Tag: Governor Bill Haslam

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Politics Politics Feature

Just Saying No

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Governor Bill Haslam‘s veto this week of HB 1191/SB 1248, christened the “ag gag” bill by its opponents, is yet another indication that Haslam may be getting more comfortable in the role of chief executive and more able to act independently of the General Assembly and the key Republican figures there.

Haslam’s progress toward self-assertion has been an uneven one. His long vacillation this year on the issue of extending Medicaid benefits and accepting additional federal funding under the Affordable Care Act was seen in many quarters as evidence of irresoluteness or even of kowtowing to the legislature, a majority of whose members were opposed to any vestige of what they call “Obamacare.”

Haslam finally had to say something and said no — though he made a show of keeping his options open to working something out with Washington down the line.

But he gained both credibility and traction in the last month of the session when two state senators — Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Dolores Gresham (R-Somerville) — pushed for a greater expansion of educational vouchers than Haslam had proposed in a fairly modest pilot program and discovered, to their surprise, that the bluff they were calling had been no bluff.

Rather than relent to legislature pressure, Haslam called for the voucher issue to be yanked off the calendar altogether. Basically, it was a case of his way or the highway, and he made it stick.

In his veto message on “ag gag,” Haslam sounded characteristically diffident. He struck a sympathetic note toward those agricultural entrepreneurs who had sought the bill, which would have required anyone with photographic or other evidence of animal cruelty to turn over whatever they had to “law enforcement” within 24 hours of obtaining it.

As critics of the bill charged, this could clearly be seen as a disingenuous means of discouraging or suppressing altogether any whistle-blowing or sustained journalistic investigation of improper farm practices. And while there was a diverse chorus of reaction to the measure, the bill had serious backing from influential agri-business interests.

So it was that Haslam’s veto message paid homage to the “vital role in our state’s economy” played by agriculture, and the governor said soothingly of the bill’s proponents, “I understand their concerns about large-scale attacks on their livelihoods.”

And the governor made a point of saying his veto was not based “on policy grounds” but on a wish that the legislature might want to “reconsider” the measure:

“First, the attorney general says the law is constitutionally suspect. Second, it appears to repeal parts of Tennessee’s Shield Law without saying so. If that is the case, it should say so. Third, there are concerns from some district attorneys that the act actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases, which would be an unintended consequence.”

It was a hedged way of saying no to the farm interests, but it was still a veto.

State senator Jim Kyle (D-Memphis) claimed the outcome as a victory for his side. Or as he put it, “The governor’s hesitancy to act earlier was no match against the voice of the people of our state and nation.” And Kyle made the most of Haslam’s cautious rhetoric:

“While we revel in this win for democracy, we need to be ready to fight this issue again next year. In his decision, Governor Haslam stated that he encouraged the General Assembly to reconsider this issue.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Pennies from Haslam

Over the past three sessions, the Tennessee General Assembly, dominated by archconservatives from the Tea Party wing of the GOP, have brought us bill after bill expressing the fundamental convictions of their ideology: Keep the government out of business and cut benefits to the “unworthy.”

From a change to the workers’ compensation system to “tort reform” that caps damages to cuts to the Hall tax and to the eventual sunset of the inheritance tax (a levy which only affected 900 people a year at its peak), these changes to state law benefit a scant few Tennesseans.

Governor Haslam supported all of these bills.

A single piece of progressive legislation, the lowering of the sales tax on food by a quarter of 1 percent, was originally opposed by the administration before its passage in the final days of last year’s session. This year, an additional .25 percent cut in sales tax on food is a part of the governor’s legislative agenda and on track to pass.

So, while corporations and the wealthy saw their state taxes and potential liabilities drop by thousands of dollars a year, average Tennesseans saw a tax cut of a mere $3.65 annually — which will buy a burrito at your local Pilot Travel Center.

A recent Vanderbilt poll showed that Governor Haslam enjoys a 68 percent approval rating. That same poll also notes that 60 percent of Tennesseans think state government should place a priority on policies that help build the economy and create jobs. Haslam’s signature economic development bill was the aforementioned tort reform, passed in 2011. A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that “reform” of this sort actually slows job growth.

Last year, the governor touted his “Tennessee Economic Miracle” to the chattering classes on cable TV. Since the beginning of Haslam’s term, poverty in Tennessee has increased to nearly 17 percent, wages have remained stagnant, and unemployment has tracked national averages. Some miracle.

None of the bills supported by the governor increases job creation or wages, nor do they extend the buying power of regular Tennesseans. Instead, all help wealthier people save money, which is an inefficient, if not downright chimerical, job-creation strategy.

Last year, the governor asked every agency of state government, other than education, to cut 5 percent from their budget. To cover the losses, state administrators trimmed staff and sought to erect barriers to eligibility. These changes don’t need legislative approval. They do, however, keep eligible people from receiving services.

According to a recent study authored by Cyril Chang of the University of Memphis, some 98,000 Tennesseans qualify for TennCare but are not in the system. Many of these working Tennesseans either don’t know they qualify or don’t have the time or resources to navigate the maze of requirements to meet eligibility. Many blame the federal government, but the state runs most federal social services through block grants. Block grants give the state authority to establish eligibility guidelines, within reason. The state has been pushing the edge of reason to the limit.

Through it all, Haslam’s policies further a system of government that focuses on helping those who don’t need it rather than those who do. It’s a policy agenda that fits nicely into a worldview that has dominated American politics for the past 30 years.

“Personal responsibility,” a longtime rallying cry of the GOP, holds that people who have access to quality health care, education, and capital accomplished this, because they chose to or worked hard for it — even if they were born into it.

On the other hand, people lacking such access don’t deserve help, because they made bad choices. If you’re not doing well, according to Republicans, it’s because of something you did or didn’t do, regardless of your circumstances.

While some may contest the strength of Haslam’s commitment to this brand of “personal responsibility,” it’s there, obscured behind his mushy language and overshadowed by the red-herring rhetoric of the General Assembly’s firebrands.

For the 2.6 million Tennesseans whose earnings are near or below poverty, and the 2.2 million more who are one financial disaster away from poverty, Haslam’s economic policies do absolutely nothing to provide relief.

In the end, the governor has shown he believes that if you aren’t making it, it’s not because of your circumstances, or bankers who tanked the financial system, or laws that actually slow job growth. It’s something you did to yourself.

The best average folks can expect are 365 pennies from Haslam, one a day — cold comfort for millions of Tennesseans struggling to get by.

Steve Ross is a former Democratic candidate for the Shelby County Commission, a member of the Shelby County Democratic Party Executive Committee, and a blogger about state and local politics at vibinc.com.

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Politics Politics Feature

Quick Shooting

NASHVILLE — Several major pieces of legislation remain unresolved, at least in their final form, but the Tennessee General Assembly last week made short work of the one issue that tied it in knots last year and resulted in the electoral defeat of a key legislator.

This was the so-called guns-in-parking-lots bill, which passed the state Senate last year but was kept from a vote in the state House, where a stalemate developed between advocates of gun rights and defenders of property rights, who were backed by some of the state’s major corporations and, ultimately, by members of the Republican legislative leadership.

That contest of wills was won by the latter in the spring legislative session, but it was different in the summer, when the National Rifle Association and the Tennessee Firearms Association combined efforts to defeat the reelection bid of former Representative Debra Maggart (R-Hendersonville), the GOP House caucus chair whom they blamed for keeping the bill from a House vote.

Maggart’s defeat clearly became something of an object lesson for Republican legislators. Long before the convening of this year’s session, another version of the bill was put together by Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville), who presides over the state Senate and is beyond doubt the General Assembly’s dominant personality.

This year’s bill absolves from any criminal penalty employees who have gun-carry permits and choose to conceal their weapons in parked cars on their employers’ parking lots. Although Governor Bill Haslam had desired an exemption for colleges and universities, one was not written into the bill.

In that form, the bill passed the Senate two weeks ago and the House last week, in a session in which debate was carefully limited. In a meeting of the GOP House caucus before the vote last Thursday, Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) advised Republican members to vote their “conscience” but to expedite passage with minimal controversy.

In practice, that meant that the 13 amendments that were introduced, 12 of them by Democrats, not only were overwhelmingly voted down but, with the exception of the one amendment introduced by a Republican, who spoke briefly for his proposal, were greeted with no commentary of any kind from GOP members.

Taking note of the dispatch with which the bill was processed, the courtly Democratic House leader, Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley, observed: “As I recall, the function of the committee system on this particular bill probably took less time overall than the very capable sponsor took for his opening remarks.”

The sponsor in question, Representative Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby), had spoken for maybe five minutes.

In a body which has 72 Republicans and 27 Democrats, the final tally in favor of the bill was 72-22.

• A General Assembly measure that proposes a tradeoff of sorts on two types of IDs that were formerly banned for voting purposes has drawn a cautious reaction from opponents of the state’s photo ID law.

State senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) will present a bill in the Senate state and local government committee Tuesday that would allow photo IDs issued by state colleges and universities to satisfy the state law but would disallow photo IDs issued by public libraries.

In a press release, Ketron said, “This legislation allows photo IDs issued by state community colleges and state universities as an acceptable form of identification. We allowed the use of photo identification of faculty members of our state colleges and universities under the original Tennessee law which passed in 2011. We believe that this state issued ID has worked as a sufficient form of identification and that students should also be included.”

Ketron said one intent of his bill was to “clear up confusion” about the use of library cards at polls. In a pre-election ruling last year on a suit brought by the city of Memphis the state Court of Appeals approved the rule of public library cards as consistent with the state law.

The state has appealed that ruling. “We considered locally issued cards when debating the original bill, but after reviewing the process, decided that the safeguards were not in place to ensure the integrity of the ballot like state and federally issued identification,” Ketron said. “We continue to believe that the safeguards are not in place to use these cards as acceptable identification for voting purposes.”

City attorney Herman Morris, who, backed by Mayor A C Wharton, vigorously argued for the validity of public library cards in last year’s legal action, seemed to regard the Ketron bill as potentially affording “some progress” in widening the compass of acceptable state IDs but emphasized that the city regards the photo ID law itself as unconstitutional and is awaiting a ruling on the measure as a whole from the state Supreme Court.

That opinion was echoed by Van Turner, a lawyer who serves as chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party. “Any advancement is a good thing,” Turner said of the bill’s intent to license student IDs, “but I’m disappointed that it would take library cards off the table.” That aspect of the bill would inconvenience “seniors and others who aren’t so mobile as students,” Turner said. “They’re picking and choosing.”

Like Morris, Turner said that the real issue was the fate of the photo ID law itself.

 

• Although Rich Holden, administrator of elections at the glitch-plagued Shelby County Election Commission, has completed a six-month probation period and received what amounts to a clean bill of health at a meeting two weeks ago, the two Democratic members of the five-member commission remain dissatisfied, and one of them, Norma Lester, calls the procedure a “hoax.”

At the February 20th meeting, Lester, along with Democratic colleague George Monger, unsuccessfully called again, as they had at a previous meeting, for a resolution asking Holden to resign. They were out-voted by Chairman Robert Meyers and the two other Republican members of the election commission, Dee Nollner and Steve Stamson.

Lester contends that Holden was allowed to circumvent a three-day suspension without pay that was imposed on him along with the six-month probation period. She describes the combination of penalties, voted by the commission last year in the wake of several election irregularities, as having been a “compromise” but one that was incompletely enforced.

Meyers acknowledged that Holden had not had his pay docked but called that an “oversight” on his part. “There was something specific I had to do beyond our resolution that I didn’t realize at the time was necessary, but, when it was called to my attention, I took care of it.” Holden’s pay will be docked for three days, Meyers said, but, in answer to an additional assertion by Lester that the administrator had taken only two days off, not the three mandated, the chairman said, “We were in crisis mode at the time, and I called [Holden] back to help out with it. I don’t think it’s necessary to ask him to take another day off, so long as we are docking his pay for three full days,” Meyers said.

Holden’s penance was ordained by the full commission in the wake of a series of election-related glitches in 2012 that included the distribution of thousands of wrong ballots during the August 2nd county general election — a problem generally attributed to an untimely application of reapportionment guidelines to precinct assignments.

As part of his probation, Holden was required to take a Dale Carnegie course and one in management, to explain work assignments of his staff members in some detail and conduct regular meetings with them, and to complete the process of redistricting to the commission’s satisfaction. Holden supplied the commission with an itemized statement as evidence of his compliance with all points.

Lester and Monger have made it clear they remain unsatisfied, with Lester declaring in a memo to her colleagues, “My distrust of the AOE [Holden] has been very open. It is disheartening to think trust of the Republican commissioners has been misplaced.”

Another unsatisfied person is Joe Weinberg, who, along with but independently of fellow election watchdog Steve Ross, exposed the wrong-ballot problem last year — one which was confirmed by the Tennessee secretary of state’s office.

Weinberg, who has compiled a lengthy list of what he sees as systemic problems in the workings of the administrator’s office, charges that most of them have not been dealt with — either by Meyers or the election commission as a whole or state comptroller Justin Wilson, who conducted a review of commission activities at the request of Secretary of State Tre Hargett.

Weinberg has publicized new research of his own, contending that at least 400 city voters, and possibly many more whose precincts were “split” following reapportionment, were deprived of the opportunity in November of voting on a city gas tax referendum.

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Cover Feature News

The Elephants in the Room

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE — In the middle of last Wednesday’s first formal meeting of the Shelby County legislative delegation in Nashville, Democratic state representative Antonio Parkinson, who was moderating the meeting, was redirecting somebody’s question about some pro forma matter to the delegation’s newly elected chairman, state senator Reginald Tate.

“Chairman Norris?” he said, in what had to be some kind of Freudian slip.

Tate decided to riff on the error, which had begun to draw modest guffaws from the delegation. “I’m the real Mark Norris,” he said, as if in casual acknowledgment of a long-held secret.

And that set up state representative Joe Towns, a Democrat and African American like Parkinson and Tate but one less inclined than either to work hand-in-glove with the General Assembly’s dominant Republicans, of whom Norris, the GOP’s majority leader in the Senate, was a highly influential one.

Under his breath but audibly to most of those nearby, Towns said, “Y’all look like twins. That’s why I believe in birth control.”

All parts of that exchange were uttered — and taken — lightly, but that is not to say that the back-and-forthing did not betoken some serious issues within the delegation. It did.

Less than a week before, after a dinner meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club (at which he’d been a lively raconteur), Tate was discoursing on his place in the legislature’s political firmament, responding specifically to questions about his seeming coziness with leading Republicans and his estrangement from the current leadership of the ever-shrinking state Democratic Party.

“It just so happens that I’m not dancing to the music,” Tate said. As to his easy and frequent access to GOP leaders like Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, the Senate speaker, the south Shelby County legislator was up front: “If I can’t get you to help me, then I’m going to get somebody else to help me.”

Yes, he conceded, he is friendly with Ramsey, but that’s because “he wants to reach out to the Democratic side.” Besides, said Tate, who had challenged fellow Memphian Jim Kyle, the longtime Senate Democratic leader, for control of the sorely diminished party caucus and lost by a single vote, 4-3, “If I’m not dancing to Kyle’s music, what makes anybody think I’d dance to Ramsey’s music?”  

On that latter point, Tate acknowledged voting counter to other Democrats and with local Republicans Norris and state representative Curry Todd on the two Republican legislators’ several bills to pave the way for suburban school independence, but that, he suggested, could result in possible quid pro quo arrangements down the line for the areas he represents.

Tate was talking realpolitik of a fairly basic kind, and, while he may be more active than most Democrats in courting such trade-offs — and certainly more open in discussing them out loud — he is certainly not the only Democrat to seek accommodation with the Republican majority.

It’s a matter of arithmetic, really. Starting with the election of 2008, in which there seemed to be a state backlash against the first Obama presidential candidacy, continuing with the Tea Party wipeout of Democratic seats in 2010, and culminating with another strong Republican showing in 2012, assisted by some artful redistricting by the now dominant GOP, Democrats are barely on the legislative map at all.

They have the aforesaid seven of the state Senate’s 33 members. They have 27 of the 99-member state House of Representatives. The GOP has the governorship, all of the state’s constitutional officers, seven of the nine congressional seats, both U.S. Senate seats, and what would seem to be the same kind of firmly committed loyalty that Democrats used to possess and now can count on in only a very few isolated patches of Tennessee — most notably Shelby County, largely because of its black population; and Davidson County (Nashville), arguably the sole surviving remnant on Planet Earth of the old solid Democratic South.

For Democrats in the Tennessee legislature, the old expression “go along to get along” has very definite relevance.

Even Kyle, a longtime party point man who, by virtue of his leadership post, is one of the official upholders of the Democratic standard, has found it necessary to deviate from strict orthodoxy. After Republican-controlled reapportionment relocated him in a district that was not up for election last year, in effect deleting him from the Senate, he was forced to negotiate with the GOP powers-that-be for inclusion in a district he could run in.

That turned out to be District 30, which already had a Democratic incumbent, Beverly Marrero, who was not exactly thrilled to find her party leader opposing her reelection and who would lose that match. And, rather than opposing outright certain GOP agenda items — like one for state education vouchers, which is backed by the governor and currently picking up steam — Kyle indicated last week that his strategy will be to seek modifications.

In his State of the State message to the newly reconvened General Assembly on January 28th, Governor Bill Haslam issued what sounded like a sincere nod to bipartisanship:

“I believe we have to begin this evening by addressing the elephant in the room — or I guess I should say the elephants in the room. There are a lot of expectations and preconceived notions about how our Republican supermajority is going to govern. … As we go through this legislative session, I ask everyone in this chamber this evening to keep in mind what Senator [Howard] Baker said: ‘The other fellow might be right.’ Tennesseans don’t want us to be like Washington. They don’t want continuous conflict. They do want principled problem solving.”

That was reassuring, coming from a governor who, in contemporary terms, has to be considered a moderate (though the genial Pilot Oil scion and former Knoxville mayor, like all other Republicans on the planet, shies away from such a term as the kiss of death, insisting on being called a “conservative”).

The difference between a Haslam and an archconservative like Ramsey (who finished third in the 2010 Republican primary behind Haslam and then Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp) is basically one of degree — but the degrees count for much.

In 2011, when he laid out Phase One of the educational-reform package that he clearly intends to be a major part of his legacy, for example, the newly elected Haslam focused on such issues as merit pay for teachers, tenure reform, and expansion of charter schools.

Revocation of teachers’ rights to collectively bargain was never part of his agenda, but it was part of Ramsey’s, who declined to accept the modest tweaks proposed by Haslam (and House speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, for that matter) and constructed a solid front for abolition in the Senate.

In the end, Haslam gave way on that issue, as he did on several others that first year of his tenure. Since then, he has strived, with mixed success, to hold his own with Ramsey, and the two — like partners to an arranged marriage — make a conscious, and not always successful, effort to stay on the same page.

The realities are that legislative debate for the foreseeable future in Tennessee is likely to be a matter of compromise between Republican factions, with Democrats, confronted with GOP supermajorities in both House and Senate, hoping at best to impact such few borderline votes as may occur.

Here are some of the major issues known to be coming in the 2013 session of the General Assembly:

The voucher bill: What the governor proposes is a modest pilot program, beginning with a maximum of 5,000 students, all of whom must be members of households below the official poverty line and currently be attending schools performing in the lowest 5 percent of Tennessee schools, according to standardized tests.

To critics who maintain such bills will undermine public education and strip already struggling schools of per-pupil funding, Haslam noted in his State of the State address that he is funneling an additional $57 million into the problem institutions, all of which seem destined for the fledgling state-managed Achievement School District created under Haslam’s reform package.

State senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), who introduced the first voucher bill two years ago, more or less along the lines Haslam is proposing now, had floated new proposals involving wider scope and higher subsidies but seems content for the moment with the Haslam bill. Formally sponsored by Norris and House majority leader Gerald McCormick of Chattanooga, it envisions some 20,000 students within three years.

  

Medicaid expansion: As originally enacted, President Obama’s Affordable Care Act required states to expand Medicaid coverage (Tennessee’s version is TennCare) to individuals earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. The federal government would fully fund the increased costs through 2015, after which states would begin to pick up the slack, incurring a maximum of 10 percent liability for the new expenses in 2022.

With expansion now optional as a result of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision finding “Obamacare” constitutional, debate rages in every state with a conservative majority, and that definitely includes Tennessee. Here is another instance in which the inclinations of Haslam and an assortment of supportive Republicans and Democrats favoring expansion may be thwarted by Ramsey and ultraconservative GOP legislators.

It is generally believed that the governor, earlier on, had been willing to have Tennessee avail itself of the option to form its own medical exchange under Obamacare, but that stout opposition from his right wing backed him off. That pattern seems to be repeating itself on the issue of Medicaid expansion, which the state’s hospital administrators have lobbied for. Haslam has indicated a willingness to consider participating, but two bills — one by Kelsey, which already has 16 of the 33 senators as sponsor — have been introduced to prohibit any expansion, and Ramsey has said flatly (in what may actually be a concession to Haslam) that the issue won’t be dealt with this year.

And that’s probably the case.

Workers’ compensation: Given that the once semigenerous provisions of Tennessee’s workers’ compensation laws were already weakened by bills supported by Democratic governor Phil Bredesen less than a decade ago, it’s a slam-dunk proposition that they will undergo major surgery in the current legislative session.

Here’s a case in which Haslam himself has proposed to wield the scalpel. The most important provision of a measure he announced in his State of the State message is the establishment of a new state bureaucracy that would adjudicate all injury claims and other job-related disabilities which once went directly into litigation and, under the proposed law, would seriously limit the potential grounds for judicial appeal.

Another portion of the Haslam bill would increase the burden of proof on a claimant.

There are doubtless union representatives and trial lawyers who will try to lobby against the bill, but the day in which star lobbyists like John Summers could retard such legislation are now in the past. For better or for worse, making Tennessee more “business-friendly” is now the order of the day, and on this point there is no quarrel between Republican factions.

Guns in parking lots: One bill which famously did divide the GOP in the 2012 legislative session would have further expanded the prevalence of guns in Tennessee even more than had been the case in the NRA-mentored sessions of 2011 and 2012.

Allowing guns in bars and parks was a fairly easy matter for the firearms lobby, notoriously generous (or punitive) with financial and organizational support during political campaigns. But in 2012, a proposal to allow guns in parked cars on business parking lots put the rank-and-filers, including numerous members of the Tea Party class of 2010, in serious conflict with business-minded Republicans, including the governor and the party’s legislative leadership — not to mention the state’s major corporate interests, such as FedEx of Memphis and Volkswagen of Chattanooga.

It was a battle between property rights and gun rights, and, lo and behold, guess who won? The bill was bottled up in committee and held off the floor, and Representative Debra Maggart of Hendersonville, the GOP caucus leader in the House, later paid a penalty, losing her seat in a 2012 primary race to an opponent heavily supported by the NRA and the Tennessee Firearms Association, whose executive director called for Maggart to be “crucified” as an object lesson.

That experience makes it likely that some reprise of the bill will get a fairly attentive hearing in 2013. And a compromise measure seems to be taking shape that would allow permit holders to have the guns concealed in locked cars on business lots, provided that the businesses could keep a record of their permits on file.

Charter school legislation: This one — at least in its full dimension — is the subject of mystery and intrigue on the part of Shelby County’s suburban interests and the legislators who represent them. They seek some legally and politically acceptable substitute for the municipal-schools legislation struck down last year by U.S. district judge Hardy Mays.

What seems to be developing is a proposal for a state authorizer empowered, after an appeals process, to overrule local school boards that might choose to reject this or that charter school application. That much is known, and it’s consistent with the known predilection of Governor Haslam and his Education Department for blowing out the number of charter schools.

The hard part for the suburbanites and their surrogates — Norris and Todd — will be to fashion some schema that would allow large-scale charter school networks to be formed and simultaneously pass muster not only with the courts but, almost as difficult, with legislators, of both parties across the breadth and depth of Tennessee, who don’t want their school boards monkeyed with.

It is the requirement in state law that legislation affecting only a single county be approved by the legislative body of that county (in this case, the wholly resistant Shelby County Commission), which caused a breakdown in Republican Party solidarity last year, forced principal architect Norris to disguise a private bill as a public one, and got an ultimate turndown from Judge Mays.

It remains to be seen if this water can be made into wine.

Wine in grocery stores: Speaking of which, both speakers are now lined up behind the perennial effort to allow wine to be sold in grocery stores. What makes such a bill possible this time around is the requirement in the new version for referenda in those counties that want such privileges.

And there will be more — including as many novelty measures as the inimitable Stacey Campfield of Knoxville (now a state senator) can dream up. He’s already thought up a new version of last year’s discredited and deflected “Don’t Say Gay” bill. This one would force school counselors to identify likely gay students and expose them to their parents. And there’s Campfield’s bill to take away welfare payments from families whose school-agers are screwing up at school.

The shame of it is that Campfield, who got himself a billet on the Senate Education Committee to wreak this mischief, is capable of applying himself to better ends, as he indicated with some acute questioning in committee of the principals involved in state-subsidized virtual (i.e., online) education. This would-be innovation, authorized in the giddy 2011 session, seems to have flunked out due to its poor student scores.

Haslam has called for limiting its enrollment, and legislators from both parties have threatened it with extinction.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

And There’s Deidre …

Ever since the names of state senator Jim Kyle and county commissioner Steve Mulroy were mentioned in a recent column as possible Democratic candidates for county mayor in 2014, numerous plugged-in sorts have made a point of reminding me that former county commissioner Deidre Malone is almost certain to be a candidate.

Malone, who was edged out in a bid for county mayor by then provisional mayor Joe Ford in 2010, confirms that she’s likely to run. And she has experience and relationships that would enable her to run seriously. A longtime Democratic Party activist, Malone served two terms on the commission, from 2002 to 2010. She subsequently ran Memphis mayor A C Wharton‘s successful 2009 reelection campaign. She served two five-year terms on the Shelby County Housing Authority and is currently a member of the city/county EDGE board and the Memphis-Shelby County Port Commission. And she runs the Carter-Malone public relations firm.

•  While we’re speculating on names of possible future candidates, an interesting email came through the transom this week from a well-informed friend who suggests that Wharton is almost certain to run for reelection in 2015 and wonders who might be wanting to succeed him in 2019.

Sez he: “The general consensus seems that people need to be positioning themselves now for a run at the big chair when that time comes … but nobody really is. There are a few usual suspects that pop up in conversation (Darrell Cobbins, Tomeka [Hart], Mike Carpenter, [Jim] Strickland, [Harold] Collins, Paul Morris, and Keith Norman).”  

All of the aforementioned seem credible and credentialed enough. Cobbins is a longtime activist and former MLGW chairman; Hart has served as local Urban League head and on the MSC and Unified school boards and ran for Congress in the 9th District last year; Carpenter, currently an aide to Wharton, served two terms on the county commission and, until recently, represented the StudentsFirst organization in Nashville.

Strickland and Collins are both city council members who have been prominent as budget chairman and council chairman, respectively; Morris is head of the Downtown Memphis Commission; and Norman is a local Baptist minister who has been Shelby County Democratic chairman and was recently cited by the White House for his efforts to stem youth violence.

Of course, 2019 is a long way off.

 

• NOTES FROM NASHVILLE — Shelby County Democrats voted overwhelmingly for the winner in last Saturday’s election contest for a new state party chairman.

The winner, by a 32-27 vote of state executive committee members, was former legislator Roy Herron of Dresden, who as a late entry overcame what had earlier appeared to be a consensus in favor of Dave Garrison of Nashville, who had been serving as party treasurer.

The vote by Shelby Countians was nine for Herron, a fellow West Tennessean, and three for Garrison.

• Governor Bill Haslam, ever adept at walking political tightropes, managed several versions of the feat during his 2013 State of the State address before a joint legislative session in the House chamber and before whatever political junkies might have tuned in to a statewide multimedia simulcast.

On several key issues, the governor expressed himself with studious ambiguity — notably on the still pending matter of Medicaid expansion under the terms of the Affordable Care Act. “Most of us in this room don’t like the Affordable Care Act, but the decision to expand Medicaid isn’t as basic as saying, ‘No ObamaCare, No expansion,'” he said. In other words, he was carefully weighing the issue.

On the one hand, “The federal government is famous for creating a program and then withdrawing the funds years later, which leaves state governments on the hook.” That was apropos conservative opponents’ expressed fears — embodied in new prohibitive legislation sponsored by state senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown).

But on the other hand, “There are hospitals across this state, many of them in rural communities, that are going to struggle, if not close, under the health-care law without expansion.” For “hospitals,” read: sources of serious lobbying efforts for expansion.

And, regarding proposed legislation to enable state vouchers for use in private schools (including a far-reaching variant by the self-same Kelsey), Haslam was able to thread his way through the controversial issue without ever even using the word “voucher” at all. Still, the governor left no doubt that he would be pushing a “school choice” proposal, one that focused on low-income students, and he balanced that with boasts that he had greatly increased financial support — $47 million, over and above annual funding — for the struggling schools that might lose students through a voucher program.

What was interesting about the SOTS address from the standpoint of audience reaction in the chamber was that every time Governor Haslam mentioned this or that new expenditure — $51 million for “technology transition upgrades in schools across the state”; $16.5 million for workforce development programs; $45 million for a new community health facility at the University of Memphis; $58 million for new jails and prisons, etc., etc. — he got substantial applause from the supermajority of supposed GOP tightwads.

True, too, however, that the governor stressed whenever possible anything he could refer to as a tax cut — in levies on groceries, for example; or in the state inheritance tax (which he, admirably, declines to call a “death tax)”; or on gift taxes; or on the Hall income tax — and he got the same prolonged applause.

Haslam briefly boasted about his educational reforms and improved student performance on standardized tests. He touted a variety of public-private partnerships in the marketplace and an increase in the number of state jobs. He circled around a couple of problem areas — issues within the department of children’s services, for example, concerning which he spoke mainly of “upgrading nearly 200 case manager positions” and “guns and schools,” which he morphed into a call for “a larger conversation about mental health issues, identifying warning signs, and getting people the help they need.”

One of Haslam’s strongest stands concerned his support for stability in the state’s procedures for making judicial appointments. He noted that a pending 2014 referendum calls for modest changes and said, “I … believe that it makes sense to preserve the current process until the people have a chance to vote. … Making changes in the meantime does nothing but confuse the situation further.”

At the very onset of his speech, Haslam hit one inescapable issue head-on: “I believe we have to begin this evening by addressing the elephant in the room — or I guess I should say the elephants in the room. There are a lot of expectations and preconceived notions about how our Republican supermajority is going to govern. … As we go through this legislative session, I ask everyone in this chamber this evening to keep in mind what Senator [Howard] Baker said: ‘The other fellow may be right.'”

And in the spirit of that suggested bipartisanship, the only significant modification made by Haslam in his prepared text was an ad-libbed recognition of Memphis state representative and former House speaker pro tem Lois DeBerry for her 40 years of service in the legislature. That drew a standing ovation, as did several other tributes to various state employees whom he recognized for their superior performance.

In one sense, Haslam’s State of the State message left a lot of blanks to be filled. But in another sense, he filled as many as he could with what seemed to be encouraging data and honest feel-good sentiments.

• Several of the established lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Nashville have jumped at the chance to apply for the new position of lobbyist for the Shelby County Commission — one whose very existence attests to the continued strain between the county administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell and the commission as a whole.

Indeed, suspicion regarding the administration’s motives is one of the few circumstances which can unify the members of an oft-fractionated commission.

A solid commission front emerged recently when, as commissioners saw it, Luttrell unilaterally signed a provisional accord with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Juvenile Court reforms, which members felt could obligate the commission financially.

In any case, the deadline was this week for applicants seeking to become commission lobbyist, and interviews could begin as soon as Wednesday of next week.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Haslam Ready for Compromise on Guns in Parking Lots

CREDIT: JB

Governor Bill Haslam

  • JB
  • Governor Bill Haslam

Press reports from Nashville and East Tennessee indicate that a guns-in-parking-lots bill which caused a major schism in Republican ranks in the 2012 legislative session and never got to the floor may be cocked and ready for passage in 2013.

According to Eric Schelzig of the Associated Press, Governor Bill Haslam said Tuesday that he expects to see a compromise measure passed in the forthcoming session of the General Assembly but one that precludes storing firearms in vehicles on college campuses.

A bill allowing guns to be kept in locked cars in parking lots was vigorously pushed by the National Rifle Association in the 2012 session but encountered stiff opposition from major business interests in the state, including FedEx in Memphis, and was never called up for a vote. State Rep. Debra Maggart (R-Hendersonville), then the GOP caucus chair, was blamed by the bill’s supporters for blocking it in the House, and the NRA played a major financial and organizational role in getting Maggart defeated for reelection in this year’s Republican primary.

According to Schelzig, Haslam indicated his administration would not intervene in any renewed controversy unless college campuses were included in such a bill.

The governor’s remarks came a day after Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey had told educators at a luncheon meeting in Blountville that he expected a guns-in-parking-lots bill to pass in 2013.

Hank Hayes of the Kingsort Times-News quoted Ramsey as saying, “I’ve already got it drafted …The (newspaper) headline will be ‘Guns On Campus,’ but that’s not what we’re talking about,” Something is going to pass this year. I want to put this behind us and forget about it.”

Ramsey spoke to the terms of a likely compromise. “We may exempt out schools, that’s fine, but even then we’re talking about public parking lots. …There’s got to be a way to keep it in a car legally.”

There may still be serious opposition among lawmakers in the Republican majority to a guns-in-parking-lots measure, however. As state Senator-elect Frank Nicely (R-Knoxville), who was regarded as one of the more conservative members of the House during several terms there, said, ““If a property owner tells someone you can’t bring a yo-yo on his property, much less a gun, you can’t bring it on that property.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Political Peace, Not War

This month’s election had bittersweet results for Tennessee’s Democrats. You were happy that President Obama was reelected and happy that the U.S. Senate remained under Democratic control, but in our home state, we were left to deal with a different kettle of fish.

On the plus side, the state Democratic caucus has its choice of phone booths and closets in which to hold meetings. The bad news is that there would be room left over for the brooms and cleaning supplies. Despite national triumphs for Democrats, in Tennessee, the Republicans are ascendant, enjoying a level of legislative and executive authority that would make a monarch blush.

The real good news is that state Democrats, for the first time in a long time, are free to lead. As Janis Joplin famously sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Democrats are free from worries about holding onto majorities and leadership positions and free of worry about what redistricting will look like.

In many ways, we are free of decision-making of any kind. After all, the Democrats don’t even have to show up for the Republicans to conduct the state’s business. But in a world where nothing you do matters, the only thing that matters is what you choose to do, and just because we don’t have power doesn’t mean we don’t still have responsibility. This responsibility is far more than being the loyal opposition. We Democrats must do more than brandish partisan language and perpetuate the politics-as-team-sport analogy that is becoming a serious drag on our democracy.

The truth about our politics is that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, patriotism, or decency. Yes, we live in a new world, where people retreat to their separate corners and use the internet and social media to build their own personal echo chamber, but every new world becomes old at some point.

Through our recent losses, Tennessee Democrats have won an opportunity to begin leading down the road away from the straw-men mythologies that we in both parties have built up around each other. If the 2012 election proved anything, it’s that the mass of people who don’t watch cable news channels and who don’t immediately memorize the talking points of the various parties wants our leaders to work together. Being in a super-minority presents the opportunity to constantly offer compromise.

Now, I realize that the true believers will see this as appeasement talk, that the blogosphere and the media want the never-ending battle to continue, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and that is not the path back to a more balanced legislature.

Democrats still have a valuable voice in the governance of our state, but it will be wholly wasted if we use it to shout at the Republicans. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. Internet hyperbole and cable talking heads do nothing to build a better Tennessee. Democrats are not going to win back seats by pointing out what Republicans do wrong and what we don’t like about them.

Instead, the path back to power is by getting things done, and the only way to get things done is by working with the Republicans. Yes, there will still be those times when we will not see eye to eye, when a confrontation must be had, but just maybe we can lead the way to a time when disagreements over ideas will not mean demonization of those with whom we have disagreed.

Governor Haslam currently enjoys widespread bipartisan support across the state. We should reach out to the governor and any other Republican we can work with to find the areas where we agree — on the budget, on education reform. Republicans on a national level are forced into doing some soul searching; Democrats in this state must do the same.  

No amount of money, no amount of organization, and no amount of internet chatter is going to change the balance if we aren’t working to improve the state. And that requires cooperation, not conflict. It won’t make for good headlines, it won’t fire up a particular base for an individual candidate, but it will leave an opening. The media thrives on conflict. The Republican majority is so big now that the only way it can pick on someone its own size is by fighting itself. Democrats have other things to do than to get in the way of that coming conflict.

Shea Flinn, a Democrat, is a member of the Memphis City Council.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

It’s a State Issue Now!

As of this week, the volcanic local issue involving the school systems of Memphis and Shelby County has spilled over into the corridors of state government. Big time. Not only will the General Assembly begin this week to consider in earnest bills dealing with the issue, but Governor Bill Haslam stepped in on Tuesday morning with a full-dress press conference at the state Capitol to consider the matter.

What Haslam had to say might possibly give aid and comfort to both sides in the controversy. Essentially, the governor acknowledged that the issue was a local one for Memphis and Shelby County and specifically said the forthcoming March 8th citywide referendum on the transfer of authority for Memphis City Schools to Shelby County Schools would go on as scheduled. “Nothing we are doing here will impact that vote,” Haslam said.

But he declared that the state had a “legal responsibility and a moral responsibility” as well as a “common-sense responsibility” to see that any transition preserved the rights of the teachers and the 150,000 students currently enrolled in the two systems.

Haslam said the state education commissioner, Patrick Smith, “has to approve any plan as it relates to teachers” and noted that Smith had dispatched a detailed letter on the subject to both MCS superintendent Kriner Cash and SCS superintendent John Aitken.

In the letter, Smith cites “a legal requirement placed upon the commissioner of education by Tennessee Code Ann. §49-5-203(d) in the context of a change in any governmental structure or organization.” The statute, he says, provides that “[t]he commissioner must make a determination that the rights and privileges afforded to teachers by Section 49-5-203 are not impaired, interrupted, or diminished by organizational changes like the one proposed by the referendum.

Smith writes elsewhere in the letter: “In order to make a favorable determination that no impairment, interruption or diminution has occurred, the department must review a comprehensive plan addressing in detail all of the pertinent aspects related to the transition of teachers.” And the letter sets forth a deadline of February 15th for receipt of “a personnel plan for teachers” and a second deadline of March 1st for receipt of “a comprehensive transition plan developed by both school districts.”

An appendage to the letter lists a lengthy variety of subjects to be addressed in the comprehensive transition plan, including student services, facilities and equipment, charter schools, and debt.

Smith also took part in Wednesday’s press conference and pointedly said the commissioner’s office had “moral authority … to withhold funds in any district anytime there’s noncompliance with a rule or a state stature.”

Haslam said he had been in touch with various parties to the issues involved, including Memphis mayor A C Wharton, Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell, state Senate speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville, state House speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, and “some members of the Shelby County [legislative] delegation.” He said he had talked as recently as Monday night to Wharton and Luttrell and declared he had “great faith and confidence in their leadership.”

In answer to a follow-up question on the March 8th referendum, Haslam repeated his assurances that the vote should go on as scheduled: “I don’t think it’s our place to decide who votes or when the vote happens.” But, in answer to another question about several bills pending in the General Assembly, he said the legislature “has a role,” which it would likely define for itself.

• As the action prepared to shift to the General Assembly, yet another local summit meeting was scheduled for City Hall on Tuesday afternoon, involving legislators, city council members, county commissioners, and other interested parties. It would be missing some of the major players, though. State senator Beverly Marrero, a Midtown Democrat serving as this year’s chair of the Shelby delegation, said that she had experienced difficulty talking local Republican members into attending.

With the legislature firmly in Republican hands for the first time since Reconstruction, GOP members, who chair all the committees in the Senate and House and can totally control the flow of legislation, are spending much of their time in Nashville, where the General Assembly will reconvene on Monday, after a three-week recess following the inauguration of Governor Haslam on January 15th.

“I understand they’re getting their program ready, but I still had hoped that some of them could take time off to attend the meeting. We’ve got to try to reach some understanding,” said Marrero. She was fatalistic, however, about attempting to block Republican-sponsored bills designed to obstruct the forthcoming citywide referendum on MCS charter-surrender or to impede the possible merger of MCS-SCS.

“They’ve got the votes and the power, and all we can do is try to make our case and persuade them to look at the big picture,” Marrero said.

Lieutenant Governor Ramsey created something of a sensation last week when he announced — as his Republican counterpart, House speaker Harwell, had previously — that he intended to fast-track bills by two GOP senators from Shelby County.

One, by Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, would basically call for a delay in a referendum on MCS charter surrender as well as require a dual vote by city and county. Another, by state senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, would in effect mandate a state takeover of Memphis City Schools as “non-performing schools” if MCS should end up surrendering its charter.

Both bills were due for consideration by the Senate education committee on Wednesday, but only Norris’ bill was also on the finance committee calendar for later Wednesday afternoon — an indication that the Norris bill would be moved to quick passage while Kelsey’s legislation might be given only a fair hearing.

What might happen in the event of the passage of legislation contradicting the verdict of Memphis voters on March 8th remained unclear, even in the wake of the Haslam press conference, and will almost certainly be resolved in the course of subsequent litigation.

• “I’ll be long gone.” That was Kriner Cash’s half-serious jest in a conversation Friday night about when the end-point might finally be reached in the ongoing wrangle between MCS and SCS. Cash has no immediate plans to ship out or to give up the commitment to long-term educational reform of the city’s schools. The quip was just his acknowledgment of what everybody suspects: that whatever the results of the referendum on MCS charter surrender, a morass of litigation and cross-purposes lies ahead. Cash was asked whether he envisions a further role with a newly consolidated city/county school system if the referendum should pass, making Shelby County Schools — or Shelby County government or mayhap some newly created county entity — the overseer of the new system.

“There’s no guarantee I would continue on,” he said. And “there’s no guarantee that I would want to continue on.”

• So gripping has the issue of possible consolidation of the two local school systems become that the action that purportedly precipitated the crisis has begun to seem somewhat secondary. That was SCS board chairman David Pickler‘s statement the day after last November’s state elections that the big Republican margins provided in legislative races made it a propitious time to seek special-school-district status for SCS.

But all may not have been what it seemed. MCS board member Martavius Jones, who, along with board colleague Tomeka Hart, began the move toward a December 20th vote by the board to authorize a charter-surrender referendum, acknowledged to the Flyer that on Election Night, he, too, had read the election results as being favorable to an SSD move for the county schools and made plans accordingly.

While viewing televised returns at the headquarters of Rebuild Government, Jones confided that now might be the right time to surrender the MCS charter and force consolidation of the two districts. “But if Pickler had not said what he said, I’m not sure I would have proceeded right away,” Jones said.