Tag: Governor Bill Haslam

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Editorial Opinion

Keeping Hospitals Alive

The pending shut-down of Crittenden Regional Hospital in West Memphis, which followed several months of highly publicized financial crisis, should sound the alert for medical authorities in Memphis — especially at Regional One Health (formerly known as The Med), which will inherit much of the now stranded patient load at the expired hospital.

The loss of Crittenden Regional and the resultant further shift of the medical burden to Regional One highlights once again still unresolved questions of the degree to which both Arkansas and Mississippi should compensate the Memphis facility for taking care of underprivileged patients from those states who seek medical assistance on our side of the state line.

And the closing of the facility in Tennesssee’s neighboring state should stand as both a warning and a reproach to Governor Bill Haslam and the Tennessee General Assembly — the latter for its callous indifference to the needs of our state’s stressed and financially challenged hospitals, as evidenced in the Republican-dominated legislature’s persistent refusal to consider Medicaid expansion funds available through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and the former for letting himself be cowed into acquiescing in that refusal.

As Tennessee law now stands, the General Assembly having passed legislation in last year’s session giving itself de facto veto power over any future decisions Haslam might make on the issue, the governor’s hands are more or less tied. But he had ample opportunity before that point, when hospital administrators all over the state were begging him for financial relief, to avail himself of Medicaid expansion funds. He should have accepted the funds, even at the potential cost of inviting threats to his reelection. No profile in courage there, Gov.

It is true, of course, that Crittenden, like other public hospitals in Arkansas, had the benefit of Medicaid expansion funds, thanks to the fact that the state’s governor, Mike Beebe, is a Democrat, like the president, and therefore is not bound to an ideology of refusal that too many Republicans, for purely political reasons, are bound to. That fact alone kept the hospital alive for a season or two. But a pair of serious fires at the facility, one as recently as this year, pushed the hospital over the fiscal cliff.

There are numerous hospitals in Tennessee that are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and, failing the kind of unforeseen accident that happened in Crittenden, could easily survive with a fair share of the $2 billion that our state officials have opted to deny them.

Back to Arkansas: Another Democrat, U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, is running for reelection with a campaign that features public speeches on behalf of Obamacare/Medicaid expansion (both of which, however, he, rather too cautiously, calls by euphemistic names), pointing out that he himself was able to survive a bout with cancer in the 1990s, despite the fact that his insurance company back then declined to pay for the expensive treatment he required, which he then had to pay for out of pocket.

Obamacare, Pryor notes, prevents insurors from doing that to others. It can help keep hospitals alive, too.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Deforming Tennessee Justice

A Tennessee “country lawyer” named Andrew Jackson founded the Democratic Party. An Illinois “prairie lawyer” named Abraham Lincoln founded the Republican Party. Both represented people charged with violent crimes. Jackson allegedly committed a few of his own in his early years, and Lincoln was defending people charged with murder, right up to the time of his run for the presidency.  

Lincoln’s memorial now stands on our national mall in Washington, D.C., as both a tribute to justice and the most visible platform for those seeking fairness to peaceably assemble. Many of our founding fathers were defense attorneys. John Adams even defended the British soldiers at the Boston massacre. But today, the voices of private criminal defense lawyers are not wanted nor welcomed by the state government in Nashville. Somehow, American heroes like Thurgood Marshall and the fictional Atticus Finch are no longer valued as part of American culture.

Last week, Governor Bill Haslam formed a 27-member task force to reform sentencing laws in Tennessee. The goal is a noble one, as nearly every study of prisons reveals that the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but more than 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, demonstrate the anger that many citizens have at a government that is over militarized and increasingly appears to be waging war on its own people. 

Citizens of Tennessee can likely expect more of the same from the sentencing task force. The commission counts numerous prosecutors, judges, and police chiefs among its membership, and gives the appearance of being well rounded. However, the task force lacks even one private criminal defense lawyer among its members. In fact, the governor appointed only one recently reelected public defender to the task force. In other words, almost no one charged with “reforming” sentencing in a draconian justice system has ever defended a citizen at a sentencing hearing.  

The act of standing alone with a single citizen as the overwhelming weight of our government crushes his liberty is an experience that almost no one on the task force understands. The government will reform itself largely on the advice of its own employees, and without the advice of those independent thinkers who exist outside of government — like the lawyers who founded our country.

Six Shelby County residents were appointed to the task force. All are white Republicans, now tasked with reforming a system that overwhelmingly affects people of color. But, more importantly, none have defended a sentencing hearing since these laws were created in 1994.  

Senator Brian Kelsey is a lawyer who has never argued a case in criminal court. Sheriff Bill Oldham is not a lawyer, but his son serves as a prosecutor in the criminal courts. His predecessor in the Sheriff’s Office is Mark Luttrell, our current county mayor, who never argued a criminal case. Bill Gibbons is the current director of Tennessee’s Department of Homeland Security, a law enforcement position. As a lawyer, he served as our district attorney in an administrative capacity and never argued a criminal case.  

Amy Weirich is one of the most accomplished trial attorneys in the history of Shelby County, but has served only in the role of prosecutor. The Honorable John Campbell is equally accomplished as a trial lawyer, having served as a prosecutor from 1986 until he took the bench in 2012. A notable local lawyer who differs from all others on the committee in both appearance and work history but was not selected is Memphis Mayor A C Wharton.

I know several of these citizens, but my affection for them does not change the fact that each of them presents only one side of the debate about sentencing in Shelby County. For example, our laws send people to prison for six years for possessing $40 worth of marijuana, an act that is no longer a crime in several states. Possessing just $10 of cocaine can lead to a 30-year sentence.  

The elected officials of the task force all promise to be “tough” on crime. None ran advertisements promising to be “fair” or “smart” on crime. But the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that families in Shelby County are destroyed by many of our sentencing laws. How can a commission this one-sided and completely lacking in practical perspective make any meaningful reform? 

The task force should remember the words of Lincoln: “A law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.” It would be even better for Tennessee if the task force had members who actually live and work as Lincoln did — to remind the group in person.

Mike Working is the owner of The Working Law Firm, and serves as a member of the board of directors for the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

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Editorial Opinion

Can the Tennessee GOP Wise Up?

Is there hope for the Tennessee Republican Party? It’s fairly well established that the party’s establishmentarians are waging war with Tea Party insurgents for control of what, in the wake of the Civil War more than a century ago, was

once called the “Grand Old Party.”

These days the adjective “grand” would surely occur only to the most rabid of

Republican partisans as a self-description.

The Republican congressional wing has long since settled into a mode of obstructionism that would cause such leading Republicans of yore as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follete to roll over in their graves — and they may have done so, a plausible explanation of earthquakes and weather disturbances for those party Neanderthals who decline to accept the evidence for climate change.

In any case, the past weekend here in Tennessee witnessed the revival — however tentative — of what seemed to be actual bipartisan sentiment among Republican spokespersons. The occasion was the visit to Tennessee of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who stopped off in Memphis on Friday to boost the reelection prospects of Senator Lamar Alexander, before heading off to Nashville as the featured speaker of the state Republicans’ annual “Statesmen’s Dinner.”

It’s not just what Christie said — which was interesting enough — but what some of his red-state Tennessee hosts said in the shadow of the blue-state Republican governor’s still substantial presence.

Here is Alexander attempting to characterize his home-state party: “We’ve kept an open door, tolerated differences of opinion, and listened to everybody.” If “huh?” was the only appropriate response to that bit of wishful thinking, here’s how the senator described Christie: “He’s proud to be a Republican, but he also is a good enough governor to earn the respect and support and votes of independents, Democrats, and Republicans, just as our candidates do in Tennessee.” (They do?)

All that, however, was a warm-up for Christie himself, who endorsed Alexander against Tea Party challenger Joe Carr thusly: “I want to stand next to people like Lamar Alexander as often as I can, to remind Republicans, independents, and Democrats that the problems in our country are not partisan problems, they’re American problems, and we need to come together as a country to fix them. And we’re not going to do it by continuing to have the kind of divisive activity you see by some folks in both parties in Washington, D.C. The good news for Tennessee is, all of you are smart enough not to send anybody like that to the United States Senate. And let’s not start getting dumb like that now, okay? We don’t need to do that. Let’s stay smart, and Senator Alexander is somebody who brings people together.”

Lest anyone miss Christie’s drift, he said more of the same in Nashville. Apropos the process of governing, for example: “I don’t know when compromise became capitulation. I don’t know when it became wrong to talk to the people on the other side of the aisle and become their friends.”

We’re not credulous, but we like the sound of that paean to bipartisanship. Can they keep it up?

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Open Carry” Gun Bill Killed

Governor Haslam

  • Governor Haslam

The state House of Representatives — supported, it would seem, by the Haslam administration — acted decisively on Monday of this last week of the 2014 legislative session to reverse the action of the state Senate, week before last, in passing an open-carry gun bill.

The bill, which the Senate had approved by a 25-2 vote, was negated by an equally lopsided vote of 10-1 by the House Finance Subcommittee, which had the duty of screening it for the full Finance Committee, where approval was necessary to secure a floor vote for the bill.

That the bill’s defeat in the Finance subcommittee was fore-ordained was first reported last week in a Flyer article quoting Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel (R-Parker’s Crossroads).

McDaniel, a subcommittee member, confided the prevalent attitude on the subcommittee that, with action on the state budget already complete, there was no room to wedge in a new bill with a “fiscal note” (i.e., price tag) of $100,000.

That fiscal note had been stripped from the Senate version of the bill by Senate sponsor Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet), but had been re-attached to the House version on the advice of Commissioner Bill Gibbons of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, who adjudged the sum to be necessary to pay for revising the language of state carry permits to accommodate the changed gun-carry picture.

While the open-carry bill would let anyone carry anywhere, so long as their weapon was visible, permits would still be necessary for anyone wishing to carry a concealed weapon.

The open-carry bill’s House sponsor, Micha Van Hass (R-Jonesborough) fumed that the relatively modest fiscal note was unnecessary, little more than a symbolic fig leaf.

And indeed it was, essentially a cover for the administration’s apparent determination to abort the bill in the House, a chamber whose Speaker, Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) and membership are far more responsive to Haslam’s wishes than the Senate, where Speaker Ron Ramsey, the state’s Lieutenant Governor, holds sway in his own right.

As one instance among many, Ramsey, memorably, had imposed the abolition of teachers’ collective bargaining on a reluctant governor and House speaker in 2011.

In this case, Ramsey had merely shifted from his own previously expressed philosophical doubts on open-carry to a position of laissez-faire, and he himself, along with most of his membership, went along with the Senate bill more or less spontaneously, whether motivated by a militant campaign on its behalf by the Tennessee Firearms Association or not.

In the House, things were otherwise. Van Hass was able to reprise Senator Beavers’ prior action in stripping away the fiscal note, but the bill, even with that shield discarded, went down to the aforesaid lopsided defeat in the House subcommittee. So overwhelming was the vote that Van Hass, a Tea Party conservative with numerous concerns about government restrictions, had to admit that the bill’s rejection had been “fair and square.”

The outcome was regarded as a demonstration that Governor Haslam, a temperamental moderate who operates with a relatively loose rein, can impose a brake on what he regards as legislative excess — as he did late in the session of 2013 when he caused the relatively modest school-voucher bill he had approved to be withdrawn, rather than open it up to significant expansions sought by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and others.

The Governor also acted decisively in the 2013 session by bringing himself to make a rare veto of the so-called “Ag Gag” bill, widely regarded as a measure to suppress media investigation of cruelty to animals. A modestly revised version of that bill has been passed by both chambers of the legislature, however, and Haslam is expected to sign the new version into law.

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Editorial Opinion

Full Faith and Credit

Our Republican governor, Bill Haslam, is a pleasant and no doubt well-meaning man, and, in some ways — on the issue of using public money for private school vouchers, for example — a genuinely moderating influence on his party’s excesses.

As an example: The governor has proposed a modestly funded pilot program involving some 5,000 low-income students in demonstrably failing schools. While that might be characterized by public-school advocates as the proverbial slippery slope, what other Republicans on Nashville’s Capitol Hill — notably Germantown state Senator Brian Kelsey and Lietenant Governor Ron Ramsey — would prescribe amounts to the chasm itself, an open-ended voucher program whose stipends at some point could be made available to students from any family, regardless of income.

We cite this difference of opinion as evidence that the governor has a mind of his own and can, when he chooses, resist pressure from his rank and file. Unfortunately, there are issues on which this admirable quality seems to become, in the Nixonian phrase, inoperative.

A case in point is on the matter of whether to accept upward of $2 billion in federal funding under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) to expand the state’s Medicaid coverage (administered in Tennessee by TennCare). The state’s 165 hospitals, many of which are financially strained to the brink of having to shut down, are desperate for such expansion funding, 100 percent of which would be provided by the federal government for three years, after which a recipient state would be liable for only 10 percent of the annual sum.

This is not a “liberal” cause. The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, that bastion of economic conservatism, has urged the governor to accept the funding. GOP governors as far to the right as Jan Brewer in Arizona, Rick Snyder in Michigan, and John Kasich in Ohio have accepted the funding. Yet Haslam will not, continuing instead to dangle the prospect of something he calls “the Tennessee Plan,” an amorphous private-sector alternative that even a loyal GOP legislator like state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Memphis acknowledges is a “phantom.”

Though he surely knows better, having accepted his share of federal matching funds during two terms as mayor of Knoxville, Haslam declines to contradict those in the party — Kelsey, Ramsey, and Norris among them — who purport to believe that the feds will welsh on their 90 percent funding commitment to Medicaid once the initial three-year funding period is over. Never mind that the skeptics are unable to cite a single case of federal default on such a funding guarantee.

Beyond even the issue of health care itself, what is at stake in Tennessee’s Medicaid debate is the same premise that is at risk in Washington every time (which is annually) the congressional Tea Partiers would have us default on our national debt obligations — namely, the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

To undermine that bedrock, either fiscally or rhetorically, is a disservice to the very nation that our nay-saying legislators go through the daily ritual of pledging allegiance to. The governor, who really does know better, could at least cease giving them aid and comfort.

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Politics Politics Feature

Haslam Tips Hand on Agenda

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Some hint of what Governor Bill Haslam has in mind for the 2014 session of the Tennessee General Assembly was revealed to reporters last Thursday, after the governor had spoken at the ceremonial grand opening of the new Electrolux plant on President’s Island.

In a Q&A session, Haslam briefly addressed several subjects.

On school-voucher legislation: “We’re going to make our recommendation next week. As you know, we favored a more limited approach to school vouchers. I still think that’s the right one, because it’s focused on those lowest-performing schools, which are actually … a lot of which are our responsibility now in the Achievement School District and others.

“So in something like this, we think it makes sense to take a more measured approach as you look at vouchers, and let’s see the impact. There’s a lot of concern as to the effect it has on an existing school system, and how much difference does it make for the student. As the physician operating on ourselves first, we think, makes a lot of sense.”

The governor was asked about a more extensive (and expensive) voucher program proposed last year by state senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), who has said he will offer it again this year. At the end of last year’s session, Haslam asked his legislative sponsor, state Senate majority leader Mark Norris, to pull the more moderate gubernatorial pilot program rather than submit it to the changes desired by Kelsey.

“You know, we obviously last year felt much more comfortable with our position. We want to come up with something that’s the best idea. Last year, we didn’t hear another approach that we thought made sense, given everything else we have going on in education.”

On prospects for minimum wage legislation proposd by Assembly Democrats, Haslam said, “I’d be surprised if that gets much traction.”

On the outlook for the Tennessee Plan, a private-sector alternative to Medicaid expansion under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), Haslam said, “We’ve just had an additional conversation with [Health and Human Services] Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius, and several folks from CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] are coming down to Tennessee, I think, next week to have additional conversations.”

Federal subsidies for Haslam’s plan under the ACA (aka Obamacare) would require a federal waiver, which thus far has not been approved.

“I don’t want to mislead anybody into thinking we have something imminently worked out, but we do think we’re making some progress,” the governor said.

On the rape-kit controversy that has flared up in Memphis and nationwide: “Senator Norris has some legislation on that.” He thinks a statewide approach is in order and acknowledges having had conversations with Mayor A C Wharton on matters of state responsibility and state funding support for working through backlogs, but he did not elaborate.

• Mark Billingsley, director of the Methodist Hospital Foundation, won election as the newest member of the Shelby County Commission Monday, as anticipated by many observers.

Billingsley was selected on the second ballot, running ahead of four other nominees from an original field of 15 applicants, most of whom were interviewed by commissioners last week. Runners-up were George Chism, Diane George, Dennis Daugherty, and Frank Uhlhorn.

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Editorial Opinion

Money, Muscle, and Mind

The ceremonial grand opening last week of the expansive new Electrolux plant on President’s Island drew a distinguished group of celebrants, including company CEO Jack Truong, Mayors A C Wharton and Mark Luttrell, state Senate majority leader Mark Norris, and Governor Bill Haslam. They toasted the ghost of Christmas Future and predicted great things from the plant, which has been in operation already for four months, producing an array of state-of-the-art appliances.

Luttrell had another opportunity during the week to reference the plant. Delivering a version of his annual state-of-the-county message to Memphis Kiwanians at the University Club, Luttrell turned the coin and delivered a cautionary word from the underside.

The mayor emphasized the importance of education at large to issues like public safety and job creation, and said further economic development of the sort represented by Electrolux and Mitsubishi, the appliance behemoth’s near neighbor on President’s Island, depend on a constant upgrading of the community’s work force, particularly in the technological fields. As Luttrell noted, it is no secret that such development has been hindered by the inability of various interested industries to find people to step into the jobs that they already have — not to mention those that they might choose to offer to an appropriately skilled workforce. Luttrell hailed the willingness of Shelby County Schools superintendent Dorsey Hopson to “partner” with businesses in trying to upgrade basic skills.

Such educational bootstrapping is further dictated by the fact that PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) and other such discounting industrial incentives resorted to by local government are inherently subject to a law of diminishing returns. The general public infrastructure, which is or ought to be part of the bait for new industry, is increasingly in need of rehab — in large part because the public money to keep it in good repair is in scarce supply. To appropriate an old chestnut from the lay world, it takes money to make money.

More promisingly, large-scale development projects such as the recent completion of state Highway 385, linking Northwest Shelby County to Collierville and other points southeast, cannot help but spur economic activity. Further good news was the Tennessee Department of Transportation recently awarding a $109.3 million contract to finally finish the I-40/240 interchange in East Memphis. This project, which has a projected completion date four years hence, is a complement to TDOT’s ongoing widening project on the leg of I-240 stretching from Poplar to Walnut Grove.

Things are happening in our neck of the woods, but much remains to be done. It takes money, and muscle, and mind. All of that is where the commitment to educational partnering spoken of by Luttrell comes in.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Haslam’s “Gift” to Poor Tennesseans

This Christmas, Tennessee could have given a quarter-million poor Tennesseans the gift of health insurance without spending a dime of state funds. Instead, we’ve turned down billions in federal dollars, threatening the financial life of rural hospitals across the state and of the Med here in Shelby County.

Steve Mulroy

The reason for this Grinchism? Ideological disdain for anything connected to “Obamacare.”

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Tennessee stands to gain billions of dollars in federal funds to get an estimated 250,000 poor, uninsured persons the health insurance they need. The feds pay 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and 90 percent after that. So far, 25 states have already signed on.

Last March, Republican Tennessee governor Bill Haslam rejected Medicaid expansion. He explained that he would ask the federal government for permission to try a “third way” of using the federal funds to help the uninsured buy private insurance through the “health care exchanges” set up under the ACA. This free-market, private-sector solution ought to appease conservatives. And the feds have already approved a similar proposal in Arkansas. 

But, nine months later, the governor hasn’t made a formal proposal to the feds, and the whole thing is stuck in indefinite limbo. He’s being pressured to avoid taking the federal funds by the right wing of his party in Nashville, which opposes Medicaid expansion in any form.

This is unacceptable. We cannot play “political chicken” while the poor get sick and die for lack of insurance.

Expansion will provide the poor and uninsured the chance to get preventive care — such as breast cancer screenings, treatment for chronic diseases like diabetes, and prenatal care, which is so crucial here in Shelby County, with its Third-World-level rates of infant mortality.

A New England Journal of Medicine study of states that have already expanded Medicaid shows that it reduced death rates by more than 6 percent. And this preventive care not only improves health outcomes, it saves money. Preventive care is much cheaper than waiting until you need to go to the emergency room (or simply using the ER as a free medical clinic).  

The economic benefits are just as great. Tennessee stands to get well over $1 billion per year over the next five years. A University of Memphis study estimates that these federal funds would create 20,000 new jobs across the state. That’s why the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and the Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga Chambers of Commerce have all endorsed the idea of using these federal funds to expand health insurance coverage. 

Further delay prevents these benefits, obviously. But it’s even worse than you think. Because the ACA contemplates that poor people will be covered through Medicaid expansion, it scales back certain federal payments called “DSH funding,” which compensate hospitals (like the Med) that treat for free a disproportionate share of poor patients. The Tennessee Hospital Association estimates that these cuts will total $3 billion over the next five years and cost the state well over 10,000 jobs. Added to the benefits we lose by forgoing the ACA’s federal dollars and the jobs that go with them, we’re talking about a decision which by 2019 will cost Tennessee more than $9 billion and 30,000 jobs. That’s a pretty high price to pay for ideological purity.

And those DSH cuts will hit the Med especially hard. Without the ACA funds to make up for them, the Med will be on the ropes (as will similar charity-intensive hospitals in rural counties). Tennessee needs Medicaid expansion next week, but Shelby County needs it tomorrow.

Opponents of expansion say that we can’t trust the feds to keep their word, that in future years the federal contribution will drop below 90 percent and Tennessee will be stuck picking up the tab. But if the feds do renege on the deal, we can always drop out. That’s the approach taken by Arizona, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, and New Mexico, each of which has stipulated that it will cancel or reduce its participation if the feds don’t hold up their end of the bargain. 

Whether or not Tennessee expands coverage, Tennesseans must pay the federal taxes that fund these benefits nationwide. We can either have those dollars come back to us, or we can have them go to other states.  

The county commission will discuss this issue in January. We should urge it to join the coalition of businesses and health-care professionals asking Governor Haslam to act and to act now. The health of our citizens, our hospitals, and our economy depends on it.

Steve Mulroy is a member of the Shelby County Commission.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Who’s the Laughingstock?

The argument for “right-to-work” laws, like the one that exists in Tennessee and most other Southern states, is that they function as incentives to attract industry.

The mechanics work this way: In right-to-work states, no worker at a plant where unions are recognized is obliged to join a union. Advocates of right-to-work laws maintain such laws are guarantees of free choice. Opponents of them say they are union-busting measures and allow non-union workers to “freeload” on the employee advantages obtained through union auspices.

A situation now arising involving the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, however, is scrambling all the clichés and talking points and confounding the assumptions of leading Tennessee Republican officeholders that union prerogatives have “job-killing” consequences and impair the state’s efforts to attract industry.

In the case of Volkswagen, the management of the corporate giant has been insisting — in the face of opposition from Governor Bill Haslam and Senator Bob Corker — that the arguments of right-to-work enthusiasts and union-bashers run counter to reality and that strong worker organizations actually constitute a competitive advantage for the corporation. The practice in economically powerful Germany is for corporations to be governed jointly by representatives of management and labor — the latter through union-like groups called “works councils.”

In an interview with Nashville-based Associated Press reporter Erik Schelzig, who is German-born and speaks the language fluently, Bernd Osterloh, head of Volkswagen’s works councils and a member of VW’s supervisory board, said categorically: “Volkswagen considers its corporate culture of works councils a competitive advantage.” Osterloh added, “Volkswagen is led by its board and not by politicians,” and expressed confidence that the board would make “the right decision” in the face of demands by Haslam and Corker that the VW board should void its decision to honor a petition for representation by the United Auto Workers at the Chattanooga plant. The two officials say that, at the very least, Volkswagen should insist on a “secret ballot” vote on union representation by workers at the plant.

Haslam and Corker acknowledge having “concern about the impact of UAW on the state’s ability to recruit other companies to Tennessee,” as a spokesperson for Haslam put it. Corker went so far as to say Volkswagen would be a “laughingstock” if the company permitted a union to operate there. The baffled VW official said, “The decision about [buying] a vehicle will always be made along economic and employment policy lines. It has absolutely nothing to do with … whether there is a union there or not.” He further noted that U.S. law mandates union representation as a prerequisite for allowing the power-sharing function of works councils and pointed out that every other VW plant in the world maintains such councils as a key to its manufacturing strategy.

Though he might have, Osterloh did not go on to note the long-standing fact of existing UAW representation at the General Motors plant at Spring Hill or that Tennessee’s ability to attract industry had somehow not been destroyed by the fact. Nor, and this is surely the clincher, did it keep Volkswagen itself from locating here.

We have to wonder: Just who is the real laughingstock in this argument?

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Editorial Opinion

Virtual Nonsense

Education is, of course, not the only aspect of Tennessee life which is undergoing substantial change these days, but, as has so often been said by lay and professional folks alike, it is the key to the state’s future. That being the case,

we can only hope that the people who are in charge of Tennessee’s destiny know what they are doing.

We are now in the third year of the educational reforms that will be associated with the tenure of Governor Bill Haslam and his appointee as education commissioner, Kevin Huffman. The jury is still out — or should we say the examination is still under way — on the sweeping educational reforms being officially pursued. These include a plethora of new charter schools and a truly revolutionary and experimental new layer of educational bureaucracy, typified by the statewide Achievement School District being administered by Chris Barbic.

No one who has had any contact with any of the three individuals mentioned above should have any doubt as to their good intentions or their sincerity or the extent to which they believe in what they are doing. All those attributes are much in evidence.

We have our doubts about much of what has been achieved or is being attempted, but we strive to keep an open mind. We do wonder, however, about Barbic’s boast that he does not have to “answer to” any school board in carrying out his particular reform agenda. Yes, there are some questionable boards with some knot-headed school board members in Tennessee, but these boards are, after all, elected, and they do represent the people.

We doubt, too, that the process of education was well served by the action of the legislature in 2011 in abolishing the bargaining rights of Tennessee’s established teaching organizations, but we also know that this drastic step (for drastic is what it is) was the work not so much of Haslam and his appointees but of Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and the archconservative legislators whom Ramsey apparently can guide to his heart’s content. At least those in the state Senate, of which he is the undisputed master.

Not that there aren’t some blessings to go with that last fact. Because he happened to get involved in a power struggle with his House counterpart, Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, last year, Ramsey put the quietus on a House-baked plan for a state “authorizer” empowered to overrule local school boards in their decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of charter-school proposals.

And, to give Haslam his due, he acted to quash several efforts by his party’s right wing to overreach themselves in the extent to which they were proposing public vouchers for private schools. Haslam also did his best to slow down and to establish more realistic criteria for “virtual” — i.e., online — education. In particular, he tried to rein in and put a term limit on the Tennessee Virtual Academy, an institution whose head testified before a legislative committee last year in an effort to excuse his system’s poor performance, introducing his personnel with non-grammatical sentences such as, “This is so-and-so, which is in control of such-and-such.” Which.

Alas, the poor governor, which was overruled by the legislature. We hopes for the best, but we fears it gets worser and worser.