Tag: Bill Haslam

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Outsourcing Tennessee

On December 1, 2015, Tennessee’s Department of General Services (DGS) filed a request for proposals through the Central Procurement Office for facility management services through a private vendor.

Simply put, more than two years ago, the state quietly sent out feelers. If they decided to outsource or privatize the lowest-paid and most diverse part of their workforce — custodial maintenance and groundskeepers — which private company would be interested in absorbing their employment? And what would they charge?

Two years later, Tennesseans have their answer. Multi-national commercial real estate management giant Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) inked a deal with the state to outsource facility workers at state-run institutions to the tune of $1.9 billion to be paid from the state to the company over five years.

The biggest targets of the contract are higher education facilities, including the University of Memphis, Southwest Tennessee Community College, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. The union representing workers employed by public higher-ed institutions, United Campus Workers, say that more than 760 workers in Memphis alone are at risk for lowered wages and benefits.

Micaela Watts

Across the state, the numbers jump anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000, depending on who you ask. But even if the scope of the contract is considered small in contrast to the population of the state, the move itself is unprecedented. No state has attempted to auction off swaths of campus workers’ jobs.

As of today, Tennessee, under Governor Bill Haslam’s administration, is making fast moves to become the first to do so. Repeated talking points are savings to taxpayers and public universities, which will theoretically, in turn, prevent raises in tuition.

But as of press time, there are several unknowns — the number of workers affected, what their new salaries and benefits packages will look like, and how the contract will affect smaller districts that house state-run prisons and other facilities that are employment bedrocks in sparsely populated areas.

What is known is that JLL, a company that Haslam has invested in to an unknown tune (more on that later), is about to rake in billions in profits, and thousands of Tennesseans will be shuffled from the public sector to the private sector. Read on to find out how you sell a state, one workforce at a time.

 

BURNING QUESTIONS: VANILLA RESPONSES

In late April, after the state prematurely and quietly pulled the trigger on the outsourcing contract, bipartisan opposition went from tepid to boiling. Seventy-five of the state’s 132 lawmakers signed a letter penned to Terry Cowles, the director of the Office of Customer Focused Government (OCFG), the office that will oversee the outsourcing.  

The letter urged Cowles and the comptroller’s office to slow down the contract office until more solid information was known about the cost and the workers affected. Eighteen of those legislators requested economic impact statements specific to their district.

All 18 legislators received the same response, absent of district-specific information. Bob Oglesby, a commissioner with the DGS, floated the same number to all of them — $155.5 million in savings over five years.

“Obviously, if more authorized entities [contract speak for universities] participate, the savings will be even greater,” Oglesby wrote. The commission also pointed to savings accrued already from the state capitol facilities previously managed by JLL — $26 million over a three-year contract.

Though the state declined to provide district-specific information to representatives, the contract was approved by the comptroller’s office anyway and declared effective on May 26th.

John Ray Clemmons, a Democratic representative for part of Nashville and an established critic of the state’s outsourcing quest didn’t hold back. “There’s been absolutely no transparency in this process,” Clemmons said. “Their response was neither sufficient nor district specific. They responded with vanilla information.”

Another Nashville Democrat, Bo Mitchell, echoed his colleague’s response. “The bottom line is that privatization is harmful for state employees, public servants that have worked so hard for this state. Now they’re going to lose those jobs for corporate greed.”

Pointing to Tennessee’s privatized prisons as a cautionary tale, Mitchell warned that the contract is more of the same — sham numbers, false savings, and corporate greed. “I call on anybody in the state to release numbers that prove that this is helpful to state employees,” he said.

As of press time, no such numbers have been released, and they likely won’t be even after this story goes to print. All concerned departments in state government will insist that’s because too many variables hang in the balance. After all, it’s not even known at this point which facilities and universities will choose to “opt in.”

The OCFG has pointed to the “opt-in” option repeatedly as the contract’s major safety lever.

“This is really about what makes sense for each institution,” said Michelle Martin, spokesperson for the OCFG. And while the OCFG has maintained that autonomy still reigns supreme for each institution, United Campus Workers drew no comfort from the officials from OCFG seen touring campuses across Tennessee, just days before the contract was signed.

 

LOCAL COLLEGES WEIGH IN: CUE CRICKETS

Amid the protest and touting of the outsourcing plans, one group of voices remains glaringly absent from the official process — the state employees who actually stand to be affected.

To date, not one meeting has been held between the OCFG and workers in state-run facilities. No major university or college has taken it upon themselves to do so either.

To those uncertain about their future employer, the silence is deafening and has prompted civic action.

Three days before the contract was signed, a week before it was to be presented and on record to the public, UCW members and University of Tennessee Health Science Center workers gathered at their employer’s administrative building. Cowles was rumored to be inside, supposedly touting the benefits of the contract with JLL.

Micaela Watts

“If you’re going to outsource someone, you should give us the benefit of the doubt from the start and let us have some input in it,” said Charles Kendricks, a specialized carpenter at UTHSC.

“We don’t know the impact this is going to have on minority workers, on single mothers, or on veterans,” said Kendricks, a veteran himself.

The protest Kendricks attended was small, fewer than 30 people. But that’s been par for the course for the majority of the process. Campus workers and university students have spearheaded the majority of public outcry against the contract, going so far as to unroll a scroll of more than 6,000 signatures from individuals opposed to the plan in the state’s Capitol.

Still, the efforts by student and union organizers have been loud enough that no major university president is in the dark about opposition to outsourcing. But since the contract’s signature by both parties and approval at the comptroller level, no major university is willing to indicate whether or not they will sign on. Only the University of Tennessee system came close.

“Each campus within the University of Tennessee will meet with the proposed contractor and receive information to help determine whether contracted services would be in the best interest of the campus,” said David Miller, CFO for the UT system.

Miller added that each UT campus will present their individual decision to the board of trustees at a later point in the year. The University of Memphis has effectively washed its hands of the decision and deferred the future of more than 500 workers to the university’s independent school board.

A U of M student group, the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), has been dogging university president David M. Rudd — and, occasionally, Haslam — about the decision at every opportunity.

PSA member Lindsey Smith said that Rudd had declared the matter as being out of his hands. “He’s told me that he’s personally against it, but that it’s not up to him but up to the school’s board,” said Smith.

The board’s chairman, FedEx’s CFO Alan Graf, said that the matter has not been discussed and that the next board meeting would occur on June 6th, and that it would be open to the public.

Graf didn’t say whether the privatization matter would be discussed and when asked for any update following the comptroller’s approval and the contract’s effectiveness, U of M spokesperson Gabby Maxey said that the outsourcing matter was not on the June 6th agenda and that the university had no additional comment, still.

Numbers provided by the campus workers’ union show that roughly 500 people work in building maintenance and custodial services at the U of M and that staff has seen reduction in the past years, to the point that some custodial staff are charged with cleaning entire buildings by themselves at night after classes have mostly dispersed.

And though these numbers aren’t readily available, a brief stroll around the campus seem to confirm findings that jibe perfectly with a study done on privatization and its effects by research and policy center In the Public Interest: The majority of U of M campus workers are women and minority, demographics that are employed by the public sector at high rates.

The study reads, “When contractors degrade jobs, taxpayers make up the difference through food assistance, emergency health care, and other public support programs.”

Should workers like Kendricks at UTHSC see their worst fears come true, outsourced employees will find themselves on the receiving end of reduced wages and benefits, and taxpayers savings through privatization will evaporate as additional federal and state assistance could be needed to supplement the loss in wages.

 

THE LEGISLATIVE DODGE

While the UCW represents much of the opposition in larger metro areas that are home to many higher education institutions, the Tennessee State Employees Association (TSEA) is the organization that rallies behind state workers at parks, prisons, and smaller state facilities.

TSEA president, Randy Stamps is a former Republican state representative, and he’s troubled by the tempo and secrecy of the plan. “It’s alarming, the pace of public outsourcing taking place in Tennessee,” said Stamps. “We have it on several different levels — state parks, higher education institutions, and the department of general services.”

Stamps had been long critical of the state’s efforts to privatize the Inn at Fall Creek Falls, one of Tennessee’s most popular state parks. That effort recently sputtered to a stop when no companies returned with a bid for state park facility management.

“When you decide to privatize state parks — including their inns and marinas — we feel like that’s a public policy decision, and the legislature should be involved in it,” said Stamps.

The legislature wasn’t involved in the process, but instead could only submit letters urging for more information and a halt to the process — efforts which were ignored.

As far as how a decision of this size and scope could legally be made without legislative input, Stamps points to a procurement act authored by state senator Bill Ketron in 2016. The act grants total autonomy to the state in pursuing public-private partnership.

Stamps insists that Ketron, who was unavailable for comment, believes his own piece of legislation yielded results entirely out of line with the original intention. “It gave a lot more authority than he intended to give,” Stamps said, adding that Ketron will be working with TSEA over the summer to rein in some of the language around contract oversight.

“He doesn’t feel like the transparency he intended is available,” said Stamps.

Even before the procurement act was passed, Haslam had already been in the process of parceling off state responsibilities and services to JLL for years, starting just after he took office in 2011. The first contract signed with JLL was a real-estate-management contract. Relatively small in comparison, it yielded the management of Tennessee’s real estate portfolio to JLL.

The next contract with JLL was inked in 2013 and ceded facilities management of state capitol buildings to the company. That contract was not renewed when it expired in 2016, since those buildings could be covered under the latest outsourcing plan.

Tennessee’s comptroller office found several violations of that contract, however, including JLL’s failure to submit timely building inspection reports.

Bit by bit, Haslam has been transferring power to the real estate management behemoth, in spite of repeated criticism of his previous ties with the company before taking office. Haslam’s current JLL investments are in a blind trust while he is in office, and his holdings pre-election are largely unknown, since, much like President Trump, Haslam has refused to release his tax returns. And Haslam has even signed into law a bill that effectively eliminated any Tennessee politician’s requirement to do so.

JLL: IT WILL ALL BE OKAY

The company that may or may not soon become the employer for thousands of state employees broke its silence on the issue the day the contract went into effect.

In a statement, the company assured Tennesseans that employees who transition to JLL “will have a compensation package, including benefits, equitable to their state compensation.”

Joe Hall of Hall Strategies, the public relations firm representing JLL, insisted that the move to JLL often ends up being more beneficial to the employee than employment with the state.

“Former State of Tennessee employees on the JLL team now earn approximately 38 percent more,” Hall said. He also adds that JLL employees receive additional professional development that furthers their skill sets and marketability.

According to Hall, JLL is able to produce savings not because the company lays off workers and slashes wages, but because they specialize in key areas of cost savings: namely energy savings, purchasing power, and self-performance, erasing the need to contract out any large capital projects.

“We recognize that job security is an extremely important issue; we stress that the jobs at these facilities are secure,” said Hall. “It is a priority to JLL to work collaboratively with college and university leadership to directly engage employees and assure them of that fact and highlight the opportunity available at JLL.

Micaela Watts

 

WAITING ON A SIGN

For all the efforts made by the OCFG and JLL to soothe workers potentially affected, none of it is swaying the contract’s harshest critics.

The state has stuck to the main talking points consistently, and detractors have countered with one argument, essentially, “Show us the proof.”

One thing is certain, though, the contract has been signed, stamped for approval, and is in effect. The rest depends on the state’s universities to opt in or opt out. No doubt, they’ll have UCW in their ears every step of the way until they make a decision.

Thomas Wayne Walker, the spokesperson for the union, says he stopped being shocked by the state’s actions a long time ago. Instead, he and the union will keep insisting the universities take heed and examine every loophole they feel exists in the contract.

“The question is,” said Walker: “Why is Haslam so hell-bent on signing this contract, even though nobody in Tennessee seems to want it?”

Editor’s note: David Roberson, Director of Communications for the Tennessee Department of General Services responds to our story:

I’m writing regarding some factual errors in your story “Outsourcing Tennessee.”

1. “…the state quietly sent out feelers…” – This RFI was posted on the state website, exactly the same way we put out hundreds of RFIs, RFQs, and RFPs each year, and in the same place that our vendors know to look for them. We want maximum response to these requests, so there is no reason we would issue them quietly. We didn’t.

2. “No state has attempted to auction off swaths of campus workers’ jobs.” – The contracting process cannot with any accuracy be called an auction since cost is only one of several elements considered. Also, contracting with external vendors for work formerly done by campus employees is widely practiced, in Tennessee and elsewhere. Many universities in Tennessee already contract out their food service and custodial work, and some contract out their groundskeeping – all of which are jobs formerly held by state employees. The business case for this new procurement, posted on the CFG website for many months now, specifically cites the experience of Texas A&M University in contracting out its facilities management. The National Association of College and University Business Officers even held a conference on outsourcing in 2015 (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/21/institutions-outsource-they-should-keep-their-mission-and-vendor-close). Saying that no state has done this before is not remotely accurate.

3. “JLL…is about to rake in billions in profits….” The estimated maximum liability for this contract is $1.9 billion, and the vast majority of that (about 96%) will be in pass-throughs and cost recovery. The remaining 4% would constitute JLL’s and the Alliance Partners’ profits (or management fees). Please see attachment F3 of the contract, where you can see details for the cost proposals of specific institutions.

4. Your paragraph describing the history of JLL’s contracts with the state contains several errors. The first contract JLL signed was for a facilities assessment, and it was followed by a second contract for facilities management for properties operated by the Department of General Services. An amendment to that contract required JLL to act as a lease broker for the state. That amendment expired in 2016 and was not renewed. The original contract for facilities management was for five years and is still in effect.

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News News Blog

State of Tennessee Enacts Outsourcing on State Properties

In a move that caught many by surprise, the state of Tennessee has declared its outsourcing contract with Jones Lang La Salle as effective today, Friday, May 26. If all major campuses opt into the contract, roughly 10,000 state worker jobs will be privatized to JLL, a global corporate real estate management company that contracts with properties and institutions all over the world.

Seventeen state representatives had requested individualized economic impact statements the contract would have on their districts. The Department of General Services released one response to all 17. The response was generic, with few specifics. Representative J.R. Clemmons called the lack of specifics “inexcusable.”

In all, there were 45 questions by representatives submitted to the state comptroller regarding the JLL contract. It is unknown at this point whether the comptroller has responded to any of those questions.

State Representative Bo Mitchell said that he has not received any additional information specific to his district and the potential impact of the outsourcing. “This is all about corporate greed,” he said. “We know that privatization doesn’t save the state money.”

More information to come on this story as we learn it.

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Politics Politics Feature

Unfinished Shelby County Business: Aquifer, EDGE, and Weed.

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The issue of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s drilling wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer may not be a done deal, after all. Though TVA’s application to complete four wells into the aquifer to acquire water to use as coolant for its forthcoming natural-gas plant was seemingly given the go-ahead in November by the Shelby County Board of Water Quality Control, concerns remain in important political places — on the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission — and in the Tennessee General Assembly.

A bipartisan duo of state senators from Shelby County — Democrat Lee Harris of Memphis and Republican Brian Kelsey of Germantown — last year made a point of expressing solidarity with local environmentalists on their fears of possible contamination of the aquifer and the need to resist the TVA drilling. On Tuesday, in tandem with a media contingent, they began a “fact-finding trip,” which began at the Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research at the University of Memphis and included stops at MLGW’s Sheahan Pumping Station,and the current coal-burning TVA plant on President’s Island and TVA’s soon-to-be natural-gas plant there.

Jackson Baker

Ward Archer and state Senators Lee Harris and Brian Kelsey at site of new TVA plant

 • The final form of the Shelby County Commission’s legislative agenda, to be presented to the General Assembly by the county’s lobbyists, was achieved on Monday, with the unanimous approval of a brief addendum, apropos the city-county EDGE board, which is responsible for making industrial-development decisions. The resolution called for “a member of the governing body of the municipality where the Industrial Development Board (IDB) was created to serve as a voting board member of the IDB.” Currently, the city council and county commission each have a non-voting member on the EDGE board.

Conspicuously absent from the final legislative agenda, due to unresolved discord, was a previously floated item calling for approval of medical marijuana and a “second chance” policy for persons arrested for possession of minor amounts of pot. The General Assembly is expected to take up the issue of legalizing medical marijuana.

Put off again were two resolutions having to do with the Shelby County Board of Education’s efforts to balance its books. One resolution was to receive and file the board’s first quarter report for the year ending June 30th. Another would ratify and approve amendments to the board’s budget for fiscal year 2017, adding on expenditures of $217,389. Neither had achieved any consensus from the commission’s education committee last Wednesday.

• Citing what he said was a “critical need” for infrastructure improvements in the county and its municipalities, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell endorsed Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam‘s  proposed seven percent increase in the state’s gasoline tax in an appearance at the commission’s Monday meeting. The proposed tax hike would enable work to begin on a backlog of $10 billion worth of infrastructure projects that Haslam and Commissioner John Schroer of the Tennessee Department of Transportation deem long overdue but undone for lack of funding. 

Along with new fees on electric vehicles and rental cars, the proposed tax increase would pay for an overhaul plan, which the governor has given the name “The IMPROVE Act” (“Improving Manufacturing, Public Roads, and Opportunities for a Vibrant Economy”). 

The governor’s proposal calls for the gasoline-tax increase to be accompanied by a half-cent reduction in the state sales tax on groceries, by $113 million in cuts to the state’s business taxes, and by cuts to the Hall Income Tax.

Luttrell said that Haslam’s proposal called for more than $9 million to be spent in Shelby County and in the county’s several municipalities. “There will be some opposition to it in the General Assembly,” Luttrell cautioned, adding that he would be coming back to the commission seeking “a more formal resolution for support” once the proposed measure was in its final form.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Haslam, Corker, and Trump

The news out of Nashville last week was mostly about Governor Bill Haslam’s unique “leadership” style, in which he furrows his brow and expresses concern about the validity or constitutionality of the cockamamie bills that the legislature sends to his desk, then allows them to pass without his signature. He’s really more of a hall monitor than a governor, at this point. In fact, if Draymond Green kicked Haslam in the groin, odds are good that the governor wouldn’t even notice.

I am, however, hearing from informed sources that Haslam will probably sign into law this week a bill making “the waffle” the official state pastry. Unless someone objects, of course.

In other state news, Senator Bob Corker met with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in Trump Tower to discuss foreign relations or … something. Speculation was that Corker was being vetted as a possible vice presidential candidate, though Corker downplayed that possibility after the meeting. As well he should, if he has any sense at all.

A Trump-Corker ticket would be similar to the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket of 2008: a respected senator paired with a lunatic, only this time the lunatic will be at the top of the ticket. McCain’s reputation was permanently damaged by his association with Caribou Barbie. He went from being perceived as a relatively reasonable and honorable man to someone who sold his integrity to attract the Tea Party fringe — someone who was willing to put a mentally unstable moron a heartbeat away from the presidency for political expediency. Now, McCain will be hard-pressed to retain his Senate seat, if the latest polling from Arizona is to be believed.

Corker is probably savvy enough to realize that it’s one thing to voice pro forma support for the GOP ticket in the name of party unity, but quite another to become one of the two primary party standard-bearers with a nominee as volatile and flawed as Trump.

Whoever signs on to lift hands with The Donald at the convention will be indelibly linked to what will no doubt become the sleaziest, ugliest, and most ignorant presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. The person who agrees to be Trump’s running mate must commit to supporting whatever impulsive and contradictory nonsense comes out of Trump’s mouth — or appears on his Twitter account.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may be the leading candidate, having already sold his soul a few weeks back. This week, Trump repaid his puffy sidekick by joking that they would begin denying him tacos. Others on the Trump short bus include Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and Ben Carson. Vice President Gingrich, anyone?

Trump did gain the endorsement of the National Rifle Association this week, so he’s got that going for him. In announcing his organization’s support for Trump, NRA president Wayne LaPierre warned that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would abolish the Second Amendment and take away everybody’s guns. Which is what he said about President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Obama, of course, being the cagey trickster he is, has saved this part of his agenda for the very end of his presidency. (In case you hadn’t heard, the Second Amendment will be officially abolished by executive order on June 1st, and all guns must be turned in to the FBI by June 15th.)

Hillary must be so ticked.

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Memphis Gaydar News

Tennessee Suing Obama Administration Over Transgender School Guidance

Herbert Slatery

Tennessee will join 10 other states in a lawsuit suing President Barack Obama’s administration over its directive regarding transgender student bathroom access in public schools.

Earlier this month, Obama issued guidance to public schools suggesting that transgender students should be allowed to use the restroom and locker rooms that match their gender identity. Governor Bill Haslam has criticized the directive and accused Obama of “over-reaching.” 

On Wednesday, 11 states — Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Maine, Arizona, Louisiana, Utah, and Georgia — filed a lawsuit in a North Texas federal court declaring the directive to be unlawful.

The suit states that Obama has “conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery released the following statement on Wednesday afternoon:

The Executive Branch has taken what should be a state and local issue [under the Tenth Amendment] and made it a federal issue. Schools that do not conform under the new rules risk losing their federal funding. This is yet another instance of the Executive Branch changing law on a grand scale, which is not its constitutional role. Congress legislates, not the Executive Branch. Our Office has consistently opposed efforts like this to take away states’ rights and exclude the people’s representatives from making these decisions, or at a minimum being able to engage in a notice and comment period under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). As the complaint describes, it is a social experiment implemented by federal departments denying basic privacy rights and placing the burden largely on our children, not adults. Sitting on the sidelines on this issue was not an option.

Meanwhile, Shelby County Schools has said they’re carefully reviewing the information Obama sent to school districts, and they’ll continue to work with families of transgender students on a case-by-case basis.

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News The Fly-By

New App Maps Trans-Friendly Bathrooms

As the U.S. battles over transgender rights, one smartphone app is making it easier for transgender people to access safe, public restrooms.

Refuge Restrooms — an app that indexes and maps inclusive bathrooms across the county for transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming individuals — has identified only six trans-friendly restrooms in Memphis. It lists two at the University of Memphis, one at Otherlands Coffee Shop, and three at Starbucks.

Refuge’s initial 45,000 nationwide entries were borrowed from a now-defunct database named Safe2Pee. When the Safe2Pee app became inoperative, California resident Teagan Widmer founded the Refuge app out of personal necessity.

bathrooms.

“I started publicly identifying as transgender [in 2010] while I was in graduate school in Richmond, Virginia,” Widmer, 27, said. “I found myself scared for my safety a lot and didn’t have the confidence I have now.”

In North Carolina, Refuge users have dropped pins at about 400 secure restrooms since Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2 — nicknamed the “bathroom bill” — into law. The new law requires transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond with their sex at birth. A similar bill failed to pass last month in Tennessee.

The bathroom debate has sparked a national conversation about trans rights, and last week, it led President Barack Obama to issue a directive that public schools across the country should adopt trans-friendly bathroom policies or risk losing federal education funding. Governor Bill Haslam has expressed disagreement with Obama’s directive.

Anti-trans legislation, such as the North Carolina bill, passes when there’s pervasive misinformation, says assistant University of Memphis journalism professor Robert Byrd, who researches gender in the media.

“For decades, the only transgender representations people have been exposed to are the images on television and film, which were generally of sick or deviant people with a propensity for crime and violence or just the butt of a joke,” Byrd says. “It’s easy for some to believe the argument that transgender people in bathrooms that correspond to their expressed gender poses a threat to children because the narrative we see in popular culture supports that notion. This lack of knowledge helps fuel the fire of the bathroom bills.”

Lisa Michaels Hancock, a transgender woman living in Memphis, says public restrooms should be gender-neutral.

“I am a 6-foot-3 amazon that looks butch,” Hancock said. “On more than one occasion, I have been told I’m in the wrong restroom. My reply is ‘I have a vagina,’ which shouldn’t matter, but it usually shuts them up. I tell my girlfriends in advance that I won’t carry on conversations in restrooms because some women get thrown off by my voice, which isn’t very feminine.”

The problems Tennessee transgender people face extend beyond the bathroom. A court-ordered name change and letter certifying reassignment surgery must be presented with an application to change name or gender on any Tennessee identification. Tennessee also prohibits changing an individual’s sex on their birth certificate.

Since one in five transgender people experience homelessness, according to the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council, Widmer says she would like to eventually see Refuge serve as a housing resource for the transgender community.

Her app meets the needs of people who Widmer didn’t consider, too, which she was pleased to learn.

“One woman wrote me and explained that her adult son has severe Downs syndrome, and she uses Refuge to find gender-neutral restrooms that are single stall where she can accompany her son to assist him,” Widmer said. “It’s really easy to get caught up in the fight of it all, but ultimately for me, it’s about the people who are being affected. My only goal is to make their lives easier, and I think Refuge does that.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee Democrat and Republican Parties Both Facing Change

CREDIT: Nancy Chase

Even as the nation’s two major political parties, on the eve of their quadrennial confrontation, each struggle on a national scale with the task of redefinition, so do the same two parties in Tennessee.

In the nation at large, Democrats are still (technically) in the act of choosing between two would-be exemplars — one, Hillary Clinton, a seasoned and well-known figure touting the values of diversity and equal opportunity; the other, Bernie Sanders, a self-defined Democratic socialist focusing on the need for a “political revolution” to moderate the economic inequalities of a system rigged to benefit the wealthy.

Here and there, the differences between those two candidates (who, it should be said, have much in common) is seen clearly. In that sense, the Democrats are lucky. The Republicans have, in the course of primary races that were both numerous and confusing, found their choice ready-made — in Donald J. Trump, a wildly successful Manhattan real estate billionaire and a man whose views and attitudes toward most policy matters are, for better or for worse, vague and ever-fluctuating, clearly subordinate to the dictates of an undeniably unique personality.

The two state parties have, both within the last week, just concluded their annual banquets in Tennessee, events which are meant to define them to their respective constituencies. Paradoxically, each of the Tennessee parties veered in a rhetorical direction counter to that of the national parties they represent.

The Democrats held their annual Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville, Saturday before last, and their keynoter, the well-known consultant James Carville, made no mystery about who was likely to emerge from the ongoing Clinton-Sanders contest.

Nancy Chase

Carville at Nashville

Recounting for the party faithful at the state capital’s impressive new Music City Center a public encounter he had just had with a GOP opposite number of sorts, Karl Rove, Carville related how he teased Rove with the statement, “I believe the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party has the experience, the temperament, and the judgment to be president of the United States from Day One” (clearly a description of former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Clinton) and followed that up with a challenge: “Karl, tell us about the Republican nominee.” In Carville’s telling, anyhow, Rove could not respond in kind, but merely sputtered out the familiar attack phrases which Republicans habitually aim at candidate Clinton — FBI investigation, emails, Benghazi, etc.

The Republicans had gotten themselves “stuck” with Trump, a political anomaly, as a direct consequence of their having misled their basic constituency for a generation, Carville said, mentioning such notions as that President Obama was born in Kenya, that the planet Earth dated back only 5,000 years, that there was no such thing as global warming, that there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that giving millionaires tax cuts would balance the budget.

“When people rise up and start believing all this nuttiness, why are you surprised? Let them believe whatever they want to. And anything Trump says, they believe it because they’ve been conditioned to believe it.”

Carville proclaimed that “our diversity is our strength.” He expressed pride that “my party nominated the first African-American candidate for president and will nominate the first woman.” He followed that with another dig at the GOP: “And no, you don’t get credit for Sarah Palin. Sorry.”

Carville’s de facto celebration of Clinton, his party’s still unchosen but likely nominee, contrasted with the Tennessee Republicans’ mum’s-the-word approach, at their annual Statesman’s Dinner at the selfsame Music City Center, this past Friday, toward Trump, a candidate whose nomination is virtually signed, sealed, and delivered already.  

Tellingly, in view of Carville’s apotheosis of Clinton, the Republicans’ choice of a keynoter was another woman, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, an unmistakably conservative office-holder but one who, in her own way, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, also stands for diversity, and who, in the past year, has made headlines by a) removing the Confederate flag from its former place of honor at her state Capitol building, and b) refusing, so far, to endorse Trump.

And, though he was the elephant in that room as in the nation’s media, Trump was roundly ignored in the evening’s rhetoric. The late U.S. Senator Fred Thompson was honored with due praise, as were the two living GOP Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, as was Governor Bill Haslam and the retiring Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, and as were numerous exemplars of the party’s legislative super-majority and command of the state’s congressional delegation.

Though he surely had support here and there in the room, Trump remained at best an X factor, an unknown on the other side of whom, chronologically, were such future-tense bench hopes as Haley.

Though she did not refer to the fact, keynoter Haley was the avowed target, outside the arena, of protesters, garbed in Confederate gray and waving rebel battle flags to demonstrate their outrage at her apostasy. The Republican brass inside surely had to be pleased by this semiotic hint that — on this matter, anyhow — they were on the right side of history.

Whatever its fate in the nation at large (“We’re looking at a 162-year-old political party literally cracking up right in front of us,” Carville said), the GOP seems destined to remain the ruling force in Tennessee for some time to come, though the Democrats had scored a coup of sorts by giving one of their major honors, the Anne Dallas Dudley Political Courage Award, to a couple who had distinguished themselves by fighting hard on behalf of Insure Tennessee, a Medicaid expansion plan proposed by Republican Governor Haslam but so far rejected by his party mates in the General Assembly.

For all their different directions — the Tennessee GOP still hewing to its historic distrust of social programs and ameliorist government in general, their Democratic counterparts continuing to see themselves as tribunes of the powerless — there are points of contact in the political middle. If the GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly should, post-presidential-election, see fit finally to humor Haslam on the health-care matter, it will be through the medium of a task force appointed by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell, whose power moves will doubtless fill some of the vacuum left by Ramsey’s departure.

Harwell, who is rumored to have gubernatorial ambitions, may, in fact, become the face of the Tennessee Republican Party in much the way that Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini (whose GOP opposite number is Ryan Haynes, a male genotype) has become that of her party.

The Tennessee GOP boasts a fair number of women in office, although, truth is, it is miles behind the Tennessee Democratic Party in forms of diversity having to do with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Still, there is a political middle, and, with any luck at all, it may get filled up at some point in the respective reconstructions just now beginning to occur in the two major political parties. 

There are signs of changes in both, locally as well as nationally. The GOP’s dominant business-minded faction is under challenge from the very uprooted populists it has seduced away from the Democrats, while the Clinton/Sanders yin-yang will play out for years — a difficult wrangle but, in the end, a necessary one.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Healthcare “Road Show” Off to a Good Start

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There has been no shortage of skeptics about the bona fides of the health-care task force recently appointed by state House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) to look into the matter of an alternative to Governor Bill Haslam‘s “Insure Tennessee” proposal for federally funded Medicaid expansion, which was dead on arrival upon its presentation to the General Assembly in last year’s sessions of the General Assembly.

Criticism came from both left and right. Early on, state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini seemed to dismiss it out of hand in a press release titled “A Task Force Called Meh,” in which she said, “It doesn’t have any actual policy or concrete meeting dates. It doesn’t have the will to actually, you know, do anything. … Once again we are a witness to the failure of the Republican majority to lead.”

Nor was everybody in the state Republican Party exactly blissful about the task force’s creation. At a meeting of the National Federation of Independent Business in Memphis last week, two key GOP state Senators were less than enthusiastic. “It remains to be seen how serious this is as a task force,” said Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), the state Senate’s Judiciary chair. “I find it curious that the House now has this road show,” said state Senator majority leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville), referring to a series of public hearings the task force has begun statewide.

(Both GOP Senators, it should be noted, were vehement opponents of “Insure Tennessee.”)

To be sure, the task force has evolved since Harwell put it together in early April. Back then, it consisted of four House members, all Republicans: Cameron Sexton of Crossville, the task force chairman, who chairs the House Health Committee; Steve McManus of Memphis, chair of Insurance and Banking Committee; Roger Kane of Knoxville; and Matthew Hill of Jonesborough.

Since then, the Speaker, acquiescing to pressure to diversify the group, has added state Rep. Karen Camper (D-Memphis) and one member from the state Senate, Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), a physician. Crucially, perhaps, both Camper and Briggs were supporters of “Insure Tennessee.”

The reconstituted task force began holding its public hearings in Nashville last week and intends to hold several more before preparing legislative recommendations, which chairman Sexton says he hopes to have ready by June.

On Monday afternoon, three members of the task force — Sexton, Camper, and McManus — were on hand at the University of Memphis University Center, where they were joined by panelists and audience members representing a diverse group of respondents, including hospital spokespersons, representatives of ad hoc health providers, and prospective patients.

In the spirited discussion that ensued for two hours, there was some evidence that, the critics of left and right notwithstanding, the task force might indeed be up to something serious. A key moment came at the very close of things, when McManus, who in 2015 had adopted an adverse position on “Insure Tennessee” and chaired a brief hearing of his committee to an inconclusive end, responded to some passionately expressed testimony by uninsured and under-insured attendees, mostly low-income people who had invested some hope in the prospects for Medicaid expansion through “Insure Tennessee.”

“We’re going to have something for you,” McManus said, in an emotional statement of his own. Asked later if he thought his group would give serious reconsideration to some version of the governor’s plan. “Absolutely, we will,” he said, adding, “Let’s face it. Back then the matter was a political football.” Meaning that its coupling with the Affordable Care Act, better known among Republicans as “Obamacare,” had doomed the proposal to partisan treatment by the General Assembly’s GOP super-majority.

Typical of a potential sea change among Republicans was a lament by panelist Ron Kirkland, a Jackson physician who ran for Congress in the 8th District GOP primary in 2010, that more than $1 billion annually in Affordable Care Act (ACA) funding had been lost to the state by its failure to endorse “Insure Tennessee.” As Kirkland put it, “We’d have been jumping up and down if that much money was available to the [West Tennessee industrial] mega-site!”

And numerous of the medical-community representatives noted that Medicare funding allotments for Tennessee had been scaled down under the ACA with the idea of fleshing them out again with the Medicaid-expansion component of the Act. Subsequently, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the latter component was not mandatory upon individual states had allowed Tennessee and various other states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, with the unintended consequence of reducing overall medical funding.

Overall, the discussion on Monday seemed pointed more toward solutions of this and other dilemmas than to recapitulating various rhetorical talking points. Perhaps this is one road show that might lead to something real and tangible on the main stage of Tennessee government.

• “Give a mouse a cookie…”: Given the factional divisions on the Shelby County Commission, such as they are, it is a rare thing indeed that Heidi Shafer, the East Memphis Republican who so often speaks for what is arguably the Commission’s dominant coalition, should quote with approval Steve Basar, a fellow Republican but one who often sides with another, predominantly Democratic group.

But so Shafer did on Monday, in the course of her current effort to retard — or at least subject to serious vetting — a proposal to assist the office of District Attorney General Amy Weirich with backup to help process the future use of body cameras by local law enforcement, primarily the Memphis Police Department.

A condensed version of the Basar remark cited by Shafer would go something like this: “Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll ask for a glass of milk. Then he’ll want another cookie.” And this de facto little aphorism was employed by Shafer as a warning against what she called “mission creep” in the matter of funding Weirich’s office.

The fuller argument, as she and other skeptics have developed it in two of the Commission’s mid-week committee sessions and two of the body’s regular public meetings, boils down even further to a fairly simple formulation: “Why us?” — the idea being (a) that the impetus for use of body cams came from the MPD and city government, and (b) the District Attorney General’s office is a creature of state government, not county government.

Ergo, why should county government have to foot the bill?

That argument has found enough buyers so far to have stymied the initial proposal for a fuller funding of the D.A.’s office in the amount of $143,378. By the time of Monday’s meeting, the issue of direct new funding was off the table — replaced by an offer from the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell to shift residual money in the county’s fund balance to provide “temporary support staff for body camera rollout.”

That support would total out, as finally agreed to by the Commission on Monday, to about $25,000 from the fund balance. And that amount, as Shafer reminded an acquiescent administration CAO Harvey Kennedy, would have to be shared with the Public Defender’s office, which, according to state law, is entitled to funding equivalent to 75 percent of any sums appropriated to a District Attorney General’s office.

Enough stop-gap money will be shifted to endow three temporary employees for the D.A.’s office, along with two for the Public Defender’s office, for a period of roughly a month to assist with body-cam rollout.

To stick with the aforementioned Basar analogy, that compromise solution is less a cookie than a crumb, and it’s a clear signal that, with stiff funding increases sought by the Sheriff’s Department, and even stiffer ones sought by Shelby Couty Schools, the D.A.’s office will face difficulty during forthcoming budget negotiations in getting much more for the body-cam matter.

Categories
News The Fly-By

New Law Loosens Drug Possession Penalties

A person convicted six times of driving under the influence will now face a Class C felony in Tennessee. Meanwhile, those possessing a half-ounce or less of marijuana will be charged with a misdemeanor regardless of the number of previous possession charges on their record.

Gov. Bill Haslam signed House Bill 1478, sponsored by Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown), into law last week. The new law, which will go into effect July 1st, creates a three- to-15-year prison sentence and fines up to $10,000 for drunk drivers and eases repercussions for simple possession of any drug, including cocaine and heroin. It may signal a perception shift regarding drug sentencing in the state.

“In 2014, we had 1,904 people arrested [in Tennessee] on small amounts of marijuana possession,” said Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), a co-sponsor of the bill. “That’s a lot of loss of jobs and opportunities. If you had one blunt or one gram of weed over a half-ounce, you could face the same sentence as someone would for killing someone.”

Nearly half of the country has legalized medicinal marijuana, and four states have legalized weed for recreational use. Tennessee passed a law in 2014 that allowed seizure patients access to cannabis oil, but they must travel across state lines to obtain it. Co-sponsors of HB 1478 hope the legislation will bolster dialogue that furthers medicinal access and saves taxpayer money by reducing incarceration.

“We discovered the state was spending $1.7 million per year for [incarcerating people for] a half-ounce or less of marijuana,” said Rep. Harold Love (D-Nashville), who also co-sponsored the bill. “I think this bill will change the perception of how we deal with drug sentencing, treatment, and addiction in Tennessee. I’m not suggesting in any way that this is the gateway to legalizing marijuana, but I do think it helps with sentencing.”

Though people of all races smoke pot, arrests tend to disproportionately affect African Americans. Eighty-three percent of Shelby County’s drug possession arrests in 2010 were of African Americans, the American Civil Liberties Union found. More so, states spent more than $3.6 billion in marijuana possession enforcement.

Using marijuana can also result in a violation of probation or parole in Tennessee. Some judges will revoke or raise a person’s bail if they screen positive for marijuana, says Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City. This contributes, Spickler says, to about 35 percent of state prison admissions being the result of parole violations.

“This law is a step in the right direction, but we need to take a comprehensive look at drug laws and enforcement in Tennessee,” Spickler says.

If Tennessee were to restructure marijuana laws, Parkinson said there would be a socioeconomic benefit for the state.

“My goal next year is to remove the automatic intent to distribute for an ounce of marijuana or less out of the law,” Parkinson said. “I would like to legalize both medicinal and recreational marijuana and base it on Tennessee growers. We’re an agricultural state. I would like to see our state capitalize on an industry that can help people medicinally. We should [also] legalize it and put that money toward education.”

Like drug courts as an alternative to jail cells, Love said medicinal marijuana could potentially become a pain management option to combat prescription drug addiction.

“I’m not on the side that says legalize and tax it,” Love said. “I’m on the side that says, ‘How can we help people who are in pain be relieved without an addictive drug in their system?’ But the reason it’s important is students would lose their financial aid, and people might not be able to apply for jobs — all because they had a felony on their record for a half-ounce or less. ‘Or less’ is half of a joint. ‘Or less’ is a quarter. ‘Or less’ could be residue.”

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s post, “State House Declines to Override Haslam Veto of the ‘Bible Bill'” …

Such a colossal waste of time and our tax dollars. If only these fools put this much energy into solving real problems.

Jamie Outlaw

A little injection of sanity and common sense never hurt anyone, including the Tennessee state legislature. Well spoken, Steve McManus, the one who really addressed the matter as it should have been addressed.

Packrat

This whole story reads like a synopsis of an old Gilligan’s Island episode.

OakTree

About Bianca Phillips’ story, “Q&A With a Fast-Food Worker on Fight for $15” …

These jobs were originally created to be for part-time teenagers, working after school and on weekends, or seniors working the morning shifts. But the economy has turned these positions into ones from which people, mostly unskilled labor, are looking to support their families. If the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour, I’m afraid the unskilled labor force is going to be competing with people who have working experience, even possibly college degrees. And although I agree the minimum wage is woefully overdue for an upgrade, I’m afraid doubling it won’t be the optimal situation for the current workers fighting for it.

Mejjep

He wants more money for the same work, and I want to know why he thinks he deserves it. He has put himself in this situation, and it is fair for us to know why. Good intentions don’t mean squat. What I really want to know is why, with all the retraining opportunities the government provides, he is still working at an entry-level position for minimum wage.

Arlington Pop

The problem with APop’s argument is that the minimum wage has been kept artificially low by conservatives for decades. If it had kept up with wages and cost of living from its inception, it would now be something like $21/hour.

The real argument is never stated — that the minimum wage sets the bar for wages across the board. If you raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, then all those slobs who have been toiling away in warehouses and factories and flower shops and kitchens for 20 years to work their way up to $15 an hour are going to want a raise, too. And if they get raises, then they will be making more than middle management, who will want raises, too.

This is what puts the fear of Jesus into the rent collectors. Such a law would create a massive shift of wealth out of the hands of the 1 percent, undoing 30 years of hard work buying off legislators to suppress wages.

That’s why the 1 percent works so hard to elect Republicans, who invariably crash the economy built up by Democrats. However, because they are only 1 percent of the population, they had to make a Faustian bargain with the Bible bangers and Confederate holdouts in order to hold onto power. The terms of that contract are finally maturing, and Donald Mephistrumpheles has come to collect their souls.

Jeff

About Toby Sells’ post, “Shelby Farms Development Clears Another Hurdle” …

Sad and shameful. But what else should we have expected from this sorry excuse for a city council? Follow the money, every time.

Barry Roberson

Soon they will be so successful, they will have to find overflow parking somewhere, somewhere close. There has to be a golf course close by they can park on. Isn’t that what golf courses are for?

CL Mullins