Tennessee legislature covered a lot

From gun laws to free tuition at community colleges

NASHVILLE — From annexation to wine, from cursive writing to Common Core, from free community college to higher tuition for everyone else, the Tennessee legislature covered a lot of ground during its three-month run that ended Thursday.

Including some that legislative leaders didn’t intend to trod.

It turns out that the biggest surprise of the year — the Senate’s overwhelming and swift approval of a bill doing away with permits, background checks and safety training to go openly armed in public — was a surprise to many lawmakers as well.

“I was caught a little off guard,” Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said Thursday. “I thought the bill was going to be rolled. It wasn’t.

“Here it is on the floor; what do we do now? I’m standing on the dais; what do I do? And let me assure you, there were many of our members who (said), did that really just pass? That was one of the most interesting votes I’ve ever seen on the Senate floor: relatively little debate and I think that bill does deserve better debate. I feel like the carry-permit system we have now is a good one, that we have a bright line between the good guys and the bad guys, so to speak,” Ramsey said.

The specter of people with guns on their belts walking down the street outside schools, churches and suburban restaurants, without the need of a permit, training or criminalbackground check set off a stir across the state, with even gun advocates divided on the issue,

and sidetracked the last two weeks of the legislative session. It took a 10-1 House subcommittee vote to kill the bill, two days before adjournment.

The solidly bipartisan rejection roused the ire of Tennessee Firearms Association executive director John Harris, who charged in an e-mail blast to his members that “legislative stunts and shenanigans (were) used to infringe your rights again.”

Ramsey said he expects similar bills “will be something we’ll have to address every year.” Harris virtually guaranteed it: “This means it is time to dig in and fight harder than ever,” his e-mail said.

The no-permit fiasco shouldn’t overshadow the legislature’s significant accomplishments, Gov. Bill Haslam, Ramsey, House Speaker Beth Harwell and other legislative leaders agreed.

“As always, there were a lot of difficult issues but I thought the legislature worked hard to get to the right answers,” Haslam said.

That primarily included, from his perspective, the tuition-free community college plan he calls “Tennessee Promise” that will likely be the landmark initiative of Haslam’s first term.

Starting with the class of 2015, high school graduates can attend 2½ years of community college or the state’s colleges of applied technology without paying tuition or mandatory fees, regardless of their high school grades, as long as they attend full time, maintain satisfactory progress and meet other conditions.

Or, they can take the same amount of financial aid to offset tuition at a four-year public or private institution, although it won’t cover the full costs and only for the same amount of time.

Another milestone: the end of 59 years of annexation-at-will by Tennessee towns and cities. Henceforth, property owners outside of city limits can either petition to be annexed — with only those who agree brought into the city — or a city council can initiate annexation that a majority of residents in the territory must approve in referendums.

Early in the session, lawmakers ended seven years of frustration by consumers and voted to allow wine sales in Tennessee food stores, starting July 1, 2016, in localities where voters approve it in local referendums.

The referendums can start with this November’s general election.

On the education front, the legislature upheld the Common Core State Standards against the complaints of some conservatives who believe the nationwide K-12 curriculum standards developed by the National Governors Association and state education commissioners are a federal plot to take control of education policy. But legislators did agree to delay the “PARCC” testing program developed with Common Core for at least a year to see if there are alternatives.

The $32.4 billion budget proposed by the governor and approved earlier this month contains no new money for higher education, which means a higher-than- expected tuition increase on the state’s public campuses.

And lawmakers ordered the State Board of Education to require instruction in cursive writing at whatever grade level it deems appropriate — most likely in third grade.

Senate Republican Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, who shepherded most of the governor’s legislation and several of his own, said “a tremendous amount was accomplished — some huge initiatives by the Haslam administration and some pretty stout initiatives by the General Assembly itself.”

Norris, for example, won approval of a bill allowing military veterans to attend state universities at in-state tuition rates regardless of whether they have established residency.