an expert in or anything of that nature, I’m learning about it as we go. It’s a funny thing about the legislature, it seems that after you’re there for a while you develop an areas where you have an expertise in and you work in those areas more. ...

One of the things that counties have been complaining about is that they have to pay 7 percent of the Medicare costs and that is a lot of money for them. They’ve been trying to get out of it, and there’s been a lot of legislation this year to try to move that away from them and it’s not been accomplished yet. But we’re the only state in the nation. There used to be New York, which was the only one that did it with us, but we’re the only state in the nation that does it. So that’s got to go pretty soon. We’ve got to get counties relief from that, it’s not right.