Tag: Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Despite Competing Partisan Claims, the 2015 Legislative Session Was Neither a Grand Success nor a Total Flop

CREDIT: JB

JB

GOP Leaders: (l to r) House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, House speaker Beth Harwell, Governor Bill Haslam, Senator Speaker/Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris

NASHVILLE — Two sets of post-mortems on the 2015 session of the Tennessee General Assembly were held Thursday morning in the state capital — one by Governor Bill Haslam and the Republican leadership, another by the leadership of the Democratic legislative minority.

Haslam, flanked by House and Senate Speakers Beth Harwell and Ron Ramsey and by House and Senate majority leaders Gerald McCormick and Mark Norris, all sitting at a table in the old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, opened up this way:

“The primary constitutional obligation of the General Assembly and the Governor is to present a budget that balances. This actually was an extraordinary year; not only did we do that, but if you think about it, the hardest time to govern is when you actually have extra money.” An A grade, all things considered.

Half an hour later, over in the Conference Room 31 of Legislative Plaza, it was the turn of House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh, standing primus inter pares among some 18 of his party members from both chambers (the total number of Democrats in both is 30, out of a total of 132).

Said Fitzhugh, by way of starting up: “We legislated quickly, and we passed a budget. That’s about it.” Inasmuch as the veteran Leader from Ripley was among the many in both parties and both chambers who had felt rushed by the session’s hyped-up pace and among the few who could not bring themselves to vote for the budget, that was a failing grade.

In fact, both Haslam and Fitzhugh were exaggerating.

The Governor actually made the claim that “all of what you would call Governor’s bills were passed,” when his most important initiative of all, his Insure Tennessee Medicaid-expansion plan, was blocked in both the special session that began the legislative year and in the regular session.

JB

Democratic Leaders: with House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh at podium; Others include House Caucus Leader Mike Stewart and Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris.

And, while Fitzhugh made a point of naming the failures of Insure Tennessee and of a late tax-relief bill to benefit veterans as reasons for his displeasure, it was also true that several measures opposed by Democrats were blocked as well, and by a bipartisan coalition. Among those were a bill to allow de-annexation of rebellious communities from cities and, for the third or fourth year in a row, a bill allowing for a modest school-voucher start-up.

True, a GOP-backed bill to strike down local options on banning guns in parks passed both chambers, but Haslam has made clear his disagreement with the bill and said on Wednesday that he would decide within a week — maybe as soon as Friday — whether to veto it.

UPDATE: To the surprise of most (and the acute dismay of many) the Governor signed the latest guns-in-parks bill on Friday, abolishing thereby the freedom-of-action of cities and other local jurisdictions regarding firearms in their park areas.

There was actual bipartisan concord on several matters — including virtual unanimity in passage of a home-grown educational standards bill to replace Common Core that was so similar in nature to the much-abused original as to be its fraternal twin.

And even the late failure in the House (on Wednesday) of a bill to permit in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants was not due to partisan disagreement — though a GOP right-winger, Rep. Matthew Hill (R-Jonesborough) may have sullied it for some Republicans by comparing it to President Obama’s immigration directives. The real problem may have been the absence of two Democratic supporters from the vote, both for work-related reasons.

House Democratic caucus leader Mike Stewart (D-Nashville) did what he could Thursday to deflect possible recriminations against the two, Bo Mitchell and Darren Jernigan, both from Davidson County, by saying, “This is a citizen legislature. Absences are going to happen.” The fact remains that the bill fell one vote short of the 50 needed for passage.

Stewart was less forgiving in the case of Insure Tennessee’s failure, clearly brought about by the failure of the Governor’s own Republican Party (with some exceptions) to support it. An “extraordinary failure,” the Democratic caucus leader called it, and, indeed, even as Haslam vowed at the GOP availability to continue supporting it as “the right thing to do,” Lt. Governor/Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, sitting to the Governor’s immediate left, opted out loud for the alternative of a two-year scenario involving election of a Republican president in 2016 and conversion of Medicaid funds into pure block grants.

The Democrats, for their part, vowed to renew their support for Insure Tennessee. Fitzhugh announced that the combined party caucuses would be sending Haslam a letter before the week ended beseeching him to call another special session to deal with the measure. It’s fair to say that’s pretty unlikely, and the fact that next year is an election year decreases the likelihood of action in the 2016 session as well, especially given the scenario spelled out by Ramsey.

The Governor had expressed pride in getting safely through two “contentious” matters in the session just concluded. One was the Common Core matter, and that could be stacked up with other education-related successes of the Haslam agenda, including the roughly $170 million in “new money” appropriated for K-12 education and backing for higher education initiatives as well, including Drive for 55 and Tennessee Promise, both aimed at raising the level of adult post-secondary education.

Haslam was on thinner ice in expressing satisfaction in how the legislature had skirted (to his mind) major controversy in limiting anti-abortion legislation to the imposition of a 48-hour waiting period. The Democrats made whoopee on that matter, regarding which Planned Parenthood and various organized women’s groups remain outraged. “Their mission is to change the way women live. They are taking their rights away,” Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) maintained.

Still, a fair assessment of the just-concluded session from a neutral observer might be: Could have been worse; surely could have been better. Some of the outright wack stuff, like the attempt to make the Bible an official state book, was beaten down by bipartisan action, and there was intermittent harmony on other issues as well.

One such was the hectic pace of the legislature’s increasingly abbreviated sessions — an innovation that, quite obviously, has been driven by Ramsey, who has set mid-April adjournment deadlines for a body that in recent years had continued its deliberations well into summer.

At the Republican leadership availability in the old Supreme Court chamber, Ramsey had expressed pride in what he called cost-conscious “efficiency” gained from the sped-up pace and claimed, “We didn’t even feel rushed.” But, after a brief pause, in which he must have noticed either slight murmurs or rolled eyes out there among his auditors, he added, “OK, we were rushed.”

Earlier Thursday morning, a bipartisan group of legislators having breakfast at the Red Roof Inn, a modestly priced alternative to the state capital’s more expensive hostelries, sat together, grumbling about what they saw as a much too frantic pace, which one or two of them attributed to Ramsey’s need to get about his auctioneering and real estate businesses as early as possible in the spring.

In any case, these legislators agreed that key bills were being overlooked in the undue haste and some, like the in-state tuition bill which they all happened to support, had fallen victim to it. If there is a true bipartisan consensus developing on any one matter, this matter would seem to be it.

In any case, here it is, still April, and the General Assembly is over and out.

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Politics Politics Feature

“Lest Ye Be Judged”

One of the truly amazing spectacles of the current election season is the ongoing parade of judges and judicial candidates for public inspection at cattle-call events that are held several nights each week, it would seem, by various organizations around Shelby County.

It is a phenomenon that occurs every eight years, as all trial-court judges — and that includes members of the bench in Circuit, Criminal, Probate, and Chancery Crourt, as well as Juvenile Court and General Sessions Court, civil and criminal divisions — are required to stand for election, along with a goodly number of candidates, including some ex-jurists looking for new venues, who seek to take their places.

Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Janice Holder

This year’s election date for judgeships is August 7th, simultaneous with the county general election and with primaries for state and federal offices.

Including incumbents and challengers, there are some 81 candidates seeking voter approval to don judicial robes and make crucial decisions affecting citizens’ safety, livelihoods, fortunes, and freedom. Even, at times, whether they live or die. Just now, however, it is the voters who get to sit in judgment.

And to watch this vetting process in action, this humbling of authority, is a strangely empathetic process. It needs to be remembered that most of the men and women on display at these judicial forums have either been lawyering all day and all week or sitting on the bench presiding over cases.

Given the crush of competition for most judicial positions, and keeping in mind what is at stake, they not only have to spend their evenings, lunch hours, and weekends at such judicial forums as are offered, but they also turn up at various other political candidates’ fund-raisers and meet-and-greets for a chance to stand up and state their name and what judgeship they’re running for, on the chance that this or that stray voter might be influenced in their favor.

Never mind that most of the attendees at these events, including the forums per se, are other candidates and their helpers; often such folk are the sole attendees. Yet it still pays to be there somehow. Or so the candidates believe.

A case in point is Janice Holder, the outstanding, well-credentialed Memphis jurist who first won election to Circuit Court in 1990 and went on to serve on the state Supreme Court, becoming ultimately its Chief Justice. Holder, who decided to retire rather than participate in a retention election this year, competed in a crowded field the year of her first election, showing up at every scheduled event, large or small.

It paid off. Holder won. She didn’t know why, but her always being there — everywhere — for whatever audience there was, may, as she and those who watched her do it suspect, have made the difference in a close race.

The sponsors of these events run the gamut of civic, legal, and, yes, political organizations. Judicial elections are formally nonpartisan, but the two major political parties, as well as various political clubs and ballot-hustlers make endorsements and publish them one way or another.

The Midtown Republican Club has, in successive months, held forums for judicial candidates, dividing them by civil and criminal categories. The Germantown Democratic Club utilized the same formula this week on successive nights, calling their events, held in the Great Hall of Germantown, “Just Desserts.”

That name was more than an interesting pun; the participating judges and contenders who took part were asked to bring actual dessert samples for attendees to munch on or take home — a nifty innovation and, er, as tasteful a way as any to go about the pandering that is an inevitable part of the democratic process.

Keep in mind, however, that candidates for judgeships have to undergo their election-year obstacle course in shackles that candidates for regular political offices don’t have to worry about. Judicial canons of ethics forbid them to make promises, state their opinions on legal cases or issues, or do much more than recite their professional qualifications.

And, keeping in mind, too, the old saw that money is the mother’s milk of politics, judicial candidates have to be milk-drinkers like everybody else, but they are not allowed to participate directly in fund-raising. That’s the business of quasi-separate support committees.

The special restrictions on judicial elections stick in the craw of some of the participants. At such gatherings, Lee Coffee, judge in Criminal Court, Division 7, can and does boast an impressive background: Graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law schools; in practice for 32 years; service in the offices of the District Attorney and U.S. Attorney and as a Public Defender; involved in more than 600 jury trials during his time as lawyer and judge.

“Experience does count,” he told the audience at Germantown’s Great Hall Monday night, but he went on to add, “Tennessee has a really strange law. It says that to run for judge you have to be 30 years of age, you have to live in the state for five years, you have to live in the [judicial] district for one year. You have to demonstrate competence by having a license to practice law.

“There are literally certain people running for judge who could not try certain cases as lawyers but are asking for your votes to try cases as a criminal judge.” That, Coffee said, was “an insult to the administration of justice.”

Variants of that statement have been made here and there by judicial candidates during this year’s forums. They are made all the time in private conversation, particularly by sitting judges who see their professional careers endangered by a process involving political tides and too much sheer chance.

Still, that’s the law, and the law is something that lawyers and judges, actual or aspiring, have to respect. And so they soldier on, in forum after forum, making appearances at political clubs and politicians’ events, not to be seen again in such circumstances — most of them, anyhow — for another eight years.

As one judicial candidate noted Monday night, the Memphis Bar Association will soon perform a service it renders every eight years on the occasion of judgeship elections in Shelby County. Sometime before the end of June, the association will publish on its website, memphisbar.org, the results of a “judicial qualification poll” taken of members of the bar, regarding all contenders for judicial positions on the August 7th ballot.

• Also, on the score of judges facing judgment, there is much statewide interest — as was mentioned in last week’s column —in the forthcoming retention elections scheduled for three members of the state Supreme Court: Chief Justice Gary Wade and Justices Cornelia Clark and Sharon Lee.

Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, a Republican, has launched a campaign for a ‘no’ vote on the three justices, all of whom were appointees of former Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. Numerous members of the state’s legal community have professed themselves alarmed about the interjection of partisanship.

Memphian Holly Kirby, who was recently named by Governor Bill Haslam to succeed the retiring Holder on the High Court, was asked her opinion on the matter during her attendance at last Friday night’s “Statesmen’s Dinner” in Nashville, the annual gala of the Tennessee Republican Party.

While Kirby shied away from expressing an opinion on the merits of the justices or of Ramsey’s campaign, she was willing to say for the record that the unusual degree of attention now focused on the matter had a positive side. “It’s good that people realize that these retention votes are bona fide elections, not just a matter of rubber-stamping something.”

Kirby also said she supported the Judicial Selection Amendment on the November 4th statewide ballot, which eliminates nominating commissions and provides for direct gubernatorial appointment of all state appellate judges, who would then be subject to regular retention elections.

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Politics Politics Feature

Haslam Tips Hand on Agenda

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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