Friends,
It was an exciting year in the legislature, with the initial excitement coming from the Senate. As the tension mounted at high noon on the first day of session, January 9, the clerk of the Senate made history with these words: “Senator Kilby?…Senator Kilby votes ‘Wilder.’ Senator Kurita?…Senator Kurita votes ‘Ramsey.’” The crossover vote from Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville sealed victory for Senator Ron Ramsey, who became the first Republican Speaker of the Tennessee Senate, or Lieutenant Governor, in 138 years.
On the House side the four-seat Democratic majority remained intact, and I was very appreciative to be elected Republican Floor Leader by my GOP colleagues. I was especially excited that my new position allowed me to attend our House Republican Caucus leadership meetings so that I could finally be “in the know.” I would be kidding myself to say that you will be “in the know” simply by reading my account of the year below, but I have done my best to provide you with what I think you will find a unique insight into the legislative session. Hopefully, you will find that I have done my best, as well, to serve you this year.
2007 Year in Review
Smoking
Pork
Ethics
Welfare
Minimum Wage
Education
Health Care
Crime
Cable Choice
Conclusion
The biggest battle of the year occurred over what to do with a cigarette tax increase proposed by Governor Bredesen. As the governor told a group of us over dinner one night, “A year in which you have plenty of money to go around is exactly the year to raise taxes.” Arguing that this is faulty logic to say the least, I and others on both sides of the aisle urged the governor to cut the sales tax on groceries to offset any increase in the cigarette tax. After all, we ended the year with $1.3 billion in new recurring and nonrecurring revenue. Tennessee missed a golden opportunity to provide meaningful tax relief to our working families when we finally decided not to cut the grocery sales tax in half from 6% to 3% but instead to lower it only a half percent. At the same time, we raised the tax on cigarettes from 20¢ to 62¢ per pack. I hope that this price increase will curb teenage smoking, but it was fiscally irresponsible not to lower another tax with so much new money coming in. A great businessman always seeks to bring in more money, but a great governor seeks to bring in less. A year in which you have plenty of money to go around is exactly the year to cut taxes.
In other smoking news, Tennessee also enacted an indoor smoking ban that will go into effect October 1. The only problem is that the ban will not apply to establishments that card and prohibit patrons under the age of 21. This anomaly is a good vignette into how the legislature works. The restaurants association actually favored a public smoking ban so that restaurant owners would no longer have to put up with smoking yet could blame the ban on the legislature when their smoking patrons complained. The bars and strip clubs, however, did not favor the ban. In such a situation, what does the legislature do? We banned smoking in restaurants but not in bars and strip clubs. Such a solution may be practical, but it’s not principled. The purported justification for the ban was that it would protect the health of the employees working in the establishment. As I pointed out in an amendment to place bars and strip clubs back into the legislation, these employees deserve the same protection as those working in restaurants. Ultimately, my amendment was defeated, and I voted against the ban. If we are going to take away property owners’ rights to control activities in their own establishments, we should do so in a manner that applies across the board to everyone. If the restaurant association wanted the ban to apply only in restaurants, it could have established a smoking ban among its own members without the need for legislation. In fact many restaurant customers were already voting with their feet to patronize such places as the Rendezvous and Opryland Hotel, which had implemented smoking bans on their own last year. We will never know whether this private market solution would have struck the right balance between the customers who wanted a smoke free environment and those who did not.
Meanwhile, I caused a bit of a stir in the legislature by pointing out that our own smoking ban in public buildings that had been enacted last year was being flagrantly violated by members and staff throughout the legislative plaza complex. The House Democratic leadership even allowed a room right off the side of the House chamber to be used as a smoking room. The same leadership was also sanctioning the practice by instructing the building manager to continually clean up a sitting area which had been set up around an ashtray in the garage. The hypocrisy required for us to ban smoking in private establishments when we were not even enforcing our own public smoking ban is shameful. After I pointed this out on the House floor, the practice subsided greatly.
I caused a bigger stir in the legislature when I refused to submit a request for pet
pork projects in my district. As I mentioned earlier, we had the largest budget surplus this year in the history of Tennessee. There is always much wrangling over spending in lean years, but I learned this year that there is also a large struggle when there is too much money to go around. I did my best to fight against the worst spending proposal that I have heard of in my time in the legislature. After passing the $250 million cigarette tax increase, the House Democratic leadership proposed that $20 million be spent on so-called community enhancement grants to nonprofits and governmental agencies. The grants amounted to $100,000 in each House district and $300,000 in each Senate district to be allocated by each legislator. Instead of submitting a proposal on how to spend the $100,000, I submitted an envelope of bacon saying, “I’m not going to take the pork. I’m giving the pork back today.”
Public money is to be used for the public good, not for private good, and certainly not for the good of the legislator. In the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal, the last thing the state needed to do was to give funds to legislators to hand out in their districts. The possibilities for kickbacks and for buying votes is too great. Even the best intentioned legislator would end up distributing funds to cronies and pet projects and would subconsciously if not consciously wonder whether he were leveraging support from these groups come reelection time. More importantly, nonprofits would feel pressured to support individual legislators for receiving their spoils. After one legislator in Nashville designated his entire $100,000 to nonprofits of which he serves on the board, I wonder how many board invitations he will get next year.
The General Assembly took a step in the right direction when it ultimately adopted the
Senate approach of placing distribution of the grants at the discretion of Secretary of State Riley
Darnell. Unfortunately, political influence was not removed from the process. When asked
whether legislators’ proposals would influence his decision, Darnell, who is elected by the
legislators, responded, “Is the Pope Catholic?” House Democratic Leader Gary Odom, who
initiated the pork grant plan, even had the gall to say, “I’m going to tell Riley, ‘You’ve got the
list. What do I need to do to get a check in the amount I was requested by the organizations?’” When the Secretary of State rubber stamps legislators’ preferences with a nod and a wink, the
process still stinks of political cronyism. Know that I will continue to fight for you to ensure that your taxpayer money is spent based on objective criteria and not on the whim of individual legislators. As the federal government recognizes in providing an income tax deduction for charitable contributions, it is up to you, not up to the government, to pick and choose which nonprofits are worthy of your money and which are not.
The legislature squandered its best opportunity for ethics reform this year by rejecting an amendment I put forward to finally ban lobbyist-funded legislative receptions. Receptions are nightly social functions where members of special interest groups wine and dine legislators and bend their ears in an attempt to influence their votes. As one of the exceptions to the lobbyist gift ban, they are a last remnant of the good ol’ boy attitude that one of the perks of office is that lobbyists should foot the bill for legislators’ wining and dining. This year lobbyists spent $378,415 on such receptions, which were held nearly every week with multiple receptions often occurring in one night. Unfortunately, many legislators feel that going out on a nightly basis on the lobbyist dime is as much a part of the job as is reading the bills (or maybe even more a part…more on that later). My amendment was defeated on a motion by Rep. Randy Rinks (D-Savannah), who claimed to be one of the “good ol’ boys,” stating that “we’re making the system inaccessible to the people we serve.” Why he can’t meet with constituents in his office during regular business hours without a drink in his hand, I’ll never understand. At the very least, one would hope that he and other legislators would have realized that the free flow of alcohol available at such events creates a dangerous situation for other travelers on our roads after one legislator flipped his car several times this February while driving home drunk from three receptions. It is a blessing that he did not injure anyone else and that he is recuperating from his own injuries.
While the General Assembly failed to move the ball forward in the ethics arena this year thankfully our U.S. Attorney, David Kustoff, did his part by obtaining convictions on the remaining Tennessee Waltz defendants. We are finally rid of officeholders who insist on staying in office while under indictment for accepting bribes. Or we are rid of them until the next FBI sting, anyway. We still need an elected state Attorney General to combat public corruption without having to rely on the federal government to clean up our mess. We took a step in the right direction when the new Republican-controlled Senate finally passed a resolution to hold the Attorney General accountable through popular election this year. I will continue to work to get this resolution passed through the House as well.
Welfare
The Bredesen administration took a huge leap backwards in welfare reform this year by eliminating the 18-consecutive-month time limit for receiving welfare benefits. The 18-consecutive-month time limit and a 5-year lifetime limit were two revolutionary ideas put in place by the Sundquist administration in 1996 to end welfare as we knew it. The federal government that year borrowed many of the ideas used in Tennessee, including the time limits, when it changed the federal program from Aid to Families with Dependent Children to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. Unfortunately, the legislature effectively removed the “temporary” from the program this year after an amendment I offered to put the time limit back in was defeated 54 to 43 on a largely party-line vote.
The worst aspect of the major policy change was that the Department of Human Services attempted to hide it in a much larger bill, telling legislative sponsors that the bill would only “bring the program in line with federal requirements.” Thankfully, I read the bill and discovered this mischaracterization. It turns out that the Department has effectively unreformed welfare reform by refusing to enforce even the 5-year lifetime ban except in a handful of cases among the thousands of welfare recipients who have been on the rolls since 1996. I will be sure to bring this up during the department hearings next year.
Even as the Democrats in Congress were raising the federal minimum wage, putting thousands of high school students, college students, and other low-skilled workers out of work, the Democrats in Nashville felt compelled to push the issue in the state House to try to score political points. Whoops! But no one bothered to read the bill. As I pointed out on the House floor, the bill actually applied only to small businesses in Tennessee and not to large multi-state retailers like Wal-Mart. It would have put small businesses at a huge competitive disadvantage and possibly put them out of business altogether. Thankfully, the bill was dead on arrival in the Senate.
Education
Education policy proved a mixed bag this year. We provided helpful additional funding but did so with virtually no strings attached. I voted in favor of the new funding formula that better allocates funds to school systems with a higher population of low-income students, among other things. But more money without reform is throwing money into a black hole. Fewer than 20% of Tennessee students graduate with a four-year college degree, only 25% graduate with either a two-year or four-year degree, and only 80% of current ninth graders will go on to finish high school. I’ve come to the conclusion that we need radical changes to our education system. I proposed this year giving Parental Choice Scholarships equal to the amount that state and local school systems would have spent on each child to allow parents of underprivileged children the chance for their children to receive the quality education they deserve at the K-12 school of their choice. These scholarships have proven successful in removing impoverished children from failed schools in other states, and I will continue to push this issue in years to come.
A small step in the right direction could have been accomplished this year with minimal political courage, but it was not. It is shameful that the Bredesen administration and House Democrats were unwilling to take on the special interests to support a bill by Rep. Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) to simply allow charter schools to serve all failing students within a school system, regardless of which school the students are zoned to attend. Currently, charter schools are only able to serve students who are zoned for certain failing schools within the school system. The new charter schools are facing a crisis because they have invested in buildings in neighborhoods near failing schools only to have the state fudge the numbers to take those failing schools off the list. Now a charter school in South Memphis, for example, can only enroll students who are zoned for the failing schools, which have now shifted to North Memphis. This problem needs immediate attention. Hopefully, next year it will get the attention it deserves.
Another of my education proposals this year was a pilot program to give students cash rewards for academic achievement. I found out after proposing this initiative that a similar program has worked to improve Advanced Placement scores in Texas. Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced the same idea for New York City schools in July. It may not work, but we have to be willing to try new policies in education. What we have been doing for the last 40 years simply has not worked. I applaud the Bredesen administration for finally beginning the process of taking over 17 Memphis schools which have been on the failing schools list for six years. The legislature left this language discretionary this year when we should have mandated that the state take over and impose radical change. Time will tell whether improvements will be made or whether there will be simply tinkering around the edges.
All was quiet on the health care front this year. I continue to believe that a key component to lowering health care costs is curbing the number of meritless lawsuits. A medical malpractice reform bill that I co-sponsored actually made it out of committee in the House this year before being killed on the floor by Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley (D-Nashville).
A serious health problem that deserves more legislative attention is that infant mortality rates in some parts of Memphis and elsewhere in Tennessee rival those of third world countries. In most instances the resources are available for prenatal care but are not being utilized. In another attempt to use market incentives to encourage good behavior and long-term savings, I proposed paying TennCare recipients to receive prenatal checkups. The idea was met with some skepticism by TennCare representatives but Speaker pro tem Lois DeBerry (D-Memphis) and Rep. Joanne Favors (D-Chattanooga), a nurse, helped salvage the bill from defeat and pledged to work with me toward a solution. I look forward to working with both of them this fall and winter to help find a solution to this horrendous problem.
Crime
Crime is holding our community back from its potential to be a great city, and it is time we tackle this issue with full force. Badly needed crime legislation was at least partially funded this year but will have to be revisited next year. The “crooks with guns” bill, which I co-sponsored, imposes mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes committed with firearms. We were unable to fund the bill to strengthen the sentences for all felonies with firearms, but at least some of them now will carry stiffer penalties. As Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin has said, the effort would not have succeeded were it not for the dedication of many Memphis citizens who wrote, called, and even drove to Nashville to demand that the legislation be added to the budget. Thank you! It is unfortunate that this bill was only funded at the eleventh hour and even then, only partially, but we will push to have the legislation fully funded next year. We will also push to fully fund the hiring of more prosecutors to convict criminals. We partially funded 42 new prosecutors statewide, many of whom will come to Shelby County. Protecting its citizens is the first duty of government. This duty deserves complete, not partial, fulfillment.
Cable choice
A proposal to provide consumers with more options for cable service stalled in the House Commerce Committee this year. The bill would have made it easier for traditional telephone companies to offer cable service the way traditional cable companies now offer telephone service. Working with Sen. Paul Stanley (R-Germantown) and Germantown High School TV, I was able to add amendments to the bill that would have protected the Emmy-award-winning TV station while allowing consumers more choices for their cable service. The bill was ultimately put off until next year, so you will have to resort to satellite TV if you want a cable option other than your local provider.
I returned from a mission trip to Honduras with a greater appreciation for our American democratic system. The face of poverty there resulting in large part from the failure to establish democracy until 1981 was sobering. In the mountains there was no electricity, sewage system, paved roads, or even roads for that matter. We showered in the stream and slept ten to a small, two-room mud home. In the city a trip to the dump revealed the masses of men, women, children, and pregnant women who lived and worked among the stench, cows, noise, vultures, dogs, and heavy machinery of the refuse, searching for salvageables.
There are tangible economic benefits that can be gained from a stable government that upholds the rule of law and promotes entrepreneurship. But at the same time, even without economic prosperity, people can live rich, meaningful lives that are pleasing to the Lord and full of joy. Let us never forget that America is a nation truly blessed in its prosperity and government, and let us never forget in hubris that we did not earn this blessing. It is a gift from God. Thank you for letting me play a small part in being a steward of this gift. It is a joy to serve you, and I pray that I have done so with honor.