LEGISLATURE TEMPORARILY LOSES GRIP
“You can’t always get what you want,” the Rolling Stones famously sang.
Some members of the Tennessee House, angry at not getting their way on stopping Gov. Bill Haslam’s gas tax bill, responded to that maxim Thursday by passing nine amendments to the fiscal 2018 budget that put it nearly a half billion dollars out of balance, and thus unable to be passed.
Members of the leadership in the lower house, who were putting together the final pieces of the $37 billion budget before attempting passage, recessed the session after the amendments passed and decided to try again Friday.
Fortunately, it was only a one-day temper tantrum. Yesterday, cooler heads prevailed, and the House passed the budget, 83-2, largely as it had been before Thursday’s fracas. It now goes to the Senate before heading to the governor for his signature.
Bruised feelings had been evident Thursday, but House leaders felt confident the situation could be resolved.
Majority Leader Glen Casada, R-Franklin, gave the Nashville Tennessean the proper diplomatic response.
“It’s the democratic process,” he said. “Each person is represented by their people, and they’re advocating their district’s desires.”
House Finance Subcommittee Chairman Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, probably came closer to expressing the feelings of the chamber’s leadership.
“We got some people in our caucus that are unhappy, and pretty much stay unhappy,” he told the Times Free Press, “so they cut a deal with the Democrats to hijack the budget process, and they were successful today. But again, hopefully, we’ll get it straightened out sooner rather than later.”
The irony of the situation was the recalcitrant, far right Republicans got help from Democrats in passing the amendments to stall the budget process just as moderate Republicans did in getting Haslam’s IMPROVE Act — which raised gas taxes but lowered taxes on food, among other things — passed late last month.
In another irony, the far right Republicans, tight-fisted on most spending measures, were only too delighted to join the more spendthrift Democrats to tack on $500 million of amendments to throw off the drive toward a balanced budget.
Meanwhile, Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, saw the handwriting on the wall concerning her seat belt legislation and pulled it from further consideration this year. The legislation to put seat belts on buses, proposed after the bus crash that killed six Woodmore Elementary School students last November, already had been relegated “behind the budget,” meaning the House and Senate Finance Committees would consider it only after the state spending plan had been passed.
Legislators evidently had sticker shock about the cost of the original bill, which would have required safety restraint systems on all public and private school buses by July 1, 2023. The fiscal note estimated the state’s cost would be $58.7 million, and local governments’ share would be $423.4 million.
Favors eventually amended the bill — which was sponsored in the upper chamber by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga — to require only new buses ordered or purchased as of July 1, 2019, to have the safety systems, which lowered the cost, but it apparently still was too much for legislators.
It’s almost a given that in time most school buses will have seat belts. The question is whether factories will begin to add them as standard equipment first or whether they will be added as an option often enough that they become standard equipment on all new buses.
Either way, the bill will remain in the House Finance Committee until next year when it can be considered again. And fortunately, Durham School Services, which had the Hamilton County Schools’ contract at the time of the crash and continues to have it, has made a number of safety upgrades to keep students safer.
Another bill by a Hamilton County legislator, one which attempts to deal in the state with the nation’s opioid crisis, is heading to the Senate. State Rep. Patsy Hazlewood’s measure allowing nonprofit groups to offer needle-exchange programs for opioid addicts passed the House 71-17 on Thursday.
The idea is that the nonprofit groups, which would not receive taxpayer funding, would offer addicts wrap-around services such as shelters, substance abuse/mental health counseling, and job search assistance.
“I hate to say it,” Hazlewood said during the debate, “but the [clean] needles are the ‘bait’.”
While legislators can’t always get what they want, Tennessee is fortunate to be in such sound financial shape that it can give its residents what they need and try to improve on the public services it offers beyond their needs.