[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 10, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S812-S813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO JUDGE TOM JENSEN

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the long career 
in public service of a good friend of mine and a friend to the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky, circuit court Judge Tom Jensen. After a 
lifetime of service in both elected office and on the bench, Judge 
Jensen has announced his retirement from the bench of the 27th Judicial 
Circuit Court, effective this February 16. Kentucky is going to miss 
his wisdom, his judgment, and the benefit of his many years of 
experience.
  Judge Jensen has served for 3-plus years on the bench and, prior to 
that, had a lengthy career in the Kentucky General Assembly. He served 
in the Kentucky House of Representatives in the 1980s and 1990s. During 
his tenure there, he was elected as minority floor leader, the highest 
Republican position in the House of Representatives.
  In 1996, Tom chose to not seek reelection to the house and instead 
was elected chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky. During his 
leadership, the Kentucky GOP made some significant gains, adding an 
additional Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives delegation 
and sending another Republican to the U.S. Senate. Republicans also 
gained control of the Kentucky State Senate for the first time in 
history under his watch.
  Judge Jensen was next elected to the Kentucky State Senate in 2005, 
representing the 21st District, which included Estill, Laurel, Powell, 
Jackson, and Menifee Counties. As a senator, he chaired the senate 
judiciary committee and the senate budget review subcommittee on 
justice and judiciary. He also served as the vice chairman of the 
senate natural resources and energy committee.
  Judge Jensen has been honored many times in the Commonwealth for his 
achievements. He won recognition as Senator of the Year 2011 by the 
Kentucky Narcotics Officer Association. He received the highest award 
from the Kentucky Department of Corrections. He received the 2011 
Public Advocate Award for advancing justice through criminal justice 
reforms. His alma mater, the University of the Cumberlands, also 
presented him an award for his leadership.
  After 18 years in the legislature, Judge Jensen has dispensed his 
wisdom from the bench for the last 3-plus years, where he presides over 
many cases involving drugs and drug offenses. He has won acclaim for 
his wisdom and judicial temperament, but even though he has more than 6 
years left in his current term, he has chosen to retire and re-enter 
private law practice. Tom has practiced law in London since 1978, is 
licensed to practice in all courts of the Commonwealth, and has been 
admitted to practice before the sixth circuit of Appeals and the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  It seems advocacy is Judge Jensen's first love, and after a long and 
successful career, he wants to return to the role of advocacy in the 
courtroom. While he will certainly be missed on the bench, I know he 
will be an outstanding attorney and advocate for his clients, who will 
be very lucky to benefit from his experience.
  I know my colleagues join me in extending congratulations and best 
wishes to Judge Jensen and to his family: his wife, Nannette Curry 
Jensen; their two daughters, Natalie Jensen and Laura Jensen Hays; his 
son-in-law, Henry Hays; and grandchildren, Elle and Spencer.
  As Judge Jensen begins this new chapter in his career, I want to 
thank him for his career in public service and contributions to the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky. We will miss him on the bench or in the 
general assembly halls, but look forward to still seeing him in the 
courtroom.
  A local area newspaper in Kentucky published an article extoling 
Judge Jensen's life of service. I ask unanimous consent that the 
article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Times-Tribune, Feb. 7, 2016]

  Tri-County Profiles: Judge, Legislator returns to Private Practice 
                        After Decades of Service

                 (By Christina Bentley, Feature Writer)

       ``Life's too short not to do things you enjoy,'' said 
     Circuit Court Judge Tom Jensen, who recently announced his 
     retirement from the bench of the 27th Judicial Circuit Court, 
     effective Feb. 16.
       For Jensen, the thing he will be enjoying for the 
     foreseeable future will be his London private law practice, 
     although he said he has enjoyed every phase of his career, 
     from his 18\1/4\ years of service in the Kentucky State 
     Legislature to his three-plus years on the bench. But his 
     heart right now is in returning to private practice.
       ``I made a commitment that I would go back to my law office 
     . . . When I left, I said, look, I'm just going to go stay 
     three years, maybe four years, and then come back and 
     practice law and finish up that way,' '' he said. ``I may 
     take off a couple of weeks, but I am going back. My staff 
     stayed in place, and I always promised them I'd come back, so 
     I'm going to live up to my promise. And it's time. I've 
     thought about not going back. I've got six-and-a-half more 
     years or so in this term, and I considered it. At my age, 
     maybe that's the smart thing to do. It's not overwhelming 
     work to me. A lot of people have asked me why I'm going back 
     to practice law, and the thing about it is I enjoyed that. I 
     enjoyed that more than anything that I've ever done, I 
     think.''
       Jensen said that while he has also enjoyed serving on the 
     bench, he just doesn't get the same sort of satisfaction from 
     it as he does from the process of problem solving with 
     clients.
       ``It just turned out that I would rather advocate for 
     somebody than be the mediator or make the decision,'' he 
     said. ``I think I miss the give and take, the camaraderie you 
     develop by talking to a client, meeting with people, trying 
     to solve a problem, not deciding the issue or the problem, 
     but trying to solve it. I don't want to sound corny, but I 
     think I'm a people person, and I don't think that's the role 
     of a judge. I don't think I'll ever run for anything again, 
     and I think I'd like to finish up practicing law.''
       Jensen's passion for advocacy is also evident when he 
     discusses the years that he spent working in the Kentucky 
     State Legislature, a political career that resulted in his 
     recognition as Kentucky State Senator of the Year for 2011.
       ``I enjoyed (the legislature),'' Jensen said, ``trying to 
     make a difference. I think it was seeing if you could make 
     things better. It sounds crazy, but it wasn't the pay. 
     Actually, it probably cost me money, practicing law, being in 
     the legislature, being gone those periods of time. But it was 
     a good feeling if you got something accomplished. It was a 
     good feeling that you thought you could make things better. 
     Sometimes we were right, sometimes we weren't. I think, you 
     know, Kentucky's my home, and I wanted to make it as good as 
     I possibly could. Of course, I wasn't a dictator, and I 
     wasn't governor or anything like that, but I did, as Floor 
     Leader in the House, have some impact on some things. We were 
     able to put in some legislation that I think has made a 
     difference in the state. It moved at a snail's pace; 
     sometimes you'd get frustrated. Sometimes you would argue 
     that there was a better of doing it and you couldn't get your 
     way about it, but that's democracy, and the one thing that I 
     saw in the legislature: for the most part, people were up 
     there for the right reasons. They were up there to make 
     Kentucky better.''
       Jensen is proud of much of what he accomplished in the 
     legislature, but he said his signature accomplishment was 
     House Bill 463, designed to cut down on prison overcrowding 
     in the state.
       ``In about 2009 and 2010, we started looking at it,'' he 
     said. ``We were actually using private prisons to house state 
     prisoners, and it was costing the state a considerable amount 
     of money. It was to the point that we were either going to 
     have to build a new prison or we had to do something. So 
     that's when we

[[Page S813]]

     came up with (House Bill) 463 to put a lot of people on 
     probation, more than we had in the past, mainly drug 
     offenses, and it has done what we said it would do . . . Now 
     some people might say we're being too easy on them. The thing 
     about drug addiction, the way I see it, in the courtroom, 
     your criminal days are just filled up with drug cases. Most 
     of them are pleading out, a lot of probation, some 
     diversions. And then about 50 percent of them end up going to 
     prison or jail anyway because they can't comply with the 
     terms. But still, if you look at it that way, it's 50 
     percent, which is not a good rate, but actually there are 50 
     percent that aren't going back, which is a good rate, and it 
     has saved us a considerable amount of money.''
       Jensen said that while he won't be running for office 
     again, he enjoyed the political process and may involve 
     himself in it in other ways, advocating for causes he 
     believes in, primarily those that help his adopted hometown.
       ``This will be the last political position that I have,'' 
     he said. ``I'm not saying I won't help out somebody 
     politically or maybe get involved in somebody's campaign, but 
     I don't think I'll ever run for anything again. I think I'm 
     done running. But I always liked politics . . . I intend to 
     go back and practice law, but I might even lobby some. I've 
     still got some real good friends in the legislature, so I 
     might do that and lobby for some projects, mainly things that 
     I think would help Laurel County.''
       For example, Jensen cites the ongoing efforts of Cumberland 
     River Comprehensive Care to build a juvenile drug rehab in 
     Laurel County as a project he would like to have more 
     involvement in.
       ``One of the things that I even worked on as judge was to 
     try to help Cumberland River Comp Care get the old juvenile 
     detention facility,'' he said. ``I did help by going to 
     Frankfort to talk to the governor and some others . . . What 
     they want to do is have a juvenile rehab center in there, and 
     I can tell you, looking at my court system, these people that 
     are adults on drugs in my court, they didn't start when they 
     became 18. They started at 12, 13. It's actually alarming 
     when you talk to some of them, the age they began this stuff. 
     So I felt like that was a really good endeavor to get into. 
     I'd like to even help them maybe get some more money to fix 
     up more of that building . . . it's going to take 
     considerable money to get it up and operating, and Comp Care 
     has made the commitment to do it, but I thought I'd try to 
     maybe help them, see if I could get them a little more money 
     to help the renovation along a little quicker. That's one of 
     the projects I've developed for myself in retirement.''
       Jensen is not a Laurel County native, but he has spent his 
     entire career here, after following a basketball scholarship 
     from his hometown of Cincinnati to Sue Bennett Junior College 
     nearly 50 years ago.
       ``My high school coach was a guy named Ralph Rush, and he 
     was from Bush, and of course I never heard of Bush, growing 
     up in Cincinnati, but he brought me down here,'' Jensen said. 
     ``My grades were not real good in school. I was not a 
     particularly good student. I went to school mainly to play 
     sports probably . . . But that's what brought me down here, 
     and I just kind of fell in love with it here in London and 
     the surrounding area. I think I like the small town more than 
     I ever did a big city. Even though London's not a 
     particularly small town anymore, I wouldn't live anywhere 
     else. This is it. When I left Sue Bennett, I had a lot of 
     scholarship offers, and I went to Eastern Illinois 
     University. I went up there and just didn't like it, and I 
     quit. And this is 1969, I guess, and my dad was furious with 
     me. Vietnam was going on, and he said, 'Here you are going to 
     school for free. What are you going to do?' And I said, 
     'Well, I'll just join the Army.' But my dad threw such a fit 
     . . . So I came back down to London and talked to Ernie 
     Wiggins, who was my coach at Sue Bennett . . . and it just so 
     happened that night they were going to play at Cumberland 
     College, and he asked me if I wanted to go down . . . I went 
     to Cumberland and finished up there. I met my wife there. Got 
     married. Came to London--that's where her family's from--and 
     decided to go to law school about two years later.''
       Jensen married Nannette Curry and the couple have two 
     daughters, Natalie Jensen and Laura Jensen Hays, who were 
     growing up during Jensen's time in the legislature.
       ``I enjoyed . . . all those years doing that, looking back 
     on them, other than the time I was away from my family,'' 
     Jensen said. ``You know when you're away from your kids and 
     then they grow up, and if anything goes wrong, you start 
     blaming yourself: should have been there more,' but my wife 
     did a really good job, she covered all the bases. She was a 
     good mother, she was real involved with the kids.''
       These days, Jensen says he's looking forward to having time 
     to watch his grandchildren swim--they are both on the swim 
     team at Corbin High School--but he doesn't really have any 
     other hobbies. He said he wants to keep serving Laurel 
     County, just in different ways.
       ``How many years can you do this? I don't know. I just know 
     that I want to work until I can't work anymore,'' he said.
       He would like to continue to combat the drug problem in the 
     area, something he has seen first-hand as a judge.
       ``The biggest problem I see facing us today is drugs, and 
     if you come and watch a criminal day, it's nearly all drugs, 
     everybody that's convicted. Now, they might have a theft with 
     it, but they were stealing money to buy drugs . . . It's 
     really sad. I see that as a major problem, not only in 
     Kentucky but across the nation,'' Jensen said.
       All told, though, Jensen said he is proud of his life's 
     work and feels fortunate to have been able to accomplish what 
     he has for the people of the region.
       ``I'm glad I left Cincinnati to come down here. It's just 
     been a good life for me here,'' Jensen said. ``I've made a 
     lot of good friends . . . I've been very fortunate. And the 
     people of this community . . . have been really, really good 
     to me. When I was in the Senate, I was representing five 
     counties: Laurel, Jackson, Estill, Powell and Menifee 
     counties. They were always good to me. This (Laurel County) 
     courthouse here, I put the money in the budget for this and 
     the one in Jackson County, too. Those kind of things, when 
     you look back on it, things you were able to accomplish, it 
     kind of makes you feel good about some of it. Some of the 
     things you couldn't accomplish, you know, it's frustrating 
     that you thought you knew the right way to go and couldn't 
     get there, but the things that you have gotten right . . . 
     that makes you feel good. And I know what I accomplished. I 
     don't need my name on a building or anything to know what I 
     did, and I'm pretty proud of the things I did accomplish. 
     It's up to the next generation now to accomplish even more 
     and do things even better.''

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