Tag: Bill Haslam

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Politics Politics Feature

Party Talk: Partisanship Draws Post-Election Attention

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The run-up to the statewide election of 2010 may have been, in retrospect, the first time the seismic shift in Tennessee from Democratic to Republican dominance became obvious.

Then-Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, had served for the maximum two terms and was about to vacate the office. The Democratic field that year was full of worthies, as you would expect with an open seat. So was the Republican field.

There had been ample harbingers of the shift to come. In 2007, the venerable John Wilder, a nominal Democrat, had lost his speakership in the state Senate to the GOP’s Ron Ramsey, and a year later, the Republicans had captured a one-vote majority in the House.

Jackson Baker

Zach Wamp

The changeover accelerated during the 2010 governor’s race, as the Democratic candidates, noticing a diminishing lack of enthusiasm for their cause, began dropping out one by one. Memphian Jim Kyle, then-leader of the state Senate Democrats and now a Shelby County Chancellor, commented at the time, “I kept looking for Yellow Dog [committed] Democrats, and kept finding Yellow Dog Republicans.”

The race came down to three Republicans in the end — Ramsey, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, and Chattanooga Congressman Zach Wamp.

Haslam, regarded as the more moderate of the three, won, and Wamp, who waged a credible race as an Everyman-styled conservative, finished second. The Chattanoogan’s subsequent political history is, by the standards of Tennessee politics, somewhat unusual. Still regarding himself as a conservative and a Republican, he has been at pains to present himself as a “post-partisan truth-teller.”

Which means that Wamp and his son Weston, who has made efforts to establish a political career of his own, have regarded themselves as free to publicly criticize Donald J. Trump.

Wamp has of late been actively tweeting in favor of acceptance of the presidential election results — an act surely unique enough among Republicans to merit special mention.

A recent Wamp tweet, rebutting the no-surrender Trumpians: “What? Common [c’mon?] guys. Truth matters. Get real. Quit making stuff up and misleading people. Conservatives must stand for truth. #CountryOverParty.”

Another one, directed at current national GOP chair Ronna McDaniel, a vocal defender of the Trump holdout: “I was working my butt off to elect conservatives before you were a grown-up. Today I am ashamed of your service as Chair of the RNC. Time for you and your ilk to go. Truth matters. Your lies hurt our cause.”

And yet another: “The National Council on Election Integrity is spending $2 million on an ad urging a transition. On the board of this org: @GOP like Michael Chertoff, Dan Coats, Bill Frist, @BillHaslam and @zachwamp. Get to Work.”

Meanwhile, as was noted here last week, Tennessee’s outgoing U.S. Senator, Lamar Alexander, is — however circumspectly — advocating for acceptance of the election results and the need for an effective transition. In a recent interview with the Tennessee Journal, Alexander cautioned: “What we have to watch for is that what happened to the one-party Democratic Party doesn’t happen to the one-party Republican Party. … Middle Tennessee was grabbing all the power and leaving East Tennessee and Memphis out. … And now we’ve gone full circle, where we have a one-party system, which again is starting to concentrate power in Middle Tennessee. … We Republicans have to watch out for being self-satisfied, not broad enough in our thinking. We don’t want to develop the flaws the Democratic Party started to develop in the 1960s.”

Meanwhile, the aforesaid Democratic Party will be looking for new leadership as of January, as Mary Mancini, who has headed the state party for the last six years, is stepping down. Potential successors are beginning to emerge, and more of that anon.

Under Mancini’s guidance, Democrats were able to increase the number of competitive races, including several in Shelby County. One of their winners, new District 96 state Representative Torrey Harris, replaced former Rep. John DeBerry, who was disallowed as a Democratic candidate by the state party and forced to run as an independent. DeBerry has been compensated for his pain by receiving a new job — annual pay, $165,000 — as an assistant to GOP Governor Bill Lee. That’s outreach and then some!

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trump Endorsement of Hagerty Senate Bid May Have Force of Edict

CREDIT: JB

JB

Bill Hagerty in Memphis in 2012

The trial balloon sent up last week by 8th District Congressman David Kustoff, along with several others expected to have been launched by would-be Republican U.S. Senate candidates would appear to be grounded by word from President Donald Trump favoring Bill Hagerty, current U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

Trump’s support for Hagerty as a 2020 candidate for the Tennessee Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander was announced in a presidential tweet on Friday that said: “Tennessee loving Bill Hagerty, who was my Tennessee (Victory) Chair and is now the very outstanding Ambassador to Japan, will be running for the U.S. Senate. He is strong on crime, borders & our 2nd A. Loves our Military & our Vets. Has my Complete & Total Endorsement!.”

Trump’s tweet came the day after an announcement of non-candidacy from former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who had been understood to have first dibs on a race for Alexander’s seat. After Haslam said that such a race was “not my calling,” Kustoff teased a candidacy of his own, saying,” I’ve been approached by folks from all across Tennessee encouraging me to run and I look forward to continuing to talk to the people about how to best continue serving our great state.”

Meanwhile, such other GOP Senatorial prospects as 7th District Congressman Mark Green and Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett made statements taking themselves out of contention for the race.

Inasmuch as Trump’s tweeted endorsement preceded any statement by Hagerty himself, it amounted to an unusual presidential edict, and it would seem to have, temporarily at least, foreclosed any other candidate activity from state Republicans, though Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician, had already announced his Senate candidacy in early June.

As Green made a point of noting, Hagerty has good ties with both the traditional Republican establishment and its Trump wing. A private equity investor, he served as an economic advisor and White House Fellow under President George H. W. Bush and was national finance chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. From 2011 to 2014, Hagerty served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development under Governor Haslam.

Lawyer and Iraq war veteran James Mackler of Nashville remains the only serious and declared Democratic candidate for the Alexander seat.

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Cover Feature News

Pipe Dream: Megasite Sewer Line into the Mississippi River Causes Strife

Only human waste and sludge stand between the Memphis Regional Megasite (MRM) in Haywood County and a possible economic development grand slam nearly two decades in the making.

Really. That’s it. At least, that’s the story according to Bob Rolfe, Tennessee’s Commissioner of Economic and Community Development (ECD). “The greatest challenge to the Memphis Regional Megasite is the lack of a wastewater discharge plan,” Rolfe told a committee of state lawmakers last year. “That is the pacing item. That is what all the site consultants tell us.”

But Rolfe has a two-pronged plan to fix that problem.

The first part: He has to get a permit. If the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) gives it to him, Rolfe will be able to build a 35-mile pipeline that will carry human waste and industrial waste from the site in Haywood County to the Mississippi River.

Bob Rolfe

The second part: He has to acquire land. Rolfe calls them “easements across land,” meaning, he needs to run that pipeline across property belonging to private land owners. Many along the path have already accepted money from the state to allow it to dig up their land and run an 18-inch pipeline three feet below the surface.

But some land-owners say they won’t take the money; they don’t want a sewage line running through their property. To deal with those folks, Rolfe has teamed up with Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery to take their land by eminent domain. And Rolfe assured those lawmakers that Slatery has “developed a very good game plan.” Get the permit. Get the land. Bada-boom. Bada-bing. A brighter economic future for West Tennessee. 

“This project would be a game-changer for West Tennessee, every county in West Tennessee,” state Senator Ed Jackson (R-Jackson) told the committee last year. “It’s so important that we get this thing, and get it right.”

We still don’t have the thing Jackson was talking about. Not yet. The long, windy road to the MRM’s success now leads to the end of that pipeline, puking waste and sludge into the Mississippi at a rate of up to 3.5 million gallons per day. If that sounds gross, remember: Folks pushing this project hope it happens really soon — the sooner the better.

The goal of the ongoing megasite saga — employing Tennesseans and bringing economic benefits to the area — still lies at least three years away, ECD officials said recently. The series is a slow burn. But important episodes in that series are happening right now.

Since the beginning of the process, much of the cast has changed — including three governors, four ECD Commissioners, and hosts of state lawmakers — but much of the rebellion remains. Environmentalists, Haywood County residents and land owners, and free-market advocates have pressed back against the whole project, the sewage line, and the eminent domain process, some of them for more than a decade, and they’re still on the show.           

But the primary tension remains: Should we continue to pour taxpayer money ($143 million appropriated, $87 million spent, and $80 million more needed) into a project that offers no guarantee of financial return? And secondarily: What are the environmental impacts of the megasite to West Tennessee if the megasite dream is realized?  

Since you wouldn’t start watching Game of Thrones on season three, let’s go back to Memphis Regional Megasite season one to catch you up. 

Previously on Megasite

Then-Governor Phil Bredesen birthed the megasite in 2006, when it was pitched as a center for solar panel production. In 2009, state officials purchased the six square-mile plot for $40 million. At the time, similar megasite deals had brought Volkswagen to Chattanooga (East Tennessee) and Hemlock Semiconductor (Middle Tennessee) to Clarksville in billion-dollar deals. State officials had not brought anything even remotely as big to West Tennessee. 

In 2009, Bredesen said he wanted to take federal stimulus funding and build a $30 million solar farm on the megasite plot, again in hopes of making Tennessee a hot-bed of the solar industry. Haywood County Mayor Franklin Smith told WMC Channel 5 at the time that, with the solar farm, “the governor is making a statement that he’s serious about helping West Tennessee by developing our megasite.” 

The solar farm opened in 2012. It now produces enough energy to power 500 homes for a year. 

Governor Bill Haslam was elected in 2011. By 2014, he asked for and was awarded $27 million to reroute State Highway 222 from the site and connect it to the interstate. Haslam said the site would need a total of $150 million in taxpayer investment before it could attract a major automaker to the site.  

At the time, the Haslam adminstration was also fighting with environmentalists on a plan to dump megasite wastewater into the Hatchie River, considered one of the state’s most pristine waterways. Haslam lost that fight. 

In 2015, the Haslam administration launched a new marketing campaign for the megasite. Later that year, Haslam’s ECD Commissioner Randy Boyd fretted to Nashville Public Radio’s Chas Sisk that the site’s massive size may be standing in its own way. 

“Nissan, Volkswagen, Hankook, and Boeing could all fit on half that space,” Boyd told WPLN. “There was a time when people thought we could put one factory in 4,100 acres. But as it turns out today, there’s nobody that needs 4,100 acres.”

Boyd’s idea was to possibly split up the site, making it more attractive for smaller manufacturers and reducing the need to pump out so much wastewater. 

By 2016, environmentalists had beaten a plan to dump the site’s wastewater into the Forked Deer River. Haslam said his team was slowly building the infrastructure needed to lure an investor to the site. His team was also exploring ways to dump that wastewater into the Mississippi River. That year, Haslam and Boyd headed to Asia on a 10-day trip to meet with manufacturers about the megasite but came home empty-handed. 

Megasite dreams were dealt another blow in 2017, when Toyota and Mazda picked a megasite in Huntsville, Alabama, for a $1.6 billion plant. That facility employs 4,000 and makes an estimated 300,000 cars each year. 

Rolfe, then the state’s new ECD commissioner, said the MRM was passed over because it was not “shovel ready.” But that wasn’t the first prospect to pass on Haywood County. 

“Last year [2017], we had a candidate for large, international project of about 1,100 jobs and  $800 million in investment,” Rolfe told lawmakers in 2018. “The major reason they decided to build in an adjacent state was that their megasite was further along with infrastructure — closer to shovel ready — with a lower cost of development.”

Rolfe said another prospect in 2016 would have brought 1,000 jobs and $450 million in investment. They built in an adjacent state because of that state’s tax structure, Rolfe said. Later in 2017, Rolfe said he would ask state lawmakers for an additional $72 million to make the site “shovel ready.” He kept his promise but later upped the total to $80 million. 

That year, 2018, was a gubernatorial election year, and the megasite was a hot topic. Then-candidate Boyd said the site was already shovel ready and proposed doubling down on it. Almost every candidate — Boyd, Craig Fitzhugh, Karl Dean, Beth Harwell, and Bill Lee — told The Jackson Sun the megasite was a good project and they’d push to make it happen. Only Diane Black proposed something different. She said she wanted the 4,100 acres to be part of an agricultural hub, one that would work with the University of Tennessee in a new Agricultural Research Center.

As he left office earlier this year, Haslam told The Daily Memphian that not landing a tenant for the megasite was one of the biggest disappointments in his eight-year term. But he also kept high hopes for the megasite’s future. In that story, Haslam said the site is a big one, designed for the “big catch.”

New Governor Bill Lee told The Daily Memphian in January that he was committed to finishing the project. Later that month, Rolfe told The Daily Memphian that the project wasn’t finished but that the Lee adminstration would not seek any new money for the megasite unless they landed a tenant. 

To date, $143 million has been given to the megasite project. As of October 2018, $87 million had been spent on it. While some lawmakers seemed surprised at the figure, Rolfe said $220 million has been the “consistent” number always needed to “have this campus shovel ready.”

At that joint committee of lawmakers last year, then-state-Senator (now U.S. Congressman) Mark Greene asked about ROI — return on investment. How many jobs, he asked Rolfe, would it take for the state to break even if lawmakers gave the project another $80 million? He didn’t get a direct answer from Rolfe at the time but did his own math, instead. 

“If I look at an average income [of workers at the site] as $60,000 and workers spend money on things we get sales tax from,” Greene began, “it comes out to be that 5,000 jobs are necessary to get us a 20-year payout.”

By Greene’s math, the hit from the megasite wouldn’t need to just be a home run. It’d need to be an economic grand slam in the state, surpassing Volkswagen and weathering 20 years of economic booms and busts before Tennessee taxpayers ever made back their first nickel.

Competition?

Many of those interviewed for this story worried that focus on the megasite for all of these years has left neglected existing-yet-abandoned manufacturing sites such as the International Harvester plant or the Firestone plant in Memphis.   

“One adminstration after another is saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do for West Tennessee,'” said Nick Crafton, who owns land in Haywood County close to the megasite. “But it’s sucking all the oxygen out of every other project across the region. 

“Now, they’re talking about busting up [the megasite] and that’ll be in direct competition with the local industrial parks that these companies might otherwise be looking at.”

However, the Greater Memphis Chamber said it is “100 percent supportive” of the continued development of the megasite. Shelby County has a “serious lack of ‘development ready’ sites to begin with. Further, given the megasite’s size, it is not competition with other sites here. It’s in competition with other ‘sites of its ilk across the Southeast.'”

All of this is according to Eric Miller, the Chamber senior vice president of economic development, and a Haslam-appointed member of the Memphis Regional Megasite Authority Board. 

“Our efforts as a region and state should be to make that site the premier available site in its category to help our region compete for much-needed tax dollars from new investment and jobs,” Miller said.  

Plans for the proposed Memphis Regional Megasite pipeline

Down by the Water

The Mississippi River sloshes gently against a concrete boat ramp. The ramp angles into the muddy water from a wide, flat spot called Duvall Landing in Tipton County, about 45 minutes north of Memphis. A mud-splattered truck with a boat trailer sits in the chilly breeze, the only tenant of a parking lot big enough to swallow an airplane hangar. The lot is covered by a half-inch of mud, and a look at the detritus on the bank makes it clear that the river crested and receded here not long ago. 

A kayak-and-canoe blog called RiverGator (www.rivergator.org) says the parking lot is a “notorious hell-raising party place amongst locals.” The description matched the evidence of discarded Bud Lite bottles, spent shotgun shells, and lighters that littered the ground, and an enormous bonfire circle.

Just north of that scene, state officials hope to snake a wastewater pipeline the width of a large pizza (18 inches) out into the main channel of the Mississippi. If the stars align, and they win that large manufacturer to the megasite 35 miles away, that pipe could send up to 3.5 million gallons a day of human feces and industrial waste into the river.

Party at Duvall Landing with the pipe going full blast, and you could clock about 145,800 gallons of shit and sludge sliding right by your bonfire every hour.

“People out here have to actually get in the water to launch their boats,” said Jo Cris Blair, administrator of the Say No to the Richardson Landing Poopline group. “Will they get sick? We have no way of knowing. Will the fish start glowing in the dark? We have no way of knowing.”

But Blair said the wastewater will destroy farmland, settling into soils after floods. It’ll also impact the local wildlife — fish, birds, and deer — and “it will really hurt the fishing and boating community.”

The Pipe and the River

Blair said the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are turning a “blind eye to the situation.” As for politicos, only Millington Chamber of Commerce executive director Terry Roland and state Representative Debra Moody (R-Covington) have shown any concern for it.

Another spot — about a mile north of Duvall Landing — was the original site for the pipeline’s outfall. But it was moved due to the concerns of locals who felt the waste would harm the environment. 

Blair said she thinks the new Tipton County spot was picked because Memphis can’t take any more waste and Shelby Forest is protected.

Rolfe told lawmakers that TDEC helped his office pinpoint the new location and suggested they run it into the “deep channel” of the river. Standing at Duvall Landing, the Arkansas side of the river seems a mile away. Each second you stand there, more than 8.5 million gallons of muddy water slides by. If the pipeline was running at full capacity — up to that 3.5 million gallons per day — it would add an average of 40 gallons of sewage from the megasite each second. 

Feed the phrase “dilution is the pollution solution” into Google, and you’ll find environmental groups telling you that it is not. There’s a loophole in the federal Clean Water Act that allows for dumping waste into certain bodies of water if they can provide specific “mixing channels.” Deep water with lots of volume can dilute the pollution and limit its effects; that’s the idea. 

Does it work? It’s hard to say with the Mississippi. It’s so wild and so big that it’s been tough to make and maintain a water-quality tracking system. 

In a previous story on this topic, Renee Hoyos, the executive director of the Tennessee Clean Water Network (TCWN), said that the river drains one third of the United States and has “been used as the nation’s toilet.” It was her sense that “by the time [the river water] gets to Memphis, it is in pretty bad shape.”

In 2017, she told the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Water that the TCWN and nine other agencies like it had formed the Mississippi River Collaborative to track and fight pollution in the river. 

“Right now, states in the Mississippi River basin pollute the river with so much nitrogen and phosphorus, that beaches are regularly closed, dogs are dying, and drinking water is under constant threat. We want a numeric standard for [nutrient pollution] nationwide. EPA has battled this problem for decades to no avail.”

The beaches Hoyos mentioned are likely those along the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution in Mississippi River water plumes out when it hits the gulf. The pollution helps algae grow. That algae sucks the oxygen out of the water and kills everything living there. In 2017, the dead zone was the size of New Jersey. It’s forecast to be larger this year, thanks to heavy rains. 

What’s in a River?

The Mississippi River water at Memphis is already polluted. It contains chlordane, a now-banned pesticide, that — taken in high doses — “can cause convulsions and death,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also contains polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs), a now-banned substance used to make capacitors, adhesives, floor finish, and more. Doses of PCBs can cause cancer and much more, according to the EPA.

As for human waste, the megasite actually has to have it. Crafton, a chemical engineer, explains that human waste naturally treats industrial waste. But Crafton says the only human waste so far is coming from the city of Stanton. It’s only 452 people, he says, not enough to treat the volume of waste from the proposed megasite. But the concern doesn’t just lie at the end of the pipeline. From end to end, the pipeline will cross rivers and streams 54 times, according to TDEC, and they could all be affected by pollution, should the pipe burst or leak. 

It’s still unknown exactly what kind of pollution the megasite pipeline would add to the Mississippi River. That’s because no one knows what kind of company will eventually be on the site or what kind of manufacturing will take place there. Blair said ECD’s application does include heavy metals and “an unknown amount of hexavalent chromium.” If that sounds weirdly familiar, the same compound was the center of the Erin Brockovich case. 

“We know what this particular contaminate can do to people,” Blair says. “And for them to literally say ‘an untold amount’ is beyond terrifying.”

Residents along the proposed pipeline are fighting back. Motions are ongoing in a lawsuit led by attorney Jeff Ward against TDEC. Ward is working pro bono, but the group has a GoFundMe page to help pay for other legal expenses. 

The Next Step

The next episode in the megasite saga is a public hearing set for Thursday, April 25th, at Dyersburg Community College. TDEC’s early opinion of the pipeline is that it will “result in no more than de minimis [meaning trivial, or minor] degradation to water quality.” But the division will take public comments into account and the final decision will come down to “the lost value of the resource compared to the value of any proposed mitigation.”

Should TDEC grant Rolfe and his team the pipeline permit, he’s told lawmakers he’ll begin the process of taking lands (easements) from those who don’t want to sell. The process is expected to wrap up in six to nine months. If they get all those, pipeline construction can begin and is expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete.

“In the meantime, if [ECD] successfully recruits a company to the megasite, construction of the tenant’s facility on site can occur parallel to the wastewater pipeline buildout,” reads a statement from Rolfe’s office. “Under such a scenario, we could have a tenant open and operating on the Megasite within three years.”

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Cover Feature News

Fresh Start in Nashville: Criminal Justice Reform on the Docket

CREDIT: Justin Wright, Tennessee State Photographer

Everybody agrees that there was an air of kumbaya to the inauguration of Governor Bill Lee on a rainy January 9th inside War Memorial Auditorium. Part of it derived from the personality of the new chief executive, whose laid-back, inviting demeanor made him the gubernatorial choice last year of Tennesseans who doubtless felt overdosed by the bitter back-and-forthing of his two chief opponents for the Republican gubernatorial nomination — and who have not yet recovered the habit of treating Democratic statewide candidates with full seriousness.

Lee’s acceptance address at his inauguration was in keeping with his campaign persona — uplifting without being confined to specifics, a partial reason for its brevity. On the whole, the speech was not much longer than the bookend prayers of the event — the invocation and benediction. It contained the obligatory tribute to faith, family, and the ancestral virtues of Tennessee and Tennesseans.

And the new governor left no doubt that, for him, as for most prominent Republicans of our clime and time, “[g]overnment is not the answer to our greatest challenges.” As he intoned: “Government’s role is to protect our rights and our liberty and our freedom. I believe in a limited government that provides unlimited opportunity for we the people to address the greatest challenges of our day.”

Justin Wright, Tennessee State Photographer

And yet Lee served notice that there were areas of concern that he intended to move state government to address. Among them were:

Education: “More than a test score — it’s about preparing a child for success in life. A resurgence of vocational, technical, and agricultural education, and the inclusion of civics and character education, combined with reforms, will take Tennessee to the top tier of states.”

Poverty, urban and rural: “[W]e … have 15 counties in poverty, all rural, all Tennesseans. We have some of the most economically distressed ZIP codes in America — right in the heart of our greatest cities.”

Public Safety: “Tennesseans do want good jobs and schools, but they want safe neighborhoods, too. And while most neighborhoods are safe, our violent crime rate is on the rise in every major city. We can be tough on crime and smart on crime at the same time. For violent criminals and traffickers, justice should be swift and certain.”

And, as a necessary corollary to crime control and safety, “But here’s the reality, 95 percent of the people in prison today are coming out. And today in Tennessee, half of them commit crimes again and return to prison within the first three years. We need to help non-violent criminals re-enter society, and not re-enter prison.”

Jackson Baker

Governor Bill Lee addresses the crowd at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville (top); Antonio Parkinson shakes hands with Lang Wiseman (below).

It is that part of the new governor’s commitment that has engendered excitement among his reform-minded constituents, as well as among legislators — many of them hailing from Memphis and Shelby County [see sidebar] — and among movers and shakers at large.

One of the latter is Hedy Weinberg, head of the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who, in a luncheon address to the Rotary Club of Memphis last week, made a point of proclaiming her confidence in Lee’s bona fides on the subject of criminal justice reform.

She pronounced the governor to be “very committed to criminal justice reform” and went so far as to say, “we speak the same language” on that issue.

If Lee lucked out with that endorsement from the ACLU’s Weinberg, he had worse fortune on another occasion. In the immediate wake of the inauguration, the new governor went to a ceremony at Tennessee State University honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There, he delivered a convincing testimony regarding his intention to provide more effective and humane solutions to post-conviction offenders seeking to re-enter society. He did well, but then, as veteran scribe Erik Schelzig chronicled it in The Tennessee Journal:

“… Lee then took a seat behind the lectern [and] Rev. William Barber II, the head of the Poor People’s Campaign, which is a revival of King’s effort that has mounted recent acts of civil disobedience in Nashville. … [Lee] most notably stayed seated when Barber called on anyone opposing President Donald Trump’s border wall and supporting Medicaid expansion to stand. Barber thundered that King would have favored a series of policies opposed by most Republicans, including a living wage, a ban on assault weapons, and universal health care (he denounced it as a “shame and a disgrace” for Tennessee to have failed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act). “The crowd loved it.” But Lee, meanwhile, sat stoically and uneasily.
Asked about this in an interview with the Flyer, Lee acknowledged his discomfort and took a stab at presenting an alternative view: “The biggest challenge we have in health care is that we have skyrocketing costs that people can’t afford. So my plan focuses on reducing the cost of health care and improving the health of people, which would decrease costs as it improves people’s well-being. It’s about how we can make people healthier. A large percentage of our current health-care needs are associated with preventable chronic disease.”

Jackson Baker

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris (above) and newly elected Tennessee Governor Bill Lee have both made juvenile justice reform an issue in their approaches to government.

Medicaid expansion is not the only subject on which the state’s new governor possesses views that some would find contrary. School vouchers are another. Avowed progressives oppose it on grounds of separating church and state, and the suburban conservatives of Shelby County have soured on it as a threat to the tax-supported municipal school systems they now have a vested interest in. Even state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, the arch-conservative supporter of voucher measures for 16 straight legislative sessions chose last year not to introduce his usual measure to divert public funds selectively on behalf of students at private institutions.

Lee is a resident of Williamson County, an expansive suburban area just south of Nashville, where House Speaker Glen Casada, who has proposed reviving voucher legislation, also hails from and where vouchers are regarded less warily.

The governor prefers to refer to the subject as a matter of school choices. “I think the choices for parents are very important. The most important thing is that every child have access to a good education. We need to strengthen our school system. Part of the way to do that is to allow parents to have choice.

“Education savings accounts, charter schools, public school choices: These are all things that I’m willing to look at to improve the opportunity for education for every kid.

“My interest in school choice — that’s a broad choice for all areas in the state. That’s an interest in elevating the quality and outcomes of our school system all across the state. Vo-tech and agricultural and CTE (that’s career technical education). There’s a lot of phraseology and terms around that, but primarily it is expanding opportunities for kids in our schools, more skills-attainment for our kids, and opportunities for success in life. My real interest there does lie in vocational- technical and agricultural-educational public schools system.”

Courtesy American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee

Hedy Weinberg

Somewhere in there are surely points for possible compromise.

Another controversial view ascribed to Governor Lee is an openness to the idea of “constitutonal carry” or the virtually unlimited (and unlicensed) privilege of citizens to carry firearms — a severe reduction that a neighboring state like Mississippi has already adopted.

Lee is not quite there yet. “All I’ve said is that I would sign a constitutional carry bill if one passed my desk. It’s not an issue that I’m leading on. I try to stay focused on things that we’re trying to present in a legislative package. These are around vocational education, around recidivism, and job development. Those are the things we’re focusing on.”

Other things that Lee focused on in the Flyer interview, which took place last Friday at the beginning of his first weekend as governor:

Possible consequences for state government of a federal government shut-down: “My understanding is that the most recent one is over, at least for some period of time. We won’t have to deal with it for several weeks anyway. But I certainly want to stay on top of things. I’ve had folks in our administration start looking for what effects could come, if a shutdown would resume or continue, but that’s about as far as we’ve got.”

Spending and governmental priorities: “I’ve asked every department to lay out what it would look like to cut two percent from their budgets. We certainly will take some of those cuts. My overall goal is to reduce government spending to the degree that we can — and certainly to minimize potential increases. All of those cuts are on the table to be taken, but even if not, they are valuable in determining priorities and what to do with the resources we have. But we have opportunities to cut in every department. I believe in limited government.”

His first actions as governor: “I put out executive orders that strengthened orders previously in place on ethics, transparency, and discrimination. My first executive order was one strengthening our aid to rural counties — particularly those 15 that are under the poverty line.”

The West Tennessee Megasite: “I actually spent about an hour today with the Economic Development Commissioner, with our deputy governor, and with my senior adviser Brandon Gibson, who is from Jackson. We were assessing the megasite, exactly where the asset is today, what is necessary to get it shovel-ready, what are the options, and what are the prospects. It’s very important to me and to the state, so I’m spending time here in my first week getting up to speed with a complete in-depth understanding of the megasite.

“I don’t have an idea yet of the additional funding required. One of the questions I asked today was how many dollars it would take to get it ready. I want to know what it takes for a tenant to occupy it, in short order.”

Plan to raise Shelby County to the rest of the state: “I met this morning with our senior team, including Deputy Governor Lang Wiseman. He’s from Memphis. We talked about economic opportunities, job creation, and economic incentives to attract industry into West Tennessee. When you think about educational reform, there’s no place more appropriate than Memphis as a place to do that. It’s one of the largest cities in the state, and it has some of the greatest opportunities for improvement in our educational system. The accelerated transformation of Shelby County is important if we want Tennessee to make it to a leading place in the country.”

Summing up: “I believe that Tennesseans are a unique group and that we have a real opportunity. There is more that unites us than divides us. That’s the way I ran my campaign, and it’s  the way I want to govern. Hopefully, that’s absolutely what will happen.

…

Justice  Reform: A Consensus Point

As Hedy Weinberg of the Tennessee ACLU observes, the Tennessee General Assembly has in recent years seen an increasing incidence of cooperation between legislators of the left and right on bills aimed at criminal justice reform. Though in an address last week to members of the Rotary Club of Memphis she noted such remaining stands of potential obstruction as the bail-bond industry, Weinberg hailed what she saw as a dawning era of bipartisan agreement on reform issues.

Governor Lee has singled out criminal justice reform as a major governmental aim and would seem to be actively seeking out partners.

One of the interested parties is Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, who has made juvenile justice reform a major issue in his own approach to government. Harris, who vigorously protested the decision of the U.S. Department of Justice to cease its monitoring activities over Juvenile Court, has called for the demolition of the antiquated existing facilities for housing juvenile offenders, and is attempting to persuade the Shelby County Commission to create a new assessment center for juveniles, and to pony up the sources for an upgraded new detention facility that offers the youth inside it access to fresh air, recreation, and abundant classroom activity. Only this week, he persuaded the commission to authorize the first financial component on what will be a $25 million facility and persuaded commissioners further to give it the working title of Youth Justice and Education Center.

Harris, as a Democratic state senator, pioneered in bipartisan criminal-justice reform efforts, sometimes in tandem with such opposite numbers as Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown. He has also asked newly sworn-in District 33 state Senator Katrina Robinson, among others, to carry a remedial package of legislation on behalf of the county.

Robinson has jumped into the criminal-reform conversation in dramatic fashion, sponsoring a plethora of bills on the subject:

Senate Bill 62 would require the Department of Education to develop rules, to be adopted by the state board of education that include procedures for providing instruction to students incarcerated in juvenile detention centers for a minimum of four hours each instructional day.

SB 63 would expand career and technical education programs in the middle school grades and require the Board of Career and Technical Education to plan facilities for comprehensive career and technical training for middle-school students.

SB 65 and SB 85 would establish a center for driver’s license reinstatement and remove authorization to suspend, restrict, or revoke drivers’ licenses for nonpayment of fines, court costs, and litigation taxes for driving offenses, upon proof of inability to pay.

SB 69 would reduce the sentence a minor who commits first-degree murder is required to serve before becoming eligible for release from 51 years to 25 years. (This is one of several pieces of legislation introduced by the Shelby County delegation that indirectly reference the case of Cyntoia Brown, for whom outgoing Governor Bll Haslam recommended clemency as one of his last acts.)

Other legislative introductions related to criminal justice reform:

House Bill 17 by another first-term Memphis legislator, state Representative London Lamar, also related to the Cyntoia Brown case, would establish the presumption that a minor who is the victim of a sexual offense or who is engaged in prostitution holds a reasonable belief that the use of force is immediately necessary to avoid imminent death or serious bodily injury.

HB 47 by state Representative Antonio Parkinson would allow a person entitled to seek expunction from the record of a crime to pay an additional $250 fee for expedited expunction, to occur within 30 days of a court order granting expedited expunction.

HB 30  by state Representative Barbara Cooper would permit certain incarcerated persons who are allowed to enroll in courses offered by a community college or Tennessee college of applied technology pursuant to an approved release plan to receive a Tennessee reconnect grant.

The legislative session has just begun, with full committee and floor action commencing this week. The signs are clear that other Shelby County legislators and other bills on the subject of justice reform will be heard from before the deadline for introducing new bills.

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Politics Politics Feature

Blackburn, Dean, Lee, and Donald Trump All in Memphis Area

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The semi-lull in politics that had lasted from the mid-summer election of August 2nd until Labor Day is now unmistakably over, as the present week’s events well indicate.

On Monday night, Tennessee was favored with the presence of one Donald J. Trump, who turned up for one of his patented political rallies in Johnson City, in the far corner of northeastern Tennessee. Trump was on hand to bolster his own permanent campaign as well as the hopes of 8th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by incumbent Republican Bob Corker. On Tuesday night, he appeared at a rally in Southaven. (For a report on the president’s Southaven visit, go to memphisflyer.com.)

Jackson Baker

Trump in Johnson City

On Monday, the president, professing happiness at “being back in the great state of Tennessee with thousands of hard-working American patriots,” also made a point of ladling out grace notes to every other leading Republican in sight. His beneficiaries included Congressmen Phil Roe, John Duncan, Chuck Fleischmann, and Scott Desjarlais (“my favorite name in politics”), Congressional candidates Tim Burchett and Mark Green, Governor Bill Haslam, Lt. Governor Randy McNally, and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee.

Trump took time to brag on a new trade arrangement with Mexico and Canada, designated by the letters USMCA, an anagram that, unlike the predecessor association of NAFTA, cannot be said as a word. Though the new trade pact is considered somewhat more advantageous to American milk producers and automakers than was NAFTA, its primary advantage, as Trump sees it, may be that it’s one more replacement for a now-discarded creation of his Democratic predecessors.

The president also defended his current Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and disparaged several Judiciary Committee Democrats who oppose Kavanaugh — notably Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Dianne Feinstein of California.

But Trump reserved most of his criticism for Phil Bredesen, the former Tennessee governor who is Blackburn’s Democratic opponent for the Senate seat. The election of Bredesen, he said, could mean the loss of Tennessee gun-owner’s Second Amendment rights, the escalation of taxes “beyond your wildest imagination, the likelihood of mass unemployment, and the takeover of medical care by the government.”

The Bredesen campaign later issued a point-by-point refutation of these charges, along with the following summary: “From Day 1, Governor Bredesen has been clear — he is not running against Donald Trump. He is running for a Senate seat to represent the people of Tennessee. As he said in Chattanooga this evening — if Tennesseans are looking for someone to continue the D.C. gridlock and shouting, he’s not their candidate. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn has gotten very good at this after 16 years in Washington. If what Tennesseans are looking for is someone who will get things done, then Phil Bredesen is applying for the job.”

That statement, consistent with the general run of Bredesen’s TV commercials, which stress his political independence and demonstrated ability to work across the political aisle, both complements and somewhat contrasts with the former governor’s action last week in announcing that, if elected, he would not support current Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York for reelection to the Senate leadership post.    

Bredesen took that position during a debate at Cumberland University in Lebanon, and it came off then as a concession — needless, some Democrats worried — to his Republican opponent’s frequent attempts to tie him to the national Congressional leadership of Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Jackson Baker

Mike Stewart in Germantown

• Meanwhile, there’s more politics in the offing locally. As I write this, there is to be a Tuesday night debate at the University of Memphis between the aforementioned Lee and his Democratic gubernatorial opponent, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean. Dean is scheduled to stick around for a meet-and-greet Wednesday night at Railgarten, and Senate candidate Blackburn was advertised for a GOP luncheon at Owen Brennan’s, also on Wednesday.

Local Democrats have been getting help from elsewhere, too. State Representative Mike Stewart was in Shelby County the weekend before last, speaking at a picnic of the Germantown Democratic Club and bringing aid and comfort — some of it rhetorical and devoted to the macro level of politics.

Said Stewart: “We have got to take this country back — neighborhood by neighborhood, councilmanic district by councilmanic district, statehouse district by statehouse district.” 

Stewart scourged “this very radical Congress that would not compromise” and a national Republican regime that, he said, “stymied at every turn” progressive efforts.

He made the case that several local House districts now belonging to Republicans were in range to be captured. “These districts are changing,” he said. “We can turn these districts blue. These suburban districts are where the fight is at.”

On hand for the event was a prime exhibit of Stewart’s thesis: State Representative Dwayne Thompson of House District 96. Thompson upset then incumbent state Representative Steve McManus two years ago in the district, which includes parts of Cordova, southeast Memphis, and Germantown, and which, as Stewart had indicated, had indeed undergone significant demographic change.

Thompson had worked the district with all due diligence back in 2016, knocking on what he estimated to be “thousands of doors,” and his effort certainly was the largest reason for his victory. But another major component was the significant financial aid that the state party shifted his way, by way of targeting the district.

In 2018, the state Democratic Party is once again involved as an active principal in the legislative races of Shelby County, and Stewart’s very presence was a clear symbol of that. This year the state party seems to have identified two more districts capable of turnover — District 97, in the Bartlett-Eads-Lakeland area, now represented by the GOP’s Jim Coley; and District 83, in the East Memphis-Germantown overlap, now represented by Republican Mark White.  

The Democrats running for those seats — Allan Creasy in District 97 and Danielle Schonbaum in district 83 — have reportedly been pinpointed for accelerated financial aid from the state party’s coffers, as has the reelection effort of Thompson, who is opposed by Republican Scott McCormick in District 96.

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Politics Politics Feature

Haslam Points With Pride in State of the State

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE — Governor Bill Haslam‘s State of the State address Monday night to legislators at the state Capitol was, in essence, a brag list.

Recalling his first State of the State back in 2011, Republican Haslam remembered, “I stood before you and said, if we will make the right plans and decisions, then the state of Tennessee can compete with any state in the nation.”

Haslam made it clear he thought he had succeeded. “We’re doing really well. In the short time we’ve worked together, we have become one of the best destinations to live, work, and raise a family.”

He continued with the kernel of his case: “Tennessee has a job growth rate greater than 17 percent, far above the national average, with nearly 400,000 net new private sector jobs created.

“We’ve added more than $1.3 billion into K-12 education, with nearly $450 million more going to teacher salaries. And thanks to the hard work and dedication of our educators and parents, and the additional accountability to our system, our children are the fastest improving students in the nation, across math, reading, and science.

“And you’d think we did all of this by raising taxes the way other states have, but in Tennessee, we’ve cut taxes by $572 million annually, with policies in place to reduce taxes even more in years to come.

“Additionally, we’ve cut year-to-year spending by $578 million. Most states would have found such a task insurmountable, but we didn’t just do these things, we did them while tripling the Rainy Day Fund and decreasing our debt.”

Haslam attempted to draw hard and fast connections between his education policies and job creation. “Our unemployment rate has dropped from 5.1 percent to as low as 3 percent, the lowest rate in our state’s 222-year history.

Simultaneously, “In education, Tennessee students are posting the largest gains in the country and the highest high school graduation rates the state has ever seen. And while other states struggle to improve access to higher education, we created Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect, so that all Tennesseans have access to college, free of tuition and fees.”

Expressing a motto of “the best possible services at the lowest possible cost,” the governor said, “We’ve cut $578 million in taxes, including a nearly 30 percent cut to the tax that everyone pays, the sales tax on groceries. We’ve set a schedule to end the Hall income tax, and we have already eliminated the inheritance tax and the gift tax.”

Haslam did not fail to remind his listeners of his success last year in getting the passage of the IMPROVE Act, with its gas tax increase to fuel infrastruture improvements. “By providing a safe and reliable transportation network, we’re making sure the next generations of Tennesseans have access to the high quality jobs made possible by a robust transportation system.”

Beyond his litany of claimed accomplishments, Haslam put forth some goals for his last year and for whichever successor will be elected governor in 2018.

“This evening, I am proposing a bold new challenge. I want Tennessee to lead the nation in jobs, education, and government efficiency. I don’t just want us to compete; I want us to be the best. … But to lead the country, we must continue to push forward.”

Haslam pushed several new initiatives: e.g., a “Complete to Compete initiative, which, through appropriate levers and resources to students, will ensure that they start strong, receive support to stay on track, and make it to graduation day”; “the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018,” with an emphasis on “responsible reforms that will focus the most significant state intervention on the most serious offenses”; and the new “TN Together, a comprehensive plan to end the opioid crisis that focuses on prevention, treatment, and law enforcement.”

Haslam concluded on a note of heady self-confidence; “[T]he momentum we have created will make us the most effective state government in the country. It has been my life’s greatest honor to lead the state I love for the past seven years. Will you join me in finishing what we began? Tennessee, it is time to lead the nation. I believe we can, and I believe we will.”

While members of the General Assembly in general gave Haslam’s remarks respectful attention and occasional standing ovations, in the aftermath, many members of the Democratic political opposiion were not as enthusiastic, finding his prescription for curbing the state’s opioid epidemic vague and insufficient and criticizing the lack of anything else substantive in the State of the State about health care.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

If Rip Van Winkle happened to be not a fictional character from a previous century but  a current resident of Shelby County, Tennessee, he would not have had to nod off for a full score of years to wake up to a drastically changed landscape.
If he’d just blinked his eyes about midway through last week, he might have missed significant doings in the race for Shelby County mayor and that for United States senator.

State Senator Lee Harris

The first major change in the projected 2018 political lineup occurred on Wednesday with the carefully stage-managed entry into the county mayor’s race of Lee Harris, a Democratic state senator and former Memphis City Council member whose ambitions to keep on moving up in the political hierarchy were clearly signaled back in 2016 when he flirted with the idea of challenging 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in that year’s Democratic primary but thought better of it.

As the senator confided in a recent conversation, “I can serve anywhere” — the choice of a particular political office being something of a pure variable.
Harris’ interests in running for county mayor had been obvious for most of the current year but were screened somewhat by an elaborate Alphonse-Gaston scenario in which he appeared to be deliberating along with close friend and University of Memphis law faculty colleague Steve Mulroy, a former county commissioner and a mayoral candidate in 2014, as to which of them would actually make the 2018 race.

The veil was dropped abruptly on Wednesday via an interview in The Commercial Appeal, a venue choice made after scouting out the possible advantages of announcing in other media.

Harris has a reputation as a progressive but one adept at working across the aisle, a fact indicated by his partnership with Republican lawmakers on criminal justice issues and with GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey in seeking to safeguard the Memphis Sand aquifer.
As of now, Harris would appear to be the likely Democratic nominee against the winner of the three-way Republican mayoral primary between County Commissioner Terry Roland, County Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos.

But two other eminences with credentials both with Shelby County Democrats and with the civic and social universe at large are still meditating on a possible mayoral entry. Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd holds numerous political IOUs as a political donor and broker, a holdover following from his past as a Democratic state representative and two previous near-runs for mayor, and ample access to financial support.

Equally well-positioned is Shea Flinn, currently an influential Memphis Chamber of Commerce vice president and a former progressive spark-plug on the city council. Flinn’s access to funding, too, would be considerable, and, in a political environment not over-stocked with charisma, he has more than his share.
Either one of these figures, running in the Democratic primary or even as an independent, would have a dramatic effect on the outcome.
The other major development last week was in the race for the seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, whose decision not to seek reelection did not prevent him from continuing to make political waves. (See Editorial, p. 8) To no one’s surprise, 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, an arch-conservative, quickly announced as a GOP candidate, though she withheld her announcement until Governor Bill Haslam, a favorite of moderate Republicans, publicly opted out.

Another conservative GOP prospect is former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher. And the party’s centrist wing still hopes to convince Memphis philanthropist and longtime party eminence Brad Martin to make the race.

The state’s Democrats may end up fielding a serious candidate, as well. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke is seriously contemplating a Senate race, while Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet James Mackler is already in the field.

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Politics Politics Feature

TN Races for Governor, Senator, Heat Up!

The deluge is upon us. At a geometrically increasing rate, aspirants for significant public office on the 2018 ballot are coming front and center with announcements of candidacy, kickoff events, and the like.

By the time this issue hits the streets, the previous week or so will  have seen appearances in Shelby County by two major gubernatorial candidates, a new announcement for Shelby County mayor, fund-raisers for several more candidates, and continuing waves of speculation about new candidacies to come.

It was already apparent that Tennessee will have a hotly contested governor’s race in both major political parties (and a couple of potshots delivered at primary opponents by Republicans Diane Black and Mae Beavers in Memphis appearances emphasized the point). 

Now, with the announcement by U.S. Senator Bob Corker that he won’t seek reelection next year, the number of prospective Senatorial candidates, Republican and Democrat, is beginning to proliferate as well.

It seems a certainty that Corker’s seat will be sought by 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (a Republican whose district included portions of Memphis before reapportionment in 2011). Governor Bill Haslam has also hinted he may run for the Senate, and there have been serious efforts to draft philanthropist/industrialist Brad Martin, a longtime Memphis GOP eminence who once served as a state representative but has figured mainly in the donor ranks for decades.

Possible new Senate entries on the Democratic side include former state senator and current Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, who has begun to send out emails advertising his interest, and current state Senator Jeff Yarbro of Nashville. Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet James Mackler is already a declared candidate.

Inasmuch as Tennessee Democrats have been unable even to field serious candidates in statewide races for several years, this show of interest has to be a boost to the party faithful, especially since two Democrats of note — Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and state House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley — are declared (and active) candidates for governor.

The state’s Republicans feel, with some justification, that the real races will be run in their primary ranks, and two of their hopefuls were in town during the last week — 6th District Congresswoman Black and state Senator Beavers (who resigned her seat in August to focus on her race for governor).

Black was the beneficiary of a meet-and-greet breakfast at Owen Brennan’s Restaurant on Friday, and her status as a potential front-runner was signaled by the number of mainstream Republicans on hand, including longtime GOP national committeeman and former RNC general counsel John Ryder, who introduced her.

Black presented herself as a laissez-faire conservative and a believer in local options whenever possible. She also made a strong pitch for “values” as an issue and suggested that “one or two opponents,” who went unnamed, had latched on to that issue in a copycat way.

One of those opponents may have been Beavers, who was the sole gubernatorial candidate to show up at a well-attended forum held at the Germantown home of John Williams on Saturday. She certainly hit the values issue hard, confirming that, as the Nashville Scene had averred, she saw Jesus as a universal answer to governmental problems. “True, but that’s not all I said” was her response.

Beavers filled in some of the other blanks: opposition to Common Core, to transgenders’ freedom to use bathrooms of their choice, to state aid of any kind to illegal immigrants, to medical marijuana, and to add-on taxes in general. (Meanwhile, her husband Jerry Beavers and other supporters on hand circulated in the crowd and accused other candidates, notably Black and House Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, of various insufficiencies.)

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Editorial Opinion

SNAP Program Needs Scalpel, Not Ax

Back in 2008, the administration of Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, asked for and got a waiver on enforcement of the strict work requirements imposed on recipients of federal food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It was a sensible decision; the state, like much of the nation, was hard hit by the recession, and jobs were hard to come by. Temporarily, at least, the restrictions imposed on the genuinely needy in Tennessee could be lifted, though a certain rhetorical bias against them, building ever since the Reagan era, continued to posit the existence of”welfare queens” and the unholy triad of “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

The predominant feeling of the nation’s ruling establishment could be summed up this way: “The current welfare system undermines the basic values of work, responsibility, and family, trapping generation after generation in dependency.” It wasn’t Republican Reagan who said that, by the way, or even his GOP successor George H.W. Bush. It was “New Democrat” Bill Clinton, apropos his shepherding into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which is still the governing framework for federal aid programs. There had gotten to be a bipartisan consensus of sorts, characterized by Clinton’s famous remark that “the era of Big Government is over.”

It really wasn’t, of course. The size and resources and perks of government simply were progressively redirected to the benefit of folks higher up in the national class system, to the point that spokespersons for the political left — including even the most genuinely revolutionary presidential candidate in modern American history, Bernie Sanders — habitually devote most of their verbal energy to solicitude for the “middle class.”

So, with the economy apparently still on a healing course, it was no great surprise when on Monday the administration of Tennessee’s moderate Republican governor Bill Haslam announced that the time had come to end the waiver and to restore stringent work requirements for SNAP — except for 16 counties still regarded as being in some measure of financial distress.

While professing to be “awaiting more details about how the governor’s workforce requirement policy for food stamps will be implemented,” 9th District Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen expressed concern about the effects of the policy shift on Memphis, which, as he noted, has “the highest poverty rate of metro areas with at least one million people.”  

Cohen made bold to suggest, “We need to be making nutrition assistance more available, not less.” Also skeptical was state House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley, who said, “I want to make sure that we are not using an axe where a scalpel is needed in weeding out abusers of the system,” and insisted on “a targeted approach that ensures every Tennessean that needs help receives it.”

A cautious approach is certainly called for. The New Republic, in its current issue, surveyed some of the national consequences of overkill in the shift from welfare to workfare: “In 1996, nearly 70 percent of poor families received benefits. Today it’s less than 25 percent,” the periodical found. Further: “Since 1995 the number of Americans living on $2 or less a day has nearly tripled, including some three million children.”  

Something tells us the figures in Tennessee are at least that dreary.

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Editorial Opinion

Tennessee’s Healthcare System: Forced Into a Corner

Imagine the predicament on Tuesday of Wendy Long, director of Health Care Finance and Administration for the state of Tennessee, as well as, crucially, director of the state’s TennCare program, Tennessee’s version of Medicaid. Long, also a physician, was the scheduled luncheon speaker of the Rotary Club of Memphis at the Universitry Club, and, if she was late in taking her seat, it was, she would explain, because she was tuned into various news sources to get the latest news coming from Capitol Hill in Washington.

As it happened, Tuesday was also the day that Mitch McConnell (R-KY), majority leader of the U.S. Senate, had indicated he would require a vote in that august deliberative body relative to pending legislation regarding a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and/or a possible replacement measure to govern the nation’s national health-care policy.

If that has a vague sound to it, it’s because McConnell’s intentions were indeed vague, as would be whatever mechanism he trotted forth for the unsuspecting Senators to deal with. McConnell’s legislative gambit on health care this week was even more a mystery than the one he laid before the Senate two weeks ago after clearing it in advance with only 12 fellow Republicans, members of an ad hoc committee appointed by the Majority Leader.

That bill, which polls showed only 11 percent of the nation’s population favoring, would have ultimately knocked some 22 percent of current insured Americans out of coverage. The bill got nowhere, as a fair number of Senate Republicans refused to go lock-step with it. (Democrats were universally opposed to both it and any other arbitrary measure repealing the A.C.A.)

On Tuesday, no one knew what McConnell had in mind at the time of Long’s scheduled Rotary appearance in Memphis. It was thought that he might seek a vote merely to forward in discussion of an as-yet-unknown health-care measure, or perhaps he had a specific bill in mind to seek a vote for, or …

Long had to wing it in her luncheon remarks, although she made it clear that any of several possible directions that the Senate (and later the whole Congress) might take on health care were crucial to Tennessee’s medical future — and especially to TennCare, a jointly funded federal/state program that administers to fully 50 percent of the state’s population, including, as she put it, “pregnant women, children, parents of children, the elderly, and the disabled.” Several of the pending Congressional possibilities under consideration by the GOP-dominated Congress — including a bill already passed by the House of Representatives and whatever has thus far been proposed in the Senate — would effectively either scuttle Medicaid at some point in the not-too-far-off future or impose unsustainable costs on Tennessee’s TennCare version.

Asked what outcome her department sought from Tennessee Republican Senators Lamar Alexander (one of McConnell’s erstwhile ad hoc group) and Bob Corker, Long answered: “Flexibilty,” (a word with numerous implications under the circumstances, some of them ironic). In her competent, detailed way, she had managed to suggest that otherwise the state — and its large population dependent on TennCare  — would shortly be forced into a corner.