Tag: Governor Bill Lee

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Driven By Greed

Illustration: Inspiring | Adobe Stock

As states across the country adopt harsh new sentencing laws, private prison companies are celebrating, telling investors that they soon expect more people in their prisons — and even higher profits.

From Mississippi to California, many states have taken a decidedly “tough on crime” tack over the past two years in a strengthening backlash against criminal justice reform efforts after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. This year, Louisiana passed a package of harsh sentencing laws that will keep some people in prison for years longer. A new parole board in Mississippi is keeping people in prison for longer terms by denying early release. In March, Washington, DC, enacted a sweeping anti-crime package.

These laws, advocates warn, threaten to reverse years of progress in the fight against mass incarceration. Instead, they would again trap people in prison for lengthy terms, ripping apart communities and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequality — while enriching the private firms that manage prisons and their shareholders.

Perhaps no state is more emblematic of the recent sentencing crackdown — and the private interests that stand to benefit — than Tennessee, where one of the world’s largest prison companies is headquartered.

Since 2022, lawmakers in Tennessee have fought to enact a slate of harsh sentencing laws that are expected to increase the state’s spending on incarceration by tens of millions of dollars annually. The key power brokers behind the legislation are also some of the top recipients of private prison company cash, The Lever found.

On May 28th, Gov. Bill Lee signed the latest of these proposals into law, a bill that will end the use of so-called “sentence reduction credits,” which allow people incarcerated in Tennessee to serve shorter sentences as a reward for a clean record in prison. The law, which will only apply to future offenses, is projected by the state to result in a “significant increase” in spending on incarceration.

For the people locked up in Tennessee’s prison system, who are disproportionately poor and Black, this will mean, in some cases, that they will spend years longer in a prison cell. There’s little evidence that longer sentences deter crime.

But the law does have at least one key beneficiary: Tennessee’s private prison contractor, CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the world’s largest prison companies, which will almost certainly see new profits as a direct result of the legislation. The company, which spends millions of dollars a year lobbying both in states and on a federal level, has begun telling its investors that harsh sentencing laws across the country will soon translate to bigger profits from the 70-plus prisons it runs nationwide.

“There has been a fair amount of activity both this year, and really the last two years, within state legislatures on adjustments to sentencing reform,” Damon Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, who has political aspirations in Tennessee, said in an earnings call last month.

Hininger said he expected this development to lead to “pretty significant increases” in prison populations — good news for the prison company, which is often paid by how many inmates are housed in prison at a given time. Already, he said, higher occupancy rates in CoreCivic-managed prisons had led to, in turn, “strong financial results” for investors.

Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an advocacy organization that focuses on the harms of prison industries, called Hininger’s comments “brazen” and proof that the companies “don’t think people are listening.”

“It’s a real travesty that we’re allowing industry to shape what our carceral system looks like,” she said.

Tennessee lawmakers on the Joint Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Adequacy of the Supervision, Investigation, and Release of Criminal Defendants review prison release and sentencing policies at October 6th hearing. (Photo: John Partipilo)

“Increased the Sentences Tremendously”

David Raybin, a criminal defense attorney in Nashville, has been fighting for sentencing reform in Tennessee since the 1970s. He has witnessed decades of ebbs and flows in sentencing policies. Yet the crackdown that Tennessee lawmakers have launched over the last two years is like nothing he’s ever seen before. “Over time, it will have an enormous effect,” he said.

In 2022, the Tennessee legislature passed a “truth in sentencing” bill, a sweeping law that essentially rewrote sentencing practices in the state, requiring people to serve, in some cases, up to 10 years longer for certain felony crimes.

“It just absolutely increased the sentences tremendously,” Raybin said.

The 2022 law was just the beginning of Tennessee’s draconian sentencing crackdown. Last year, lawmakers proposed a “three-strike” bill requiring even harsher sentences for people with prior convictions. The legislation passed a key House committee last year but did not reach the governor’s desk, though it has continued to move forward in the Tennessee Senate this session.

Should the three-strike bill ultimately pass, it will require an entirely new prison to be built in Tennessee to house 1,400 more inmates, costing taxpayers at least $384 million.

In May, ignoring the outcry of criminal justice advocates around the state, Lee signed a bill that will largely end early release from prison, which inmates were able to earn through participation in educational programming and maintaining a clean record in the system.

Now, people in Tennessee’s prisons will only be released early on parole, which in the state is rarely granted. The effect will be to “keep people incarcerated longer,” said Matthew Charles, a Nashville-based policy advisor with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit that advocates for more just sentencing reform.

Lee also signed a new law this spring that will impose adult sentences on teenagers after they have served a juvenile sentence, which criminal justice reform advocates say will have “alarming” repercussions for youth in the state.

It will take several years before the full impact of the laws becomes clear as new cases wend their way through the courts.

“It’s not immediate,” said Dawn Deaner, the executive director of the Nashville organization Choosing Justice Initiative. She estimated that it would take more than five years to start to see the full effect of the new sentencing laws.

“But we’re going to see the prison populations grow,” she said.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, center, with House Majority Leader William Lamberth at left and Republican Caucus Leader Jeremy Faison (Photo: John Partipilo)

“The People That Have the Money”

Tennessee is an important state for CoreCivic, as evidenced by the company’s significant lobbying expenditures in the state. The private prison company is headquartered in Nashville, and it has long been one of the state’s biggest political spenders. Since 2009, the company has spent $3.7 million on lobbying and campaign donations in the state, a Tennessee Lookout analysis found.

In response to a request for comment from The Lever, CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd wrote the company “supports candidates and elected officials who understand the limited but important solutions our company can provide,” and noted that it employs 1,200 people at its prisons in Tennessee.

Although a Tennessee law from the 1980s mandates that the state have only one privately-run prison, CoreCivic has carved out a loophole after years of attempts to rewrite the law entirely. The company now runs four of the state’s fourteen prisons by routing contracts through counties rather than the state. Together, the value of those four contracts exceeds $200 million.

Lobbying records from last year indicate that CoreCivic has a small army of eight lobbyists working on its behalf in Tennessee’s state house. According to state campaign spending data aggregated by FollowTheMoney.org, Tennessee’s current governor has received the most money from the private prison company of any politician in the nation: $65,400 over the last two election cycles, including donations from company executives, making the company one of his largest donors.

This year, Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, who is said to be considering a run for Tennessee governor in 2026, chaired a fundraiser dinner for the state Republican Party and personally gifted each attendee a souvenir glass emblazoned with the state’s Republican Party logo. Hininger himself has donated more than $100,000 to politicians in Tennessee over the years.

Meanwhile, lawmakers who have pushed the slate of harsh sentencing laws in Tennessee have been rewarded.

House Republican Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth of Portland, a former county prosecutor, has spearheaded the sentencing bills in the state, championing the sweeping 2022 law and sponsoring the more recent bill that did away with early release. “He’s been very active in trying to pass harsher sentencing laws,” Deaner of the Choosing Justice Initiative said.

Lamberth is also one of CoreCivic’s biggest beneficiaries in Tennessee, receiving $8,500 from the company. So, too, are other Republican champions of the sentencing bills, including Lt. Gov. Randy McNally of Oak Ridge, who has received $7,500 from CoreCivic, House Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville ($10,000), and Rep. Jerome Moon of Maryville ($3,000).

The money is “absolutely” having an impact on policy, Deaner said.

“Who are the people that have the money in Tennessee?” she said. “Particularly in rural places, there are not a lot of wealthy donors.” In the absence of other campaign funding sources, this state of affairs has allowed CoreCivic to wield an especially significant influence with state lawmakers, she said.

”Driven By Greed”

CoreCivic regularly claims it does not lobby on sentencing-related bills — in Tennessee or elsewhere — and did so again in response to questions from The Lever. “CoreCivic does not lobby or take positions on any policies, regulations or legislation that impact the basis for or duration of an individual’s incarceration,” Todd, the company spokesperson, wrote.

But it’s clear from executives’ statements to investors that they are, at the very least, monitoring these laws closely.

“Going forward, the next three years to five years, a lot of states are looking at pretty significant increases [to prison populations] because, again, of changes, maybe, in sentencing reform,” Hininger said in the May call.

For the first time in a decade, prison populations across the country are rising after a dramatic drop in 2020 during the pandemic, when court backlogs and early releases due to Covid-19 lowered the number of people in prisons. The majority of states have reported an increase in the number of people incarcerated in their prisons over the last two years, according to a study published by the U.S. Department of Justice last November. According to the report, there were currently more than 1.2 million people behind bars — raising the country’s already sky-high incarceration rate.

A significant part of this incarceration surge is the return of normal court systems as judges worked through case backlogs that had persisted through the pandemic. But tough sentencing laws, criminal justice reforms say, also appear to be playing a role.

Prison executives agree. “In conclusion,” Hininger said in May, “the macro environment in which we operate continues to improve.”

The agency found Tennessee is seeing one of the country’s sharpest increases in its prison population — a reported 8 percent surge between 2021 and 2022. Colorado, Montana, and Mississippi all reported incarceration rates growing at 8 percent or above, and another 42 states reported some growth in their prison populations.

Many of CoreCivic’s prison contracts, including in Tennessee, are paid on a “per inmate, per day” basis, meaning that these fluctuations in prison populations directly impact the company’s bottom line. Many of the company’s facilities, its financial statements show, are not at full occupancy levels — and laws that could change this would put money directly into the pockets of prison companies.

CoreCivic’s “unholy alliance,” in the words of one state Democratic lawmaker, with the state of Tennessee illustrates just how greatly private interests are profiting from rollbacks to criminal justice reforms — whether that’s prison companies raking in cash from harsh sentencing laws or the bail industry’s success in Georgia, which reimposed cash bail requirements after experimenting with bail reform, a move that will benefit bail bond agents and insurers.

“This moment is revealing exactly what we’ve known about the carceral system,” Tylek of Worth Rises said. “The expansive use of incarceration as a solution to social failures is driven by greed.” 

This article was originally published by The Lever, an investigative newsroom.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Poll: Tennesseans  Support  Gun Laws, Abortion, LGBTQ Rights

Photo by Brandon Hooper / Unsplash

In the wake of  local gun incidents that have prompted potential emergency action from the Memphis city council, a Vanderbilt University survey demonstrates a favorable attitude statewide for new firearms legislation.

The semiannual Vanderbilt Poll, released on Wednesday, finds “significant bipartisan support” for government action on gun control. The poll also indicates support for “basic protections for abortion” and for provision of health care options for the LGBTQ community.

Though Governor Bill Lee has said he intends to call a special session of the General Assembly to consider new gun laws, the legislature adjourned its 2023 session last week without considering such legislation. Meanwhile, the Memphis city council may test the resolve of the Assembly’s Republican supermajority against new laws by passing its own gun ordinances. 

The council’s action, signaled by Councilman Jeff Warren, is in response to the shooting of two people on Beale Street over the weekend, followed by a disturbed young gunman’s firing a round on Tuesday into the studio space of Fox-13  television.

The council will apparently consider action for a red-flag law, for banning assault weapons locally, and to require gun-carry permits. If it does so, it will challenge state government’s increasing emphasis on curtailing local options.

However the state might respond officially, its citizens would find such action agreeable, according to the Vanderbilt Poll.

The survey, conducted April 19-23 among 1,003 registered Tennessee voters, shows that 82 percent of those polled support Gov. Lee’s  recent executive order on gun background checks, and that three-quarters of them desire “red flag” laws to that end.

Support for the governor’s executive order, issued in response to the recent Covenant School shootings in Nashville, which killed six people, was 81 percent among self-described non-MAGA Republicans, 91 percent among Democrats, and 78 percent among independents.

The survey indicates that gun control ranked as the third-most important issue on the minds of Tennesseans, just two percentage points behind education and three points behind the economy. 

On abortion, 82 percent of those surveyed supported the right of abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threats to the life of the mother.

Further, says a summary of poll results, “At a rate of 3 to 1, Tennesseans oppose the idea that a person should be charged with a crime if they help a Tennessee citizen get an abortion in another state. Opposition to this idea is again bipartisan, with 93 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Independents, 62 percent of non-MAGA Republicans and 53 percent of MAGA Republicans.”

And, though the survey indicates sentiment to control sexually suggestive entertainments in public, apparently including drag shows, “most voters oppose legislation that would restrict transgender individuals’ access to health care.” Such restrictions were opposed by 66 percent of those surveyed.

“It’s hopeful that while 58 percent of respondents view Tennesseans as divided, there is a fairly strong agreement on basic next steps in our most politically divisive issues,” said John Geer, co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll and Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science and professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “At the same time, 74 percent of registered voters say they’d prefer their elected leaders compromise across the aisle rather than strictly pursue their own values and priorities.”

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News News Blog

Gun Lobby Calls Lee’s Gun Proposal a “Knee-Jerk, Emotional Response”

PHOTO BY TOM DEF / UNSPLASH

The Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA) is trashing Gov. Bill Lee’s push for what it calls a “red flag law,” saying he wants to pass an unconstitutional measure as an emotional reaction to the Covenant School shooting.

“Governor Lee called for the Legislature to react to the emotional response of some citizens after the Covenant murders and more particularly after the expulsion of two Democrat House members who demanded gun control,” TFA Executive Director John Harris said in a Wednesday statement. “Nothing in Bruen authorized knee-jerk emotional responses to murders or the calls of progressive Democrats and their mobs to justify government infringement of a right protected by the Constitution.”

The association contends Lee’s plan would violate the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Justices found that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to “keep” firearms in their homes and to “bear arms” in public, including the ability of “ordinary, law-abiding citizens” to carry firearms “for self-defense outside the home,” without infringement from state and federal governments.

I’ve talked to Republican members that say that the Tennessee Firearms Association is irrelevant.

– Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Nashville

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, based in part on the court’s decision in Bruen, reached an agreement with a California gun rights group that sued the state over its permit-less carry law and agreed to drop the gun-carry age to 18. Two bills to lower the age to 18 are hung up in committees, but the state Legislature remains a gun-friendly body overall.

Thus, Lee is avoiding the term “red flag law” while trying to garner the Legislature’s support for a new protective order that would prohibit access to weapons for people deemed to be a danger to themselves and others. He made the proposal two weeks after six people, including three 9-year-olds, died in a hail of bullets at The Covenant School in Green Hills.

The proposal, which the governor wants done this session, is meeting with mixed reaction from lawmakers and faces an uphill battle with only a couple of weeks left in the legislative session.

He also signed an executive order Tuesday to improve the background check system in Tennessee for firearms purchases.

Democratic state Rep. Bob Freeman, whose district contains The Covenant School, said Wednesday he hopes the governor’s plan can survive a fight from the gun lobby.

“I’ve talked to Republican members that say that the Tennessee Firearms Association is irrelevant,” Freeman said.

Yet the Republican House will be torn between following the governor’s lead and sticking up for their voters, many of whom base ballot decisions on support on the absolute right to bear arms. The gun lobby doesn’t spend heavily on legislative races, but pro-gun voters are a critical ingredient in Republican elections.

“People back home don’t like it. They don’t want their gun rights taken away from ’em, so we’re going to have to vet that very, very closely and I don’t know to what degree his executive order will play out on legislation when we go to pass something, because my people back home do not like it,” Rep. Dale Carr, a Sevierville Republican, said Tuesday.

Rank-and-file Republicans are dead set against a “red flag law” too, Carr said. Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, said, “Depriving someone of a constitutional right is a serious matter and any proposal to create an emergency mental health order of protection must be carefully considered, narrowly tailored and require rigorous due process.”

In his statement, Harris points out many Republican lawmakers campaigned as “strong Second Amendment supporters” and told constituents they would never back a “red flag law,” even signing pledges against voting for such laws.

“Now Republican Governor Lee calls on them to violate those promises and assurances and to pass a ‘Red Flag’ law,” Harris wrote.

Harris calls “red flag” laws “a scheme” that allows almost anyone to claim that a person at risk of harming themselves or others shouldn’t be able to possess a gun. He points out courts can direct law enforcement to seize a person’s weapons and to notify authorities that  the person is banned from having guns — all without due process.

Republican leaders said Tuesday any type of protective order to prevent an unstable person from possessing weapons would have to include provisions guaranteeing due process. 

But while some Republican leaders said they would be willing to work with the governor, Johnson, who usually carries the governor’s legislation, said changes to state law shouldn’t be made hastily in an emotional time.

“Depriving someone of a constitutional right is a serious matter and any proposal to create an emergency mental health order of protection must be carefully considered, narrowly tailored and require rigorous due process,” he said. He noted no bill has been drafted and he could not endorse or oppose a bill he hasn’t seen.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Politics Politics Feature

Down to the Wire

Tuning it Up: GOP state Senate candidate Brent Taylor at campaign kickoff last week with country singer John Rich (Photo: Jackson Baker)

As the August 4th countywide election cycle winds down, the marquee race is still, as before, that for district attorney general between Republican incumbent Amy Weirich and Democratic challenger Steve Mulroy. The race remains the focus of attention in local politics. It has also engendered significant statewide and national attention.

A quiet moment in a turbulent campaign (Photo: Jackson Baker)

The Tennessee Journal, a weekly which is the preeminent statewide source for political news across Tennessee, featured the race in its lead story for the July 15th issue. Editor Erik Schelzig recaps some of the significant charges and other back-and-forths of the contest, highlighting the two candidates’ major differences regarding the state’s new “truth-in-sentencing” law, which eliminates parole in several major violent-crime categories.

Weirich, who boasts her years-long efforts on behalf of passing the law, points with pride. Mulroy sees it as a case of vastly increasing state incarceration expenses while blunting possible rehabilitation efforts.

In the several recent debates between the two candidates, the challenger notes that his skepticism puts him on the same page regarding “truth-in-sentencing” as opponents like the American Conservative Union and GOP Governor Bill Lee, who declined to sign the bill, letting it become law without his signature. Weirich seizes upon Mulroy’s mentions of that fact as an opportunity to advertise her purported independent-mindedness, noting that she also disagrees with Lee (and the Republican supermajority) on such issues as open-carry gun legislation. “I don’t care what the American Conservative Union says,” she adds.

All that being said (and it’s consistent with her would-be crossover slogan, “Our DA”), the race as a whole is between Weirich’s right-of-center hard line and Mulroy’s highly reform-conscious point of view. Mulroy wants cash-bail reform and systematic post-conviction reviews, the latter including DNA testing. Weirich is open to modifications in those areas but not to major changes.

The two have battled over the matter of alleged racial disparity issues in the DA’s office, with Mulroy charging, among other things, that Weirich has an 85-percent white staff of attorneys prosecuting a defendant population that is 95 percent Black. Weirich says she’s trying to alter the ratio but cites the difficulty of competing with better-paying private law firms in efforts to acquire African-American legal talent.

Both contenders have seemingly forsworn the Marquis of Queensberry rules regarding the etiquette of competition. With no real evidence to base her claim on, Weirich’s ads consistently try to saddle Mulroy with the onus of being a “Defund the Police” enthusiast. He answers that he would like to see more police hired, and at higher salaries, and given “better training.” His ads portray Weirich as being a Trumpian (a stretch) and the “worst” district attorney in Tennessee, one saddled with several citations for misconduct from state overseeing bodies and with an ever-rising violent-crime rate during her 11-year tenure that is the worst in the nation.

The two candidates took turns in verbally pummeling each other in a series of almost daily formal debates the week before last. The venues were the Rotary Club of Memphis, the Memphis Kiwanis Club, and an Orange Mound citizens’ association. Neither gave any quarter, each attacking the other along lines indicated above.

Much of the aforementioned Tennessee Journal article is dedicated to the two candidates’ fundraising and campaign spending. In the second quarterly disclosure of the year (April through June), Weirich reported raising $130,400 and spending $240,400 — much of it on the Memphis consulting firm of Sutton Reid, where her blistering TV and radio ads are prepared. She began the quarter with nearly half a million dollars on hand and ended it with $361,00 remaining.

Mulroy raised $279,000 in the period, a sum which included a loan from him to his own campaign of $15,000. He spent $194,000 and had a remainder on hand of $159,000.

As noted by the Journal, Weirich has gotten almost all her funding from within Tennessee, all but $1,600. Mulroy, who has the avowed support of such celebrities as singer John Legend and author John Grisham, is also boosted by several national groups with a professed interest in criminal-justice reform. Some 35 percent of his funding has come from out of state.

One key venue for Mulroy is New York, where he has traveled twice recently, attending public occasions in tandem with such supporters as criminologist Barry Scheck, mega-lawyer Ben Crump, and entertainer Charlamagne Tha God. Mulroy’s travels and his funding sources are reportedly the target of a new Weirich TV spot which begins this week. It should be noted that the vast majority of Mulroy’s trips out of town during the campaign — all unpublicized until now — have been to Pensacola, where he drives down regularly to look in on his elderly mother.

With early voting about to expire and a week to go before the judgment day of August 4th, polling information is being held close to the vest by both principals, though Mulroy publicized an early one showing him with a 12-point lead.

A fact that looms large to all observers and to both participants and their parties: The position of district attorney general, is, as of now, the only major countywide position held by a Republican. Early voting statistics gave evidence of serious turnout efforts by both parties.

• There are other key races, to be sure. The race for county mayor, between Democratic incumbent Lee Harris and Republican challenger Worth Morgan has been something of a back-burner affair, with neither candidate turning on the jets full-blast in the manner of the DA race. Harris basically is resting on what he sees as a high productive record, and Morgan, though he challenges that, saying the county “deserves better,” has not featured many specifics beyond Morgan’s ill-based claim that Harris has — wait for it — defunded the police (strictly speaking, the Sheriff’s Department).

A recent TV ad shows Morgan in interview mode, chatting about his life and outlook and looking and sounding likable. Given Harris’ edge in incumbency and party base, that is probably not enough for now, but it does bolster Morgan’s name and image for later on.

In the race for Juvenile Court judge, Dan Michael’s incumbency works for him, while his opponent, city Judge Tarik Sugarmon, has a well-known local name and an active Democratic party base working on his behalf. Michael is heavily backed by the GOP in what is technically a nonpartisan race.

Few surprises are expected elsewhere on the ballot, though Democratic County Clerk Wanda Halbert, who has fumbled the issuance of new automobile plates, may get a scare (or worse) from Republican opponent Jeff Jacobs.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Money for Nothing

Bill Lee (Photo: tn.gov)

I had Mrs. Bailey for two years in high school: freshman English (Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, etc.) and honors English in my senior year, where she introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller, Flannery O’Connor, and other more contemporary writers. She had a tiny sneeze that she would stifle with a small hankie and that would invariably cause the class to giggle. She was well-known for these tiny sneezes and her love of bad puns.

But I remember Mrs. Bailey for another reason: She saw me for who I was — an awkward kid with a speech impediment and a good brain — and for who I could become. Mrs. Bailey probably decided that I wasn’t going to make my way in this world by being a smooth talker, so she encouraged me to write. She praised, criticized, and edited my essays. She took me aside and encouraged me to read real writers, not just the required classroom stuff. She helped forge my life’s path, and I didn’t even figure out what she’d done until years later.

I think, if we were lucky, most of us have a Mrs. Bailey in our past — a teacher who took the time to connect, who saw our potential or our pain, who saw a way forward for us or a way out. And it’s still happening, every day, all over the world: Teachers make a difference; teachers shape lives; teachers are among the most important people in our society.

Which is why every human being in Tennessee should be absolutely outraged at Governor Bill Lee, who is relentlessly fostering the destruction of our public schools via a voucher system in which parents play the middleman between our state treasury and private schools to the tune of $7,000 per family. It’s flat-out wrong, and it’s using money that rightfully should be going to public schools. If people want to send their children to private schools, let them have at it, just don’t ask the taxpayers to cover the note.

But that’s not the only reason to be outraged at Lee. He’s been pushing to bring the Michigan-based Hillsdale Academy into the state, openly stating that he wants to let them establish 100 schools with our money. Hillsdale Academy is a Christian-based private school that promotes conservative values in its “1776 Curriculum,” which appears to mean the Civil War was just a misunderstanding and slaves were just inconvenienced and everything is fine now — among other interesting theories.

At a private event in late June, Governor Lee sat on stage with Hillsdale Academy president Larry Arnn and listened, smiling, as Arnn said the following: “Teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country. … We are going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.” This ramble went on for nearly two hours, with Arnn repeatedly disparaging teachers and public school systems. (Hillsdale practices what Arnn preaches. None of its eight education faculty members are certified to teach in public schools.)

So what did Bill Lee say or do as Arnn attacked and discredited all teachers, including, presumably, the thousands of public school teachers in Tennessee? Zip. Nada. He sat there and grinned like a chimp, or a chump. Your call.

Unfortunately for ol’ Bill, Nashville’s Channel 5 got a copy of the tape and all hell broke loose. All around this deep-red state, school boards, administrators, and teachers erupted in protest, demanding the governor repudiate Arnn’s remarks. Lee had his spokesperson send a boilerplate statement that mentioned nothing about Arnn’s comments. He then slipped off for a bit to Florida to hang with Ron DeSantis, who’s pushing for Hillsdale to take over public schools there. When he got back, he dodged reporters, evaded teachers’ groups, and made no public appearances for a week — a real profile in courage, this guy.

The only good that may have come out of all this is that Hillsdale is now very unlikely to get any state dollars, according to several Republican state legislators. Turns out that lots of communities around Tennessee are quite happy with their public schools and rather fond of their teachers. Mrs. Bailey would find that gratifying, I suspect. She didn’t suffer fools.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Gov. Bill Lee’s Shaggy Dog Story

Bill Lee (Photo: tn.gov)

At the beginning of 2019, as a newly elected governor, Nashville Republican Bill Lee, an industrialist of sorts, prepared to inaugurate his first four-year term, it became my task — both self-assumed and officially assigned — to write as authoritative a take as I could possibly make on what this ascendant Tennessee executive-in-chief had in mind to do.

As the Flyer’s chief politics writer, my job at the onset of a new state administration would be to chronicle the opening of a new session of state government, focusing significantly on the early actions and intentions of the General Assembly. The problem was that the issue allocated (or, as we say, budgeted) for just after New Year would be on the streets before the first gavel was destined to fall on the opening of the 2019 General Assembly.

The solution was to shift gears and write instead about the mind of the Governor-elect, and, if we could get to him beforehand, to dilate upon his plans and his intentions as against the actions of the General Assembly. The calendar permitted me to take in his formal inauguration (and with it access to the rhetoric of his acceptance address and the theater of the state ceremony).

To accomplish my end, however, I needed to flesh things out with the kind of detailed explanations from him on his plans that would be unlikely to turn up in a formal acceptance address. Accordingly, I made overtures through what was then but a thin group of gubernatorial retainers and got his assent to take part in a remotely conducted interview on the eve of his installment. The result was done partly via phone calls and partly through his answers to a questionnaire I sent to him. I had covered his election campaign fairly extensively as well and had that to go on, along with one of those superficial and polite relationships writers have (ideally) with their sources.

The piece, a Flyer cover story, begun on Memphis turf and completed in Nashville during inauguration week, turned out more or less successfully.

Dated January 31, 2019, it was entitled “Fresh Start in Nashville” and focused mainly on Lee’s expressed support for criminal justice reform, one of the few planks in his inaugural platform that could be called remotely “progressive.” (His views on that issue were actually praised by Tennessee ACLU head Hedy Weinberg!)

Most of his positions on other issues — education, public safety, government spending, what have you — were antiseptic Republican generalities. All in all, the profile probably suggested the same thing that Lee’s campaign had: Here was a man who had a pleasant exterior and was something of an enigma, enough of one to allow such benefit of the doubt as one might have toward a political figure.

Curiously, in the collection of bromides and generalities that constituted his answers to my questionnaire, there was one glaring omission. I had asked what he might do regarding the dormant industrial megasite that for more than a decade had been out there in Haywood County, a stone’s throw from both the needy cities of Memphis and Jackson, a bane to his several gubernatorial predecessors’ efforts to find a big-time industrial proprietor to make it more than a jumbo-sized vacant lot.

Lee shied away from answering that part of the questionnaire, saying he’d have to think about it. And think about it he presumably did for the next couple of years, even as the more straightforward positions he claimed for other issues dissolved into his version of a bully pulpit, one in which the adjective “bully” predominated. Attacks upon “socialism”; idealization of guns and school vouchers; restrictions on LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and other non-insiders; clampdowns on efforts to minimize the spread of Covid-19 — all this was his legacy.

Until, lo and behold, it is Lee, after the failures of all his immediate gubernatorial predecessors, who has actually succeeded in getting somebody big-time — the Ford Motor Company, for crying out loud — to commit to a $5.6 billion factory at the megasite, to make electric-powered vehicles (read: environmentally friendly ones) and to open up economic prospects for the beleaguered backwaters of West Tennessee.

A nice pre-election move, that, and maybe enough to justify a new look at Lee’s developing legacy.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Selfish School of Thought

Photo: Mira Agron | Dreamstime.com

Careful readers of this paper may notice that we have changed our style guide on “Covid-19.” For more than a year, the Flyer style was to capitalize each letter of the word. More and more, it began to feel as though the paper were shouting at the reader, not unlike the sporadic capitalization in the deranged tweets of the former president. So, following the example of a multitude of other legitimate publications, we’re choosing to style the word as “Covid.”

That we have been writing about this disease for long enough and often enough to necessitate not one, but two entries into the style guide is, for me at least, a source of dismay. I’m sure most of us have had some version of this moment — the seemingly innocuous event that reminds you how long we’ve been dealing with this problem. If our governor has his way, it may be never ending.

On Monday, August 16th, Governor Bill Lee issued an executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of mask mandates imposed by local school districts, such as that of Shelby County Schools. SCS Superintendent Joris Ray immediately announced that he was meeting with SCS board members and their counsel to “review the legalities of Governor Lee’s Executive Order 84.” I imagine the same situation is happening in Davidson County and that the state will be hit with a slew of lawsuits. Again.

What worries me is that we continue to allow a fanatical minority to dictate the terms of acceptable behavior. According to a recent Axios-Ipsos poll on mandatory masking in schools, 69 percent of people polled were for the measure. What’s more, 44 percent of Republicans agreed. Let that be a reminder that all this back-and-forth, all this strife and tension, the backsliding after hard-fought gains against the depredations of the disease, is due to the whims of a very small segment of the population.

To me, it seems Lee has sidestepped the (expensive) issue of calling a special legislative session while still delivering up an executive action that will play well on Fox News. “Parents know best” and “the government can’t make my health decisions for me” are old standards, and I’m sure his supporters will eat that up. Getting out of this mess will take work and sacrifice, but that’s a hard sell to voters, and anyway, success isn’t guaranteed. But there’s a vocal segment of the population who will remember this as a stand against tyranny. And those people vote.

“No one cares more,” tweeted Lee, “than a parent.” The problem is that not every parent is a virologist or nurse or medical doctor. Parents may care the most, but caring does not necessarily equal expertise. I have no doubt that my mother loves me, but I also remember that a frequent pastime was taking my sister and me to the library, then retiring to the smoking section of Perkins or CK’s, where she would drink coffee, smoke, and draw while my sister and I read. Sure, we turned out okay (Look, Ma, no asthma!), but I think any random selection of pediatricians would deliver the verdict that the smoking section of a diner does not make the best playground.

So we’re stuck, all of us, bending to the whims of a few because they’re reliable voters who don’t ask for any meaningful change. A viable political candidate, for these voters, is not one who brings jobs to the state or works to improve healthcare access. No, they simply have to tout a gold-star NRA rating, a willingness to waste state funds defending the newest futile and cruel version of a “bathroom bill,” and say something generic about freedom.

But it’s a plywood freedom, a facade, a papier-mâché cutout of some red-white-and-blue fairytale. It’s a freedom without obligation or responsibility, and such a thing is a myth. Anyone selling that version of life is a snake-oil salesman right out of The Music Man.

So, as The New York Times this week reports that the Biden administration is set to recommend booster shots of the Covid vaccine for eligible adults, we see the damage that can be done by those who demand access to society’s benefits without participating in its responsibilities.

I hope those of us who feel that way will abandon this selfish school of thought, step up, and do their part. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, stop hurling insults at healthcare workers under the guise of protest.

In the meantime, I hope we don’t have to update our style guide entry on Covid again.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Executive Malfunction

Photo: Seventyfourimages | Dreamstime.com

On Wednesday, August 12th, 73 House Republicans sent a letter to Governor Bill Lee asking him to call a special legislative session to consider legislation about counties requiring that our children wear masks in schools. Though Lee refrained from calling a special session, he did issue an executive order on Monday, August 16th, allowing parents to opt their children out of mask-wearing, regardless of their school district’s rules. 

Around 2010, Republicans passed and touted virtual schools in Tennessee. When the pandemic hit and people wanted virtual, they said it was bad and children needed to be in the classroom. When children returned to the classroom and masks were required to keep them and teachers safe, Republicans wanted to take the masks away. 

Now, they’ve come up with another new plan for our children. But this one puts our babies, teachers, and families at even more risk. 

This is interesting because I thought Republicans campaigned on smaller government and local control. However, it appears that Democrats in the Tennessee legislature are the real advocates for smaller government and local control. Republicans on the campaign trail talk about local control, but in reality they’re for state control when it comes to something that runs counter to the national Republican agenda and, in many cases, the defunct Trump playbook.

This happened when Memphis removed the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in what is now Health Sciences Park. It happened earlier this year in the discussions about teaching our young people about race relations in a comprehensive manner. It’s happening again, except this time, they are affecting the safety of our children, our teachers, and our citizens. 

The statistics are sobering. According to a case count compiled by The New York Times, the daily average of Covid-19 cases in Tennessee more than doubled (+126 percent) in 14 days. The same for the numbers of Tennesseans hospitalized (+109 percent). According to the Tennessee Department of Health, cases among children under 10 rose sharply in the beginning of August, once again more than doubling. So far, the state has counted more than 52,000 cases in patients 10 years old and younger, and six deaths. To some lawmakers, who are making their arguments based on percentages, six deaths may be acceptable to them. To me, six deaths is too many — and those six deaths could possibly have been prevented.

Now, in spite of those alarming numbers and the fact that only six Tennessee counties have implemented some form of a mask mandate, Republican legislators wanted to bring lawmakers back to Nashville in order to issue vouchers as a punishment/alternative for those parents who don’t want their children to have to wear a required mask (only indoors) while in school. This idea would have allowed them public money to take their children to a private school where masks are not required, the school voucher financial plan being a goal Tennessee Republicans have pursued with vigor. Though Lee’s executive order effectively removes vouchers as an option for this school year, by making masks optional by a state-level executive order, the governor has again cribbed notes from the GOP playbook of undermining local government. This time, the issue is not one of a public park or school curriculum, but of the health and safety of our children. 

This is way too much for the citizens of our state. The continued adversarial relationship between the state and Shelby and Davidson counties (the state’s largest contributors of tax dollars and resources) is nonproductive and stressful to all citizens.

How do you say decisions on community health should be made locally and in the very same breath and sentence remove local control in regards to children wearing masks at school? Many children in Shelby County and across the state live in multigenerational households. More and more children are requiring hospitalization when contracting Covid and can easily transmit the virus to parents and other family members whom they may come in contact with. These conditions may prove debilitating or fatal for a child or their family members. I disagree with the executive order. It is irresponsible. The goal is to stop the spread of the virus in Tennessee. This executive order in no way will curb the spread of the virus. As a matter of fact, it may accelerate the spread of Covid in our state.

Furthermore, trying to live and keep one’s family alive and healthy through this pandemic is stressful enough in and of itself. I pray that those of us who are in state leadership will take a few breaths and give local government and leadership an opportunity to govern without the threats coming from “little big brother.” Remember, we are talking about real and actual lives and livelihoods.

Antonio Parkinson is a Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives representing District 98.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

‘Just a Park’

Millar, Turner, and Taylor at Health Sciences Park (Photo: Jackson Baker)

In the wake of a previous circumstance of tenseness and hostility at Health Sciences Park involving the disinterment of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, a press conference at the park on Friday, June 11th, was at least partly designed to clear the air, and to a large extent it may have.

The three principal speakers at last Friday’s press conference were County Commissioner and NAACP leader Van Turner of Greenspace, the nonprofit which now controls the large tract formerly known as Forrest Park; Lee Millar, president of the Memphis branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; and Brent Taylor, a longtime public official and the local funeral director who satisfied the state requirement for a technical advisor regarding the disinterment of the Forrests, destined now for a new gravesite at a Middle Tennessee site honoring Confederate history.

As Turner expressed it, “Hopefully, all sides were satisfied” — meaning the Black Memphians for whom the removal of the graves and monument meant a “full circle” expungement of former injustice and disregard as well as those whites who equated Confederate General Forrest with glory and their heritage. “I think the Forrest family wanted their ancestor to lie in peace, and there was never going to be any peace here,” Turner said.

Millar attested to the friendly cooperation and a general meeting-of-the-minds between himself and Turner, and Taylor, who saw himself as situated “in the middle” between communities, agreed that “all sides are happy with where we are. Both communities believe that we did this right.”

Asked what the future disposition of the park might be, Turner said he’d received “many recommendations,” but “Right now, we just want this to be a park, not to have any more symbolism here for a little while. We’d like people to just enjoy the park”

• Ellen Hobbs Lyle, the Nashville chancellor who ruled in favor of expanding mail-in voting last year at the height of the pandemic and subsequently incurred the wrath of the state Republican establishment, said last week that she wouldn’t seek another eight-year term in 2022. The suit that she ruled on was pressed by the ACLU and by a group of Memphis petitioners, and Lyle’s ruling was stoutly resisted by the state’s election authorities, who managed to get its scope reduced somewhat in an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Subsequently, measures to punish Lyle were pushed by GOP legislators in the general assembly but were rejected.

• Governor Bill Lee announced last week that his administration would go ahead with a 37-mile wastewater pipeline connecting the still dormant Haywood County industrial megasite to the Mississippi River. Construction of the $52 million project could begin in the first quarter of 2022.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Tennessee-Style

Photo: Jesse Davis’ family photo album

This is my fourth column in the editor’s chair. At least, it is if my math is right. Somehow it’s been a month. I’ve already received a few letters about my editor’s letters, and I thank those readers for caring enough to reach out. I’d also like to apologize to Mark, who wrote in recently to say he appreciated the relatively politics-free columns so far. Sorry, Mark, but I’ve got to follow my conscience on this one.

Last week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed legislation enacting permitless gun carry for Tennessee. The law will go into effect on July 1st and will allow anyone 21 years old or older to carry a handgun without passing some sort of permit course. The age is 18 for active-duty military personnel. What’s telling is that he signed the bill at a Beretta factory in Gallatin, Tennessee.

Not, you know, a police station, or some venue I can’t think of at the moment that symbolizes freedom. It’s no surprise that Lee didn’t choose a police station as the setting for the photo op, since there’s been little support from law enforcement for the bill. Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner spoke out against it, as did (then) Memphis Police Director Mike Rallings. So who was this legislation crafted to serve? If you wrote in “gun manufacturers and the NRA,” then, reader, our score cards are a perfect match.

I can almost imagine our governor turning around in his chair to look a Beretta spokesperson in the eye and whisper earnestly, “Did I do good, boss?”

Because this kind of pageantry makes it pretty clear who Lee’s hoping to appease, and it’s not us poor schlubs who will be wondering if Bubba in the self-checkout line has an itchy trigger finger to go along with that hip holster. The most recent Vanderbilt University Poll shows that 59 percent of Tennesseans do not support this bill, and, as I’ve already pointed out, most law enforcement officials are against it as well.

Jesse’s Granny, Coleen Davis, photographed with dog and rifle
(Photo: Jesse Davis’ family photo album)

Before we go much further, I want to note that I was raised around guns. My grandparents lived out in the hills of Chester County, and we visited them often. Shooting was a regular pastime for most of my family. I remember walking in the woods with my granddaddy, who would occasionally ask me if the safety was on. I was supposed to know without checking, to always keep the barrel pointed toward the ground. To be mindful. I remember my grandparents’ neighbor Mr. Ray camping out one night to ambush and shoot the foxes who had been stealing his chickens. Whether you’re using them to protect yourself and your family or your egg-laying chickens, guns are tools, built to serve a purpose. But you’re supposed to know how to use a tool before you walk into a Cash Saver with one strapped to your hip.

If our governor really cared about safety, he would put on his good ol’ farmer cosplay plaid button-down shirt, cheese at the camera, and explain why law-abiding citizens shouldn’t worry about having to take a permit class. It’s short, easy, and not very expensive. He’d remind us all that we have a responsibility to each other, that enjoying the freedom to carry a gun means taking on the duty of using it safely.

That would be the direction to go if this bill were actually about public safety, but in reality it seems to be about little more than enriching corporate donors. If I had any doubts about that before, the photo op signing at Beretta has done nothing to dispel them.

This isn’t really a column about guns or gun rights. No, this is about responsibility — and my perhaps idealistic belief that our elected officials have a responsibility to the average citizens pushing the button at the voting kiosk, a responsibility that outweighs whatever they owe the folks funding their re-election campaigns.

I’d like to think I’d be equally frustrated if the law in question concerned relaxing vehicle emissions restrictions and Gov. Lee had signed it at the Nissan assembly plant in Smyrna. I don’t harbor a blanket fear or loathing for cars or guns. But I recognize that they’re powerful.

And power in the wrong hands can be dangerous.