Tag: Tennessee General Assembly

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Behind the Curve

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States basically threw in its chips on the issue of gay marriage. By choosing not to hear arguments from plaintiffs contesting Appeals Courts’ rulings that threw out several state gay-marriage bans, it effectively legalized gay marriage in 30 states. Tennessee’s gay-marriage case, now before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, has not yet been officially decided, but the writing is on the wall, and it’s easy to read. Eventually, Tennessee will be dragged, kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Get the rice ready, Gary.

Similarly, 23 states have now moved to allow the sale of medical marijuana, and several more are considering it. Those states that have legalized pot and are regulating its sale and distribution are now reaping large tax and tourism revenues, a financial boon for cash-strapped state budgets. Tennessee is still just saying no, dudes.

And as of August 2014, 23 states have instituted a minimum-wage higher than the $7.25-an-hour rate mandated by federal law. Almost without exception, the economies of those states have benefitted, as their working-class citizens spend more on goods and services. The price of a fast-food cheeseburger has not gone through the roof. People are not getting laid off. The sky hasn’t fallen. In Tennessee? Well, apparently, we’re just going to keep raising sales taxes, the most-regressive possible approach to “fixing” the economy.

In fact, Tennessee is going backward as fast as our in-bred legislators can take us. The state constitutional amendments on the November ballot are a perfect example. Amendment 1 basically gives carte blanche to the General Assembly to craft any anti-abortion measures it wants to, even extending to cases where the mother’s life is being endangered. If passed, Amendment 1 will put a medical and moral decision that should be made by a woman and her doctor under the purview of the backwoods hillbillies in Nashville. Dr. Bubba, will see you now, ma’am.

Amendment 2 gives that same bunch of loons the power to approve the appointment of our state’s judges. Another great idea.

Amendment 3 permanently bans any state income or payroll tax. Which means continued higher sales taxes — and more folks driving to Mississippi and Arkansas to shop. More smart thinking.

It’s clear that our intrepid legislators are working hard to ensure that as the rest of the country passes progressive economic and social legislation that benefits the working class and appeals to young people — and the businesses that want to employ them — Tennessee stays firmly in the closet — and in the dark.

We’re not just behind the curve. We’re behind the eight ball.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Keeping Hospitals Alive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Open Carry” Gun Bill Killed

Governor Haslam

  • Governor Haslam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Key GOP Leader Prophesies Gun-Carry Bill Will Be Deep-Sixed

Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel

  • Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel

NASHVILLE — The state Department of Safety and Homeland Security has advised that a “fiscal note” in the amount of at least $100,000 — to cover the costs of re-writing existing concealed-carry permits — must be included in the open-carry gun bill (SB2424;HB2409) that passed the state Senate on Tuesday by an overwhelming vote of 25-2.

And, even though the Senate version’s sponsor, Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) managed to secure an amendment striking the fiscal-note requirement before the vote in that chamber, the House version still contains the provision, and indications are that it will remain on the bill.

That means, according to a key Republican member of the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee, which will take up the bill on Monday, that the bill, which would allow all Tennesseans to carry weapons on their persons so long as they aren’t concealed, is probably doomed.

“The budget we’re working with makes no allowance for sums like that,” said veteran state Rep. Steve McDaniel (R- Parker’s Crossroads), who doubles as Deputy Speaker of the House.

McDaniel said he doubted that the bill would ever reach the floor for a House vote as the legislature steams toward a conclusion early next week. “It’ll never get out of House Finance,” predicted McDaniel, who said emphatically that he was personally disinclined to vote for the measure.

“Hell, no!” said McDaniel, who — clearly relating his statement to the home base of his questioner — said that, if the measure passed, “Every gang-banger in Memphis will end up packing. Can you imagine?”

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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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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