Tag: Tennessee General Assembly

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Memphis Gaydar News

Brian Kelsey Sponsors Anti-Gay Bill

Brian Kelsey

  • Brian Kelsey

Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown is sponsoring a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly aimed at protecting religious organizations that choose to deny services in conjunction with a civil union, domestic partnership, or gay marriage.

Kelsey’s SB2566 “permits persons and religious or denominational organizations, based on sincere religious belief, to refuse to provide services or goods in furtherance of a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized by the Tennessee Constitution.” It’s being co-sponsored in the House by Representative Bill Dunn of Knoxville.

It’s not clear how far religious organizations could take this, if passed. But a post on the Tennessee Equality Project’s website poses the question of whether or not medical institutions run by religious organizations could refuse medical services to someone in a same-sex relationship.

The bill was filed on February 5th, and so far, there has been no further movement with the bill.

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News The Fly-By

Red, Wine, & Brews

Booze is on the minds of Tennessee General Assembly members this year, particularly with a couple of bills that will tell Tennesseans what they can drink and where they can get it.

One much-discussed bill would make way for retailers such as grocery stores and convenience stores to sell wine. Another bill would allow Tennessee beer brewers to raise the alcohol percentage in the beers they make without requiring special permits.

The wine bill, which would allow individual counties to bring the issue of wine being sold in grocery stores to a ballot, quickly passed through the Tennessee State Senate last week. It was a shocking development to many who have watched the proposed law rise and fail in the legislature for the past seven years.

A review of the House version of the bill will be heard in committees this week. Passage by the full House would send the bill to Governor Bill Haslam’s desk.

If the bill is signed, efforts could begin to get referendums on the November ballots of the 49 eligible counties. Cities and counties must already have liquor-by-the-drink or liquor-by-the-package laws approved to be able to bring the wine referendum to the ballot box. If voters approve the referendums, wine could be sold in grocery and convenience stores in their communities beginning July 1, 2016.

Joe Bell, spokesman for Kroger’s Delta Division, said this was the first year there were any real negotiations between liquor store owners and other retailers on this issue. The main reason it got traction this year was because of the widespread outcry from lawmakers when the bill was killed early in last year’s session. It was shepherded through the process by House and Senate leaders this year.

The Senate bill does not allow grocery or convenience stores to sell high-gravity beers, which tend to have higher alcohol contents. Changing the rule would open new markets for craft brewers and is one plank in the 2014 platform of the Tennessee Craft Brewers Guild.

The Guild is also working on changes to state laws that would raise the alcohol limit in Tennessee beer from the current five percent threshold to 12 percent. All of Tennessee’s bordering states have higher or no limits on the alcohol content in beers, according to the “Fix the Beer Cap Tennessee” campaign.

Tennessee brewers can make high-gravity beers now, but the brewer must get several licenses and permits to do so. Wiseacre Brewing Company got a distiller’s license in January and has since offered a barleywine with a 9.5 percent alcohol content. But getting and paying for the licenses to do it can be difficult and expensive, according to the campaign. The bill making its way through the General Assembly would do away with those expensive licenses.

The current laws put the state at a disadvantage as it limits the styles of beers brewers can offer consumers and could prevent some breweries from opening in Tennessee, both of which could hamper tax revenues, according to the campaign website.

“The solution is simple,” said Linus Hall, owner of Nashville’s Yazoo Brewing Co.   “Tennessee needs to reform its definition of beer to make it more competitive with neighboring states, to give its local brewers a new market, and to greatly expand the selection of beers that consumers can enjoy.”

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News News Blog

Tennessee’s “Ag Gag” Bill Passes

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The Tennessee House voted in favor of a bill that would require anyone who shoots video or takes pictures of animal cruelty to submit those images to law enforcement within 48 hours. UPDATE: The Senate has now also passed the bill.

Known as the “Ag Gag” bill, it was one of many being considered by state governments across the country. Proponents of the bill, which was heavily favored by animal agriculture lobbyists, claim the requirement to turn over cruelty images protects animals.

But the bill’s critics, which includes the Humane Society of the United States and the Humane Tennessee Political Action Committee, claim the legislation is designed to prevent thorough investigations of animal cruelty. Many undercover cruelty investigations at factory farms can take several weeks of documenting footage, and such bills would prevent animal activists from carrying out those investigations.

The bill was one vote shy of being voted down.

East Tennessee’s Knoxville News Sentinel is taking a brave stance against the bill. In an opinion column written before the bill’s passage, the paper states, “If the Ag Gag bill happens to pass and the News Sentinel records images of animal cruelty, we will not consider ourselves bound to turn those images over to law enforcement. We will assume that the [state’s] shield law, and more importantly, the First Amendment, will pre-empt such a law. I’d recommend that anyone else who believes in freedom of expression take the same position, too.”

Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden has more on the First Amendment implications of “Ag Gag.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Municipal-Schools Bill, 2013 Version, Passes Both Houses of Tennessee General Assembly

Rep. Todd brings the muni bill to the House floor.

  • Rep. Todd brings the muni bill to the House floor.

With little more than perfunctory debate, this year’s version of a municipal-schools bill (SB1353/hb1288) passed both chambers of the Republican-dominated Tennessee General Assembly with comfortable margins Monday, thereby allowing the de facto secession from Shelby County’s soon-to-be “unified” school district that six suburban municipalities in the county have been seeking for at least two years.

Mayors and other representatives of those suburbs — Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington — were on hand for the occasion and were introduced in the state House of Representatives by suburban GOP members before Monday’s vote in that chamber.

When the 2013 bill was considered in the House on Monday, presented by Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville), the co-author of record, there was one serious reminder of last year’s floor controversy. Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) rose to express forebodings about the measure and declared his opposition to it, as he had to last year’s original model, which would have applied statewide before being modified prior to passage.

After noting pointedly that he had received emails from within Shelby County “urging” him not to express his concerns “for all to hear,” Dunn did so, anyhow. He worried that, since this year’s bill, unlike the final product last year, was cast so as to apply statewide, not just to Shelby County, “we’re going to see some problems down the road.”







Todd began his remarks by expressing thanks for the “61 signatures” of House co-sponsors he had received.

Among those problems was a technical one — that municipal taxpayers in new districts would become restive about paying taxes to support schooling for the non-resident children who would enroll in them and that fees would be imposed on those outlying households ultimately. “The state is supposed to provide a free education,” Dunn noted.

He did not articulate the larger concern that he had been vocal about last year, before the 2012 measure was rewritten so as to apply only to Shelby County, and that was simply a concern about unintended consequences of a statewide measure that could result in new municipal school districts elsewhere in Tennessee.

Dunn pointed out that he had ultimately supported the Shelby-County-only version of last year’s bill, but “unfortunately, a judge shut it down.” He reminded his colleagues that he had “asked that the current bill be rolled” until a version with dependable safeguards for school districts statewide could be perfected, but,”unfortunately it was not rolled.” Consequently, “I will be voting no tonight. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I’m gonna be.”

That was about it for objections from the state at large. But some came from representatives from the City of Memphis, who, unlike their suburban Shelby County colleagues, were opposed to the bill. Representatives G.A. Hardaway, Antonio Parkinson, and Johnnie Turner all took shots at the measure, articulating their concerns about the effect of the bill on the county’s unified school district, still in the process of formation, and extracting assurances from Todd that the bill had no immediate impact upon the future disposition of school buildings currently owned by Shelby County.

Both Hardaway and Parkinson gave voice to a rumor that has circulated widely of late — namely, that an unspoken arrangement exists between the bill’s sponsors — Todd and Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris being the principal ones — and Republican colleagues in districts elsewhere to the effect that a one-year window would be held open for Shelby County and would be closed for everybody else by follow-up legislation next year.

Todd, who had begun his remarks by expressing thanks for the “61 signatures” of House co-sponsors he had received, blithely gave assurances that no such revocation next year was planned and that if it was proposed, “I would vote against it.”

Rep. Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley), leader of the 27 House Democrats, made one last stand against the measure. “I hadn’t planned to speak on this bill,” Fitzhugh said. “…I thought I didn’t have a dog in the hunt…But as so goes Memphis, so goes my little town and my district.” And he expressed concern about the “long-term effect” of the bill upon Memphis.

The bill would pass the House by a margin of 70 to 24.

Things were similar in the Senate, where principal author Norris, in bringing the bill to the floor, described it as a corrective to limitations on new districts imposed during the Tiny Town crisis of 1998, when a stealth bill to allow easy incorporations by small communities challenged the annexation rights of municipalities before being found unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.

State Senator Ken Yager (R-Harriman) quizzed Norris on the bill’s impact on the “existing funding stream” for county school districts where new municipal districts might be formed. Norris responded that “funding shifts [to] follow the student and that it would be incumbent on municipalities desiring their own school districts to approve them in referenda and to vote such new add-on taxation as would be necessary to pay for them.

State Senator Jim Kyle (D-Memphis), the leader of the Senate’s seven Democrats, pressed Norris on what he insisted would be the potential negative effect of the bill on counties like Roane, the one represented by Yager, and, for that matter, on Knox County and metropolitan districts like that of Davidson County.







Senators will ask themselves, said Kyle, “Why did I get involved in a boundary dispute in Shelby County?’”

Norris disputed that, both on grounds that municipal secession in such districts was unlikely because of “other hurdles” created by the bill and because there was no evidence that municipalities mentioned by Kyle — like Farragut in Knox County and Franklin in Williamson — would either pursue or be affected by efforts on behalf of new municipal districts.

Kyle disagreed. “I think the answer to that is yes. A special school district could withdraw and become a municipal district….This is a mistake, a mistake you’ll see in your community one day.” And senators would ask themselves, said Kyle, “’Why did I get involved in a boundary dispute in Shelby County?’” — one “bringing to your front door what essentially is a local dispute.” And, he said, that”could drain tax dollars from the county exactly as the gentleman from Roane County [Yager] questioned.”

In his closing remarks, Norris acknowledged that the bill “doesn’t just apply to one county but has statewide application” and insisted that the measure was “entirely in keeping with the educational reform movement,” removing an “artificial barrier” against new districts imposed at a time when the state did not possess charter schools, achievement schools, or virtual schools.

Singling out the latter category, virtual schools, which came within a whisker of being phased out or minimized in legislation favored by Governor Haslam because of poor academic results, Norris said, “You can go to school from your house on the Internet. Why should any of us seek to forbid the forming of municipal systems?”

The bill passed the Senate 24-5 and now requires only the signature of Governor Haslam and the ultimate vetting by U.S. District Judge Hardy Mays.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Senate Blocks Campfield’s “Starve-the-Children” Bill, Shunts It Off to “Summer Study”

Campfield getting the bad news

  • Campfield getting the bad news

Faced with a barrage of skeptical questions from his Republican colleagues, State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) took the hint on Thursday and agreed to refer his SB 0132 (referred to by opponents as “Starve-the-Children”) to a “summer study” committee.

The first hint of serious trouble for Campfield camp during floor debate when GOP majority leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville) pronounced himself “queasy” about the bill, which would reduce state aid to dependent families whose children were experiencing grade trouble. The bill had already engendered a mid-week statement of opposition from Governor Bill Haslam and had been actively opposed by any number of agencies and institutions concerned with student welfare.

Norris told Campfield, “You’re fooling yourself” regarding the Knoxville senator’s claim that only parents and not children would be penalized by the withholding from the affected familyof failing children an average of $20 a month in state support payments . The majority leader also referred to the bill as “the sort of legislation that gets challenged in a court of law as vague and ambiguous, arbitrary and capricious.”

Consequently, said Norris, “It’s a very troublesome piece of legislation, and I regret I can’t support it.”
After Norris came the deluge.

Senator Lowe Finney (D-Jackson) pointed out that the bill’s penalties had the effect of “making the child responsible for the parent’s actions.”

Norris queasy about bill

  • Norris ‘queasy’ about bill

Senator Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) concurred, somewhat earthily. “I agree with Senator Finney . You can’t legislate parent responsibility. I don’t care what you do.” He foresaw “unintended consequences” for the student. “The parent will beat the dog doo out of him for taking that $20 away from them, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Other senators offered objections to various contentions Campbell had made in summarizing his bill. He had said that no food allotments would be affected (an apparent response to the ‘starve-the-children’ phrase), but more than one colleague noted that manyof the affected families were already subsisting on an average of $166 a month.. He had said at one point the the state Department of Human Services had “signed off” on the bill but later acknowledged, when pressed, that DHS was at best “neutral,” while Governor Haslam had opposed it.

Campfield had contended that his bill was meant to encourage “discipline” rather than punishment and that parents could avail themselves of any number of remedies to the bill’s penalties, including participation in parent-teacher conferences, involvement with tutoring programs, or merely reading to their children. But several senators criticized what they saw as vagueness in the bill’s description of such activities or in the means of validating them.

In the end, with Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville), the Senate Speaker, explicitly encouraging him to do so, Campfield offered to have the bill referred again to the Senate Health committee, chaired by Senator Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City), and to have it relegated to “summer study,’ which would be coordinated with K-12 education sub-committees of the Senate and House.

Often, though not always, referral to summer-study status amounts to a death knell for a bill in the General Assembly.

The state House was also scheduled to consider the Campfield bill on Thursday, but the Senate’s action would appear to have made that process moot.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Gamecocks and Gay Rights

On occasion, I speak to journalism classes. One of the things I always say is that this profession, like few others, broadens you, opens you to new experiences. You meet fascinating people, you observe history unfolding in real time — judicial decisions, civic activism, crime and corruption, war, politics, sporting events, theater, art, music, food — you name it, and journalists cover it.

It’s senior editor Jackson Baker’s journalistic lot to have to occasionally trek to Nashville and cover the machinations of our Tennessee legislature (page 19). But I don’t tell students about this sort of assignment, because I don’t want to scare them off.

Imagine the fear it would strike in these eager young minds if I told him they might have to go to a Bizarro World where the inhabitants fear gays but love cockfighting; where mop sinks are seen as Muslim footbaths and guns are worshiped; where you can vote using an out-of-state hunting license but not with a state-issued student ID. Where parents whose children get bad grades are deprived of money that pays for food or rent. Where evolution is just another “theory,” like gravity and creationism. Where ideology and fear and allegiance to special interests trump common sense and the public welfare.

While history unfolds in the rest of the country, our lawmakers are refolding it. As gay marriage moves closer to reality, our legislators ponder a law prohibiting teachers from even saying the word “gay.” While the rest of the country comes to grips with Obamacare, our governor, unwilling to take on his party’s ideologues, minces around with “alternate” plans that will leave us picking up the health-care tab for thousands of uninsured Tennesseans. While Congress works on a bill requiring background checks for gun purchases, our legislature passes a bill requiring employers to let their workers have guns on their premises.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the General Assembly’s push to give vouchers to thousands of people so they could send their kids to private and religious schools. I joked at the time about what would happen when they realized such a bill would allow Muslim schools to receive public funds. I was joking, because I thought surely they’d already considered this little complication.

Nope, it turns out they hadn’t, and that derailed the voucher bill til next year — until the good ol’ boys can figure out a way to end-run the Constitution and channel tax-payer funds only to schools that don’t have Muslim footbaths.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Nicely Doubts Alexander, Corker Could be Nominated by GOP Legislative Caucus

CREDIT: JB

Senators Alexander (l), Corker

  • Senators Alexander (l), Corker

NASHVILLE — Though he disclaims that his now dormant proposal for the state legislature to nominate U.S. Senate candidates is aimed at Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, state Senator Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) is doubtful that either incumbent, both of whom he considers moderates, would pass muster with Republicans in the state legislature if they had to seek renomination from the GOP caucus.

“They both have 62 percent records voting with Obama, they voted for bail-outs, they voted for tax increases. I’m not sure they would, “ he said.

Joking about the non-existence of a book with the title “Great Moderates in American History, “ Nicely said, “If there was such a book, Lamar and Corker would be in it.”

(Asked about Nicely’s proposal during a visit to Memphis on Wednesday, Corker said he thought he knew the people of Tennessee as well as anybody, and, noting that, by his reckoning, some 650,000 people had voted in the state’s last U.S. Senate primary, said, “I don’t think Tennesseans would take very well to their right to vote being taken away.” And, Corker said, there would at present be all of 29 Democrats in the legislature to make their party’s nomination for U.S. Senate. “Just think about it.”)

In protesting that his aim was to restore power to the state and not to take the vote away from its people, Nicely contrasted the import of his proposal with the actions of three recent Tennessee governors, whom he took issue with: “We’re not doing like McWherter, who took away electing directors of schools, Sundquist took away our right to elect public service commissioners, Haslam appears to be taking away our right to elect Supreme Court judges and appellate judges. They’re actually taking away your right to vote.”

Nicely has been widely quoted as decrying a number of wicked things that he thinks happened in 1913 — the 17th Amendment, subjecting U.S. Senates to direct popular vote, of course. “Then we got the central bank that Jefferson had warned against [the Fed], more dangerous to liberty than a standing army, and Jakcson actually abolished the second U.S. bank in 1830….The bankers tried to kill him. But, anyway,we got the central bank back in 1913 and the dollar’s lost 90 percent of its purchasing power. A case of the bankers debasing our currency.”

He qualifies his Constitutional quibbles somewhat, though. “A lot of amendments I agree with — women’s suffreage, for example. The one I really agree with is the repeal of prohibition.” He laughs. “That’s one of my favorites.”

Besides the controversy over his proposal to tweak the 17th Amendment, Nicely generated some recent controversy in claiming that Abraham Lincoln was a defender of cockfighting. And he took part in a bizarre debate in the Senate Thursday over the issue of which pledge of allegiance should come first.

State Senator Stacey Canpfield (R-Knoxville) challenged the current order has the federal pledge first and the state pledge after, contending that “the American flag takes precedence over all other flags” and that the Senate should “highlight:” the pledge to the American flag by saving it for last.

Senator Doug Henry (D-Nashville) considered Campfield “technically” right but objected that it “pained” him to see the Tennessee flag “dipped” to the American flag, something Henry thought should never be.

Speaker Ramsey asked Nicely his opinion, and Nicely cited Robert E. Lee as having considered himself a Virginian first and an American second., concluding, “If Robert E. Lee was a Virginian first and an American second, I’m a Tennessean first and an American second.”

###

Frank Nicely in Nashville

  • JB
  • Frank Nicely in Nashville

A NOTE ON FRANK NICELY, who has figured more than once this week by more than one observer and for more than one reason as emblematic of the Looney Tunes aspect of the current Tennessee legislature.

Frank Nicely is one of those people who is seen one way by the outside world and another way by the people who know him up close. Yes, he’s got some outré opinions and some of them are close to the stuff that comes out of the ALEC handbook. But he is not reciting anything by rote. He’s a genuine populist, though of the right-wing —variety.

But he is personally a very tolerant man. I first encountered him back in 2002 when he was going around as the everyday helper of gubernatorial candidate Jim Henry, a bona fide moderate Republican. Henry (now serving as Bill Haslam’s new-broom director of Children’s Services, charged with redeeming that scandal-plagued agency) was urged into the Republican primary race that year as an antidote to hard-right candidate Van Hilleary by Don Sundquist, the outgoing Republican governor.

Sundquist had virtually been excommunicated by his party for the dual sins of upholding TennCare and vigorously pushing for some sort of progressive tax reform, up to and including a state income tax. Henry had similar views. Beyond much doubt, Frank Nicely didn’t, and he let Henry know it. “I’d work on him all day long, and I’d think I had him going right, and he’d waffle on me every time,” Nicely told me in a post-adjournment conversation this week, chuckling and shaking his head. It seemed clear that what he had been trying so hard to get into the governor’s office was Henry’s character, not his platform.

Hilleary won the primary, of course, to be shaded out in the general election by Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat who turned out to be more conservative in some ways than Jim Henry might have been. (Bredesen wasted no time cutting TennCare down to size, for one thing, and, having spent most of the previous couple of years second-guessing Sundquist on taxes, promptly took the income tax off the table and imposed Draconian across-the-board cuts in every state agency.)

Two years later, Nicely, who had served In the state House of Representatives from 1988 to 1992, ran again for the House and served there from 2005 to January of this year, when, having won a state Senate race last year, he took the oath and tripped over to the other chamber.

In 2006, Nicely went to work for Bob Corker, a U.S. Senate candidate seen by the GOP’s right wing as another moderate [see main story, above]. Hilleary and Ed Bryant, both of whom pitched to the Right, were the Republican alternatives that year. Nicely told me this week he had a certain affinity for Corker’s Democratic opponent, Harold Ford Jr., whom he regarded as being more or less acceptable had Ford been elected.

In the legislature, meanwhile, Nicely has followed his natural bent and materialized as a state’s right Constitutionalist. That’s how he would put it, anyhow. In practice, he votes a lot with the arch-conservatives. Returning to the House the same year that Brian Kelsey began to serve there, he and the Germantown legislator generally saw eye to eye on issues, but It is no secret that Nicely disapproved of what he saw as Kelsey’s showboating.

I don’t know a single Capitol Hill reporter or legislator, of whatever stripe, who doesn’t like Nicely or respect him for his sincerity. He’s not afraid to buck the tide. Back last year, during the first run-through of guns-in-parking-lots legislation favored by the N RA, Nicely was an opponent, contending, ““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.”

All that said, he is good fodder for the wags and fair game. After Newtown, he was one of those proposing armed guards in classrooms. He was apparently a birther in good standing. There is this 17th Amendment thing, and the cockfighting, and….Well, there’s a bunch of stuff. Again, he’s fair game. But he’s also fair-minded, and he won’t take it personally.

I think.

— JB

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Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: The Mop Sink Mob

It was reported by AP this week that a couple of our intrepid guardians of public morality in the Tennessee General Assembly had raised questions about some new sinks in the capitol building. A state senator and a state representative expressed concerns that utility sinks installed on bathroom floors were meant to allow Muslims to wash their feet before praying. We can’t have that, of course.

Turns out that the sinks were put on the floor to better allow custodians, presumably Christian, to rinse their mops and not, thankfully, evidence of Sharia Law creeping into our legislative bathrooms.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Unfortunately, these same bozos are now in charge of everything in Tennessee, including public education, where they are planning more mischief. Aided and abetted by private education and conservative “think tank” lobbyists, GOP legislators are pushing to expand a new voucher program proposed by Governor Bill Haslam.

Haslam’s bill would make 5,000 vouchers available to low-income children who attend low-performing public schools. The number would increase to 20,000 by 2016. Private schools could accept the voucher students but could not charge those students more than what the voucher pays. But this just gets the camel’s nose into the tent. (No Sharia pun intended.)

What these legislators and their lobbyist pals really want is to funnel massive amounts of tax-payer dollars into private education. They want to expand the voucher program by making subsidies for private school tuition available to families with much higher incomes. They want to allow private schools to charge students an additional 10 percent beyond what the voucher pays and allow parents of those students to pay the difference between the voucher amount and the school’s tuition.

This amounts to the public subsidizing people who want to send their kids to private schools, whether it’s Jim Bob’s Jesus Academy, Willie Herenton’s charter schools, or Hutchison.

It’s a huge financial boondoggle and probably unconstitutional. (Similar measures have been successfully challenged on constitutional grounds in other states.) But with a GOP “super-majority” that’s unchallengeable by the few remaining Democrats in Nashville, this latest version of privatizing our tax money and sending it to “nonprofit” organizations is probably headed for passage.

I just wonder how they will react when somebody decides to use a voucher to send their kid to Muhammad’s Sharia Prep.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Mays MovesToward Special Master in Effort to Break School Logjam

CREDIT: JB

After regular business had finished Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission, chairman Mike Ritz made this add-on announcement concerning a status conference held earlier that morning between U.S. District Judge Hardy Mays and attorneys in the still ongoing litigation relating to city/county school merger and the prospect of independent municipal school districts:

“ I did visit with the attorneys in the Courthouse this morning, and the circumstances were these: A new party to the lawsuit was asked to attend the meeting. The County School Board was not a party to the lawsuit, but they were asked to be there.

“And what happened was that the judge said he was going to postpone his decision on the two remaining issues and asked for a special master to be appointed, with names to be submitted no later than Wednesday to overlook the activities of the School Board, because he is not happy with the failure of the School Board to appoint a superintendent, to take budget actions, and otherwise respond to the recommendations of the TPC [Transition Planning Commission]— which he feels in toto is a failure to conform according to his order of 2011.

Ritz added, “There is nothing for us to do or not do. We don’t have to like it or not like it, but there we are.”

Earlier Tom Cates and Allan Wade, attorneys for the suburban municipalities and the Memphis City Council, respectively, had in separate meetings with reporters, said essentially the same thing and with the same matter-of-factness as would Ritz.

Municipal attorney Cates: We always knew....

  • JB
  • Municipal attorney Cates: “We always knew….”

“We all knew” that the municipalities would be in the Unified District for at least a year, said Cates, in what may have been his frankest acknowledgement yet of that particular reality mandated by Judge Mays in separate orders of 2011 and 2012. And that, both he and Wade said, was all that was discussed.

Judge Mays’ announcement of his imminent intent to appoint a Special Master resolves a matter that has been hanging since his original order of 2011, which mentioned such an office, and its most obvious intent is to dispose of the remaining financial and organization obstacles to school consolidation in the face of an approaching July 1 merger deadline.

But, while it is generally being treated as a de facto delay in ruling on remaining legal issues, pending whatever the General Assembly does on school matters in the current session, it takes those issues, including the final provision of the 2011 Norris-Todd Act and the very feasibility of independent municipal schools, to the brink of final judgment.

Hence a largely rhetorical discussion in Monday’s commission meeting on a resolution by Wyatt Bunker, Terry Roland, and Chris Thomas, all proponents of municipal schools, to remove the Commission as a litigating party and, in effect, terminate the lawsuit.

Bunker rolled it all into a single ball, beginning with a conclusion he said he reached as a member of the old Shelby County Schools board a decade ago. “We knew back then that city schools were top-heavy. There’s a lot of waste, a lot of waste in that administration,” and bringing things to the present, which included last weekend’s retreat bringing together Commission members, Unified School Board members, and other county officials. A major point of concern at the retreat had been the Board’s request for extra funding.

“We get to that retreat this weekend, they hand us a $145 million-dollar bill…That made me quite angry, because it appeared to me that they were trying to avoid making the tough decisions that they need to make and instead just hand us a bill….That’s why the municipalities don’t want to have anything to do with it…That begs the question, why are we tying them up in a lawsuit? They need to seat their board. They need to hire a superintendent. They need to obtain the capital improvements to support their school system, put in place everything that’s necessary….Why don’t we get out of the way and let them get on about the business of educating children?

“And for those of you who believe this is a race issue? By definition, Shelby County Schools is more diverse than Memphis City Schools is. It’s not a race issue. It’s a very diverse school system. It’s a high-achieving school system….You ought to vote with us, get out of the way and let them make progress.”

Roland: Nashville will act.

  • JB
  • Roland: Nashville will act.

That, a fairly complete statement of the suburbs’ case, was answered this way by Commissioner Walter Bailey, who turned the argument around:

“It takes two people to do a fox trot….If you don’t have an adversary, you don’t have a lawsuit. We’re asking them to concede the remaining issues, and the lawsuit will vanish. {We could} ask the court to enter the appropriate order. That would terminate the lawsuit. That would save hundreds of thousands of dollars…..That’s a quick remedy to end this lawsuit.

And Commissioner Steve Mulroy segued from that into a reminder of the recently terminated mediation talks between the contending parties: “They’re saying it’s unreasonable to ask for a unilateral disarmament for their side. By the same token, it’s unreasonable to ask for a unilateral disarmament for our side….The question is, why won’t we talk and work out a settlement? ….A mere three or four weeks ago, we were 90 percent of the way toward a complete local and comprehensive settlement….

“Abruptly, at the 11th hour, they walked away from the negotiations. And why? Because they had some sort of inkling that our Nashville overlords would meddle once again in our local affairs and give them everything they want.”

But, said Mulroy, “there is a chance they won’t get every single thing they want out of Nashville. If we settle the lawsuit now, they won’t have to go to Nashville.”

The reported terms of what Mulroy referred to as an aborted agreement were essentially these: 10-year agreements between the suburbs and the Commission permitting chartered school districts in six suburban municipalities; guarantees of racial diversity in the suburban schools; paid-lease agreements between the suburbs and the Unified School Board for existing school properties; and, in what seems to have been the sticking point, an agreement by the suburbs to equalize per-pupil spending with that of the Unified system and to commit municipal sales-tax revenues to that end.

In debate Monday, Roland would respond, “Don’t say, you ran away,’ when you pushed [us] away,” and he predicted that the General Assembly could make the local dispute moot by enacting legislation that would both enable municipal schools and allow direct state funding of them, bypassing the County Commission’s approval process.

Indeed, there are several measures tumbling around in Nashville at the moment, one or two that would legalize new municipal school districts, this time on a statewide basis, and others that would enlarge the state’s charter-school apparatus and create the kind of state control Roland spoke of. As reported by the Flyer last week, those measures have drawn opposition from representatives of the state’s Big Four school districts —- Shelby, Davidson, Knox, and Hamilton counties -— and reaction to them appears not to be predictably partisan.

Things remain to be seen up there, as, in fact, they do in Shelby County as well.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

State’s Big Four School Districts Frown on Bills for Munis, Charter Authorizer, Vouchers

CREDIT: JB

NASHVILLE — On the eve of a weekend retreat for the Shelby County Commission at which school matters will loom large and a Monday status conference on school litigation called by U.S. District Judge Hardy Mays, several pieces of legislation directly affecting the school impasse were hanging fire in the Tennessee General Assembly.

On Tuesday night in Nashville, members of the Shelby County Unified School Board held a reception for legislators at the downtown Sheraton. This was in conjunction with a meeting in Nashville of the Tennessee School Boards Association.

Unified Board member Mary Anne Gibson with state Senators Mark Norris and Jim Kyle at Board reception in Nashville

  • JB
  • Unified Board member Mary Anne Gibson with state Senators Mark Norris and Jim Kyle at Board reception in Nashville

And on Wednesday, some key bills of direct import to Memphis and Shelby County drew special attention at a luncheon meeting of the Coalition of Large Area School Systems (CLASS), which consists of school board members from Shelby, Davidson, Hamilton, and Knox counties.

Meeting in the downtown Sheraton, CLASS members reviewed some 200 pieces of proposed and pending legislation affecting public-school education. Several bills drew particular — and negative — attention : notably SB196/HB 190 (Norris/McCormick), the administration bill creating private school vouchers; SB830/HB702 (Gresham/White), making the state Board of Education a direct-channel authorizer for new charter schools in Shelby and Davidson counties; and SB1353/HB1298 (Norris/Todd), authorizing local referenda for the creation of new municipal school systems.

Opposition of CLASS members to the voucher and charter bills was clear and in conformity to the stated position of the parent TSBA, which was meeting in Nashville. Sentiment was also vocal against the municipal schools bill, with board members from all four participating jurisdictions stating objections.

First came a motion by Unified Shelby County board member Jeff Warren to oppose the newest Norris-Todd bill.

The Warren motion was quickly supported by David Testerman (pictured here) of the Hamilton County board (Chattanooga).

David Testerman of Chattanooga

  • JB
  • David Testerman of Chattanooga

Testerman agreed that the municipal-schools bill would undermine the integrity of unified county systems.
“Many of the things they are suggesting are the very things that would undermine the success you build, not only in Chattanooga but Nashville Metro also. You’re looking at two models that work,” said Testerman, and a Board member from Davidson County (Nashville) was quick to support Testerman, noting further that the trend in Tennessee had been to reduce the number of school districts, not enlarge them.

Indya Kincannon of the Knox County board weighed in similarly:

But, just as the Warren motion seemed about to carry, another member of the Shelby board, Kevin Woods, who represents an area spanning Memphis and its outer suburbs, noted that there was division of opinion in Shelby County and was successful in getting CLASS to defer stating an opinion until the Shelby board could meet and formulate its own.

Among other bills drawing negative attention from CLASS members were any and all measures enabling continuation of publicly funded virtual schooling. Members also approved a bill. SB798/HB113 (Beavers/Pody) revoking what many members had not realized was an existing ability by the state Education Commissioner to waive statutes having to do with charter schools and “cooperative innovative high school programs.”

They were advised by Robert Gowan and Elizabeth Merkel of Southern Strategies, which moderated the session, that the administration would probably see to the scuttling of that measure.

Here is Amy Frogge of Davidson County seeking joint action to oppose state-authorizer bill for charter schools:
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