Patch Exclusive: More With Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger was just elected to serve his fifth term representing Maryland's Second District, which includes parts of Baltimore City along with Anne Arundel, Howard and Baltimore counties.

The Baltimore County Democrat has spent more than three decades in public life, including time as a prosecutor, county councilman and as Baltimore County executive. Ruppersberger, 64, recently spent 40 minutes speaking with Patch on a wide range of issues, including the recent election, working with Republicans, immigration and even his political future. This is the second part of our interview with the congressman. Check out the first part .

Here is the second of two parts of the interview:

How can Baltimore County benefit from Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC)?

The issue of BRAC is a regional one. It's going to help Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City and Harford County. How it's going to help because so many of the jobs coming to the area are high-paying jobs. This will allow us to be in much better shape in terms of jobs.

If you create the jobs, you don't have to worry about raising taxes because you increase the tax base. That's real important. With that come the issues of infrastructure and quality of life. One of the things you learn when you represent local government is that if you have growth you want it to be positive growth. You want to make sure that you provide the infrastructure necessary to maintain the growth and sustain the growth so that you don't negatively impact residential and commercial entities in the area.

My focus is to bring in the resources to deal with the roads, maintain quality schools and other infrastructure to manage the load. We will do better in the next 10 years than most jurisdictions because of BRAC.

How much safer are we now compared to prior to Sept. 11, 2001?

We will always have issues when it comes to terrorism. We have to be vigilant. Intelligence is the best defense against terrorism. NSA is as good as anybody in the world at what they do. Unfortunately, there are many people who think NSA is listening to them all of the time and that's just not the case. They follow the law and people like me in Congress oversee them.

We have to balance our constitutional rights with security and privacy issues. We have to continue to support our military and intelligence organizations because there are people out there every day that want to kill us.  We have to guard against that.

There's another threat and that's the Russia-China threat. We control the world because we control the skies, but Russia and China are very close. China is spending a lot of money to make their military stronger ad we can't let that happen. If you look at history, if you're not strong, you're not going to have peace.

We also have to look at the bottom line and stop the spending. I'm working closely with the Department of Defense because I'm on the intelligence committee and I'm trying to find ways to cut money and save money because we have a different threat today.  We have the China-Russia threat and there's also the issue of cyber security. That's a huge threat to this country and most people don't even understand it. We could easily have an attack on our banking system or electrical system. There's a lot we have to do with cyber security because it impacts all of us.

What advice would you give incoming County Executive Kevin Kamenetz?

The first thing I would say is to make sure you service your constituents. I believe in local government you're closest to the people. You need to make sure you take care of the basics.

You want to make sure that there are quality schools, potholes are fixed, snow removal takes place and other basics. Sometimes it's not glamorous, but you need to make sure your infrastructure is in place. I think that is being done and will remain a priority. Kevin brings a lot of knowledge and experience and has been on the County Council for a long time so he doesn't have a learning curve. The key is to hire the best people possible because you are only as good as your team.

It's also important that he communicates throughout the county and that he's available. He needs to make sure that he has the right team in place and when constituents call they his team responds and they're not rude. It's just the basics. My experience in local government really helped me do my job [today].  Never lose sight of communication and taking care of your constituents. Kevin understands that and I think he'll do a great job.

Do you ever miss being county executive?

I do. When you were the boss, you could really make a difference and that's what you do in local government. I spent a long time in local government, including not only time as a county executive and a councilman but as a prosecutor and enjoyed the difference you can make at that level.

Have you thought about running for governor in four years?

People always speculate right after the election. I've had people come up to me and tell me to run for governor or run for this or that. I like what I'm doing now, but that could change. You never know where life is going to take you. I've always believed in life when one door closes another one opens. The most important thing for me right now is getting this country back on its feet and making sure my constituents are well served based on my role in Congress.