State Senator Brian Kelsey (Credit: Jackson Baker)
Tennessee state Senator Brian Kelsey announced in an email today that he would not be running for re-election in 2022. The text of Kelsey’s letter follows:
I will not be running for reelection due to a recent, exciting change to my personal life, and I look forward to spending more time with my family.
It has been a true honor to serve you for 18 years and to work with you to pass more constitutional amendments than any other Tennessee legislator in history — including one to forever ban the income tax. But now my service to you is best spent fighting for American values in the court system and stopping the Biden Administration’s failed policies like the attempted OSHA vaccine mandate.
I’m happy to return any recent campaign contributions, and Lord willing, I hope that you will give me the opportunity to run for elected office in Tennessee again in the coming years.
In October, a federal grand jury in Nashville returned a five-count indictment charging Kelsey and Nashville social club owner Joshua Smith with violating multiple campaign finance laws as part of a conspiracy to benefit Kelsey’s 2016 campaign for U.S. Congress. It’s unclear whether his upcoming trial is one of the “exciting changes to [his] personal life” that Kelsey references in his email.
The folks at Castle Retail Group, who brought you Cash Saver and the new High Point Grocery, unveil their new Downtown grocery store — South Point Grocery — on Thursday.
Tennessee’s State Treasurer and Joe’s Wines and Liquors clarified where they stand on Ukraine this week.
Tennessee has “no direct investment exposure to countries such as China and Russia,” Tennessee Treasurer David Lillard said in a letter issued this week. Lillard said he was responding to news articles about other state pension plans working to review their investments in Russia. However, Lillard said, “I want to reassure you that this is not a concern for Tennessee.”
“I want to reassure you that this is not a concern for Tennessee.”
Tennessee Treasurer David Lillard
Credit: state of Tennessee/Treasurer David Lillard
Lillard said his office uses two indexes to screen nations for investments by the state: the Global Democracy Index, developed by The Economist magazine, and the Corruption Perceptions Index, created by Transparency International.
“Countries that score badly on the combination of corruption and democracy are eliminated as possible investment options,” Lillard said. “For more than a decade, the screening has protected [Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System — TCRS] from making direct investments in countries such as China and Russia.”
Joe’s Wines and Liquors sent an email to its customers this week in response to numerous questions about Russian and Ukraine products. The note explains what products the store carries and what it does not.
Credit: Joe’s Wine and Liquor from Facebook
We do not have any on the shelf right now, and things will stay that way.
Joe’s Wine and Liquor via email
For instance, Smirnoff and Stoli, maybe the two most recognizable vodka brands, were Russian products but have not been Russian-owned nor Russian-made “for decades now,” Joe’s said.
“We sell Khor Vodka, which is made in the Ukraine, and is a top-three vodka worldwide in terms of sales,” Joe’s said in the email. “We will have it stacked up in the store [Tuesday, February 28th] morning if you’d like to try it out and show your support.
“Russian Standard is our only truly Russian Vodka, and it is owned by a Russian oligarch. We do not have any on the shelf right now, and things will stay that way.”
The ACLU of Tennessee has requested that the state of Tennessee release all records regarding its announced charter school partnership with Hillsdale College in Michigan.
In its request, covered under the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU stated, “According to recent news reports, Governor Bill Lee is developing a partnership with Hillsdale College to establish a number of publicly funded charter schools throughout Tennessee to be operated by the private Christian university.”
The request added, “Governor Lee’s plan raises serious constitutional concerns.”
A representative from the governor’s office was not immediately available for comment.
Chalkbeat reported on the controversial partnership in an article on Feb. 7, including that Hillsdale President Larry Arnn and Lee have discussed opening 50 to 100 charter schools across Tennessee.
In his State of the State address on Jan. 31, Lee announced the Hillsdale partnership and a new Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee as part of his larger plan to promote “informed patriotism” and combat “anti-American thought” in history and civics education. Numerous other organizations provide civics curriculum, but Lee is not seeking a request for proposals or using a bidding process.
The Republican governor’s push comes at a time when states across the country are passing measures that attack critical race theory, ban books about difficult topics from school libraries and syllabi, and restrict classroom discussions on certain topics about race and gender.
There are longstanding debates on how educators should teach patterns of injustice in U.S. history. The latest battle in the ideological feud started after conservative activists challenged districts that incorporated instructional material from The New York Times 1619 Project.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project’s architect, received a Pulitzer Prize for her work, and Hillsdale’s Arnn signed a joint letter asking the Pulitzer board to revoke the award. Arnn also led the Trump administration’s response initiative, the 1776 Commission. The governor’s plan to bring dozens of Hillsdale charter schools to Tennessee and the mounting resistance to the partnership are the latest battle in the classroom culture wars.
“This would flow through the established, unbiased charter application, just like any other proposed public charter school,” Lee’s press secretary Casey Black stated in February. “We are simply introducing another high-quality option for Tennessee students.”
But others have pushed back on that claim.
“Hillsdale College and their warped version of history have no right to be in our kids’ public schools. Our children deserve to learn the truth about our history — good, bad, and ugly — without pretext for the people who justified discrimination and excused violence against Black Americans,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat.
“There is no legitimate “both sides” to such events, and we must not welcome, or pay for, educational materials that pardon clear acts of racism,” she added.
Rep. Jason Hodges had similarly strong words.
“This is purely about money and ideology,” said Hodges, a Clarksville Democrat in February.
And in its recent statement, the ACLU called the deal a questionable use of taxpayer dollars.
“Outsourcing the operation of our public schools to a private, out-of-state religious college is not in the best interest of Tennessee’s children and is deeply concerning,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of ACLU of Tennessee.
She added, “Gov. Lee’s plan raises serious constitutional concerns, and the public deserves full transparency so that they know about any financial arrangement and other details of this agreement, as well as its impact on public education.”
Copies of the ACLU’s open records requests can be found here.
Bureau Chief Cathryn Stout, Ph.D. oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s news coverage. Contact Cathryn at cstout@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The tanks rolling on Ukraine have arrived at Tennessee gas pumps.
AAA, the auto club and gas price watcher, said average gas prices in Tennessee have jumped 15 cents in the last week. Prices have jumped 35 cents in the last month and 94 cents over the last year.
The latest increase, AAA said, is directly connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The move roiled the oil market with crude spiking over $100 per barrel before settling back into the mid-$90 range.
“Russia’s invasion and the responding escalating series of financial sanctions by the U.S. and its allies have given the global oil market the jitters,” said Megan Cooper, AAA spokeswoman. “Like the U.S. stock market, the oil market responds poorly to volatility. This serves as a reminder that events on the far side of the globe can have a ripple effect for American consumers.”
AAA said U.S. gas stocks decreased by 600,000 barrels last week to a total of more than 246 million barrels. Gas demand rose slightly here at the same time. Together, lower supply and higher demand are expected to continue to push gas prices higher.
Tennessee ranks seventh among U.S. states for the largest weekly increase. The highest 10 percent of pump prices across the state are around $3.69 for regular unleaded. The lowest 10 percent are around $3.19, AAA said.
Memphis had some of the least expensive gas prices in the state with an average price of $3.40. Nashville had the highest at around $3.53 per gallon.
Credit: AAA
The lowest gas price in the Memphis area is the Kick Stop in Horn Lake on Goodman Road. A gallon of regular was listed there at $2.89 per gallon, according to the Gas Buddy website. This was followed by the Marion, Arkansas Walmart ($2.95) and the Memphis Exxon on Perkins ($2.95).
To cut your fuel bill, AAA suggests limiting your drive time, removing excess weight in your car, driving conservatively, and consider paying cash as some retailers charge more for customers using cards.
Gov. Bill Lee has unveiled his proposal for overhauling K-12 funding in Tennessee, including a base of $6.6 billion to provide per-pupil funding to educate nearly 1 million public school students and $1.8 billion in extra support for students needing the most help.
The governor wants another $376 million for programs to improve literacy in kindergarten through the fourth grade and to strengthen career and technical education for older grades.
He also wants to set aside $100 million to reward schools whose students demonstrate success in learning to read, and in college and career readiness.
Lee outlined the first details of his long-awaited TISA plan, which stands for Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, on Thursday with his education chief, Penny Schwinn. Beginning in 2024-25, the state would provide $6.3 billion, and local governments would contribute $2.5 billion.
If the legislature approves the plan, Tennessee would join 38 other states that have some type of student-based funding model. Lee wants TISA to replace Tennessee’s 30-year-old funding formula called the Basic Education Program, or BEP, which is a mostly resource-based model that’s built around enrollment.
Critics say the state has chronically underfunded its BEP, and Lee has proposed investing $1 billion more annually for students through his plan by 2024. Tennessee currently ranks 44th nationally in education funding with an annual investment of $5.3 billion by state government.
“We need to invest more in our public schools in our state, but we don’t need to invest in a bulky, out-of-date funding formula,” said Lee, calling his plan a “straightforward (model) that Tennesseans can understand.”
The Republican governor’s proposal faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled legislature. While there’s broad support for putting more money into education while the state is flush with cash, many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle question whether they’ll have enough time to vet changes of such magnitude before adjourning in mid-April to face voters in an election year.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Lee acknowledged, “ but we certainly are very hopeful that this can get accomplished in this session.”
The rollout came following months of meetings and town halls to solicit statewide feedback on how to focus education funding more on students than on systems. The governor said every school district with stable enrollment would get more money under his plan.
Proposal starts with an expanded per-pupil base
The proposed base would cover the 46 components currently covered by the BEP, including teacher salaries, textbooks, technology, and bus transportation.
That base would be expanded to hire more school nurses and counselors at nationally recommended levels and more academic specialists to work with struggling students. And there would be additional state money to cover compensation for all school principals across Tennessee. Currently, about 265 school administrators are funded outside of the BEP through their local districts.
Funding for school safety — which lies outside of the current formula and requires districts to apply for grants — would move into the base and be distributed automatically.
But Lee isn’t advocating to add the state’s public pre-K program to the base. Pre-K is on the wish list of advocates lobbying to bring the program under the state’s funding formula and expand it to serve more 4-year-olds.
Extra funding for certain students
The proposed formula would set a base of $6,860 per pupil, then distribute additional money per pupil to support students in certain groups:
Economically disadvantaged students would get an extra 25%. That would affect more than 322,000 students who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals through direct certification or are homeless, foster, runaway, or migrant students.
Students living in areas of concentrated poverty would receive an extra 5%, affecting more than 652,000 students in schools designated to receive federal Title I money to help high percentages of disadvantaged children.
Students in rural areas and small school districts would get an extra 5%, affecting more than 326,500 students in counties with fewer than 25 students per square mile or in districts with 1,000 or fewer students.
Students with unique learning needs would receive between 15% and 150% extra, depending on 10 categories of need and allowing for the cost of services. This would affect more than 288,000 students with unique learning needs ranging from speech and language challenges to dyslexia to English language learners to students who are homebound or in residential programs.
Charter school students would get 4% extra, affecting 42,000-plus students to help pay for facilities for the publicly financed, independently operated schools. Once under the formula, charter school facilities would be eliminated as a line item in the state’s annual budget, Schwinn said.
The weighted funding is “stackable” — meaning that students could draw extra funding for multiple needs. For instance, a student who is allocated additional funding for being economically disadvantaged could also draw extra funding for living in a rural area, and still more funding if they are learning to speak English as a second language.
Fast-growing districts get stipends
Lee proposes giving additional per-pupil funding allowances to districts that grow their enrollment by more than 2 percent from the previous year.
Districts with that level of growth for three consecutive years can also receive funding allowances to help pay for building and infrastructure needs.
Local funding would be affected — but not immediately
Tennessee has one of the nation’s most complicated calculations for determining how much state funding that districts receive and local governments must contribute for schools.
The BEP distributes state funding among school districts based on their local fiscal capacity, which generally is driven by local property or sales tax revenue.
Lee is proposing the state pay 70 percent and locals 30 percent to cover TISA’s per-pupil base and extra weights for students needing extra support. The state would cover all of the funding for direct programs, outcomes, and fast-growing districts.
To give local governments time to transition to the changes, the total local contribution would freeze for four years until the 2027 fiscal year, when Schwinn said the increase would be similar to what districts would normally experience under the BEP.
Locals would still have to follow state laws requiring that local funds budgeted for schools cannot decrease when state funding for schools increases.
Inflation, cost of living are not factored in
During a media call with reporters, Schwinn said the proposal contains no mechanism to address inflation and the cost of living. The state would address those, she said, by regularly increasing funding to the base, as determined by the legislature.
Keeping up with escalating education costs and factoring in the cost of living, especially for urban areas, have been among the problems with the BEP. In recent years, court challenges by multiple districts charged the formula routinely allocates funds arbitrarily instead of basing them on research about current education costs and local markets.
Questions remain about intent
Student-centered funding allows money to follow a student to his or her school based on a student’s needs, which would make it easier for Tennessee to start a private school voucher program or shift more funding to charter schools from traditional public schools.
Lee — who has done more than any Tennessee governor in history to champion programs that give families more education choices — has denied that’s a goal behind his funding proposal. However, numerous local officials are skeptical of his motives.
The rollout of Lee’s proposal came on the same day the Tennessee Supreme Court was re-hearing oral arguments about the state’s school voucher law, which Lee pushed for but was overturned by a lower court in 2020 for applying only to students in Memphis and Nashville. The state, which was sued by local governments in those cities, has appealed the ruling.
Charging stations for electric vehicles are headed to gas stations, food stores, and truck stops across Tennessee thanks, in part, to $88.3 million from the federal government.
The state will get more than $13 million in the current fiscal year to begin the program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy. The rest of the funds will be delivered over the next five years.
Tennessee’s share of the funds is part of a larger, $7.5 billion effort from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to build a nationwide system of charging stations. The move is hoped to make electric vehicles reliable for short and long distance trips.
”For too long, Tennessee has had unreliable and inconsistent charging facilities along its roads and highways, inconveniencing drivers and putting a drag on our regional economy,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) said in a statement. “These overdue investments will strengthen our state’s critical infrastructure — paving the way for cleaner, easier driving and supporting good-paying union jobs.”
The country’s current system now has a network of about 100,000 charging stations. The Biden Adminstration’s goal with the new funding is to expand that network to 500,000 chargers.
The new money directs states to work with the private sector to build this network. This is “best achieved by harnessing the existing nationwide network of refueling locations,” according to lobbyists for refueling stations. The bill gives priority for charging stations at “travel centers, food retailers, and convenience stores,” according to the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA). The bill will not allow other companies to install charging stations and states cannot install them at rest areas.
The truck stop organization says its existing network offers convenience, amenities, security, food, and competitive and transparent pricing, all usually less a mile from an interstate. Gas station advocates say their stores will be able to offer charging in “communities where most residents cannot reliably charge their electric vehicles overnight” and that they are more suited for quick-stop charging that may not require a complete fill up.
“Our industry understands that electric vehicle drivers will expect their driving and refueling experience to be as safe, seamless, and predictable as it is today,” reads a joint statement from NATSO and SIGMA. “There is no ‘range anxiety’ today for drivers of gas-powered vehicles. That is achievable for electric vehicles as well.”
The new network is hoped to help grow electric vehicle sales in the U.S. to 50 percent of the entire automobile market by 2030.
”The U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese [electric vehicle] market,” reads a statement form theWhiteHouse. “The President believes that must change.”
Credit: Tennessee Valley Authority/ TVA’s Electric Highway Coalition
Last year, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) launched the Electric Highway Coalition to bolster the electric charging network across its service area and into other states. That coalition has grown to 14 other energy providers across 29 states and the District of Columbia. This push is hoped to install a network of fast charging stations across these areas with stations located less than 100 miles from each other.
More people left Memphis over the last two years than any other part of the state. That’s a bad sign for the area’s economic growth, according to a Tennessee labor expert.
Marianne Wanamaker, a labor economist at the University of Tennessee, told state lawmakers Tuesday that — from an output perspective — the U.S. and Tennessee economies are “operating as though Covid never happened.” However, fewer people are working, and 95,000 employees are needed for jobs in Tennessee. Now, there’s only half that number of workers available in the state.
Bridging the gap between high output and fewer workers means those who are working spend more time at their jobs. Wanamaker said this may explain “why working Americans express feeling burned out and exhausted.”
The American labor supply “took a beating” during Covid, Wanamaker said, and is struggling to recover. She said it’s unlikely that the labor force participation rate (the amount of Americans working or actively looking for jobs) will ever return to the record 67-percent rate experienced in the late 1990s before the dotcom bubble.
More than 2.1 million Americans retired early in the pandemic, Wanamaker said. Unlike previous times, she does not believe many of those will “un-retire” and return to the workforce, wiping out a significant portion of the “bonus labor force.”
Many blamed the so-called worker shortage on emergency pandemic unemployment insurance benefits from the federal government. So sure of this notion, Tennessee Republican lawmakers opted the state out of said benefits to prod those taking the money back into the workforce. Wanamaker said “our draw down on unemployment insurance is quite low compared to where we were last year.”
Sen. Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) said many “snowflake millennials” are now just living off the wealth of their dying parents.
“I was reading the other day that us war babies and Baby Boomers are dying off and there’s been a huge transfer of wealth to snowflake millennials — one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history — and a lot of them don’t have to work,” Nicely said. “They inherited a house and they got money in the bank. A lot of them are in pretty good shape. What impact does that have on people not working?”
In response, Wanamaker said, without unemployment insurance, people are financing non-work in other ways. She said the labor market is experiencing weakness at all education levels, but remarked vaguely on the recent increases in the stock market and housing valuations in Knoxville.
Wanamaker focused on the fact that an economy cannot grow without people, and that’s a challenge for Tennessee at the moment. Deaths exceeded births in the state by 7 percent in 2020, she said. Even without Covid deaths, Wanamaker predicted that deaths would have exceeded births here by 2024.
(Credit: University of Tennessee)
The only population growth for the state that year came from people arriving from other states. Without that, she said, Tennessee’s population would be shrinking and dragging economic growth. Those migrations did not happen uniformly across the state. In fact, Memphis was — far and away — the biggest loser.
To track migration, Wanamaker used U.S. Postal Service data from change-of-address cards. Someone moving gives the Post Office the address they’re moving from and the address they’re moving to. Each change of address card is considered one household, and each household is conservatively considered to be about two people. From this information, migration trends can be calculated.
Knoxville, the state’s biggest population winner, gained 8,202 households (or 16,404 people) in 2020 and 2021. Bristol gained 3,446 households (or 6,892 people), while Johnson City gained 1,484 households (or 2,968 people).
(Credit: University of Tennessee)
At the same time, Memphis lost 8,555 households (or 17,110 people), in those two years, losing “as many households as Knoxville has gained,” Wanamaker said. U.S. Census Bureau data show that Shelby County’s population rose by only 2,100 people between 2010 and 2020 (from 927,644 to 929,744), or 0.2 percent.
“I believe population and labor force dynamics are the major policy challenges of the next 5 to 10 years,” Wanamaker said. “Supply chain snarls will abate. … It remains very possible that the [Federal Reserve Bank] will find a soft landing on inflation that will keep us out of a double-dip recession.
“Meanwhile, the labor shortage and lack of population growth is going to be a challenge with 100-percent certainty.”
As for a remedy, Wanamaker said “recruiting migrants [from other states and legal immigrants form other countries] to the state will determine the rate of economic growth over the short and medium term.”
The Ninth District: Note phallic incursion from 2010 redistricting.
(Photo: courtesy Congressman Steve Cohen)
Maybe you saw this quote last week, when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the quiet part out loud while defending the defeat of the Voting Rights Act in the Senate: “African-American voters,” he warbled, “are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”
Never mind that McConnell apparently believes African Americans aren’t actual Americans, like, you know, white people. And never mind that the bills his party is passing in GOP-controlled states around the country are intended to change that pesky situation before the next election rolls around. McConnell is intentionally glossing over the fact that the Voting Rights Act would have outlawed the implementation of these undemocratic new laws, and that every Republican Senator voted against it — as did two hypocrites calling themselves Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
Since the 2020 election, dozens of restrictive voting laws have been enacted in 19 states, laws that supposedly remedy “voter fraud” (which didn’t happen) but that have the actual purpose of making voting more difficult for poor people and people of color — who just coincidentally tend to vote for Democrats.
You don’t have to look any further than Nashville for a perfect example of how far the GOP is willing to go to establish a permanent and overwhelming majority. Last week, the Tennessee Senate Judiciary and House State Government committees approved three redistricting plans for new state House, state Senate, and Congressional maps, which are drawn every decade after the federal census to reshape state and federal districts, if necessary, to ensure equity at the polls.
The new Republican-created Tennessee maps are a joke at all three levels, a mugging of democracy in plain sight. Newly configured districts in and around Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville are designed to break up neighborhoods and Democratic voting strongholds in urban areas, especially Black communities. The new maps pit Black and Democratic incumbents against each other in four instances at the state representative level and give Republicans a huge numerical advantage in eight out of nine of Tennessee’s Congressional districts. That’s an 11 percent representation in Congress for Democrats, who made up 41 percent of the vote in the most recent statewide election.
The lone outlier is Tennessee’s Ninth District, represented by Congressman Steve Cohen, but it’s not for lack of trying. After the 2010 census (in what was widely seen as a direct skewering of Cohen), the GOP took a literally phallic-shaped piece out of the Ninth that just so happened to include Cohen’s place of worship in East Memphis and a large surrounding Jewish neighborhood. To balance the population math, the GOP added a large chunk of Tipton County to the Ninth, meaning Cohen now represents a disparate melange of rural, inner-city, and suburban voters. This isn’t just unfair to Cohen (or whoever the Ninth District representative may be in the future); it’s unfair to all the residents of the district, who deserve to be represented by someone who reflects their concerns and values. The Republicans, it appears, would prefer it if Memphis residents found themselves being represented by a Republican turd farmer from Atoka.
But compared to Nashville, Memphis got off easy. The Fifth District — represented by Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper, and which currently encompasses most of Nashville and Davidson County — will now encompass parts of five (count ’em!) counties. The city’s vote will be split and allocated to three rural-majority districts. Meaning Nashville’s urban residents will soon more than likely be represented by three Republican turd farmers.
This isn’t how democracy is supposed to work. Our elected representatives shouldn’t be allowed to create districts specifically designed to keep them — and their party — in office. Geographic political districts — at every level — should be created by bipartisan commissions, not party hacks. And yes, I know gerrymandering has been done by Democrats as well. The point is that it’s wrong, no matter who does it, and that we had in our hands a bill that would have eliminated all this cheating, that would have kept states from arbitrarily reducing the number of polling places in certain districts or shortening voting periods or, for god’s sake, banning the dispensing of water to voters in line.
In our system, unfettered democracy is supposed to be a feature, not a bug. But unfortunately, that’s not how the Republicans see it these days.
