The Chatanoogan
Kelsey Wins State Senate Seat For District 31

Republican Brian Kelsey was elected as state senator for District 31 in West Tennessee on Tuesday.

The seat, which includes portions of Memphis, became vacant after the resignation of Paul Stanley. Kelsey was formerly in the state House.

Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney said, “Brian has already demonstrated his ability to effectively lead and legislate on behalf of his constituents,” said Devaney. “During his time in the State House, Brian was a leader in the fight for ethics reform and worked tirelessly to protect taxpayers’ dollars. Brian’s experience in the State House will serve him well as he takes on this new role of public service in the State Senate.

“I’d like to congratulate him on tonight’s election results and I look forward to seeing him continue his service for the state of Tennessee.”

Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, who conceded the 31st District race, said, “I ran this race for all the people of this wonderful district, and for the people of the great state of Tennessee, to make sure they had a chance to have their voice heard. The people have chosen a different voice, and I wish Senator-elect Kelsey the best for his year in Nashville.

“All of us will stay involved in the quest to better the community we love. The neighbors I have talked to throughout the district want the focus to stay on the community, building jobs and a better place for all of us to live and raise our families. I am hopeful and optimistic that newly elected Senator Kelsey will do just that. This district is becoming more diverse, as are the needs of the citizens of the district.

“I am extremely proud of the campaign we have run. The volunteers who have given their time these past couple of months have given me and the people of District 31 an invaluable gift. They have shown determination, caring, and a desire to continually improve the community in which they live. For that I want to thank all of them and all of my supporters. We came up short today, and it’s tough to take. But I assure you that we will stay active and we will stay involved. Thank you all.”

Commercial Appeal
By Lela Garlington

In what turned into a blowout, Republican Brian Kelsey overwhelmed Democrat Adrienne Pakis-Gillon to win Tuesday’s special election for the District 31 state Senate seat.

The unofficial final vote tally had Kelsey with 7,120 votes, while Pakis-Gillon trailed with 2,394 votes.

Pakis-Gillon, a 51-year-old business manager, was making her first run for a local political office. Kelsey, 31, is a lawyer with a solo practice. He has been a state representative since 2004.

“I’m truly humbled by the opportunity to serve the people in the state Senate,” Kelsey said. “The first order of business is to get the budget under control … and exercise the fiscal responsibility that the people told me to exercise.”

The Shelby County Election Commission is expected to certify the vote by Dec. 14. Kelsey likely will be sworn in the day after certification. The legislature reconvenes Jan. 12.

Turnout was light for Tuesday’s election. Most residents found no lines and no waiting to vote. Only about 7 percent of voters cast votes in what was a one-race ballot in many precincts.

“For a special election, it was not unusual to have a 7percent turnout, especially for December,” Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Bill Giannini said.

As she left the Bert Ferguson Community Center, Cindy Savage said she cast her ballot for Kelsey, “because I vote Republican. I think he’s a good guy.”

“People are kinda letting this one go by,” lamented election worker June Porter at Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church. “We are dishonoring our veterans by not voting.”

The special election was held to replace Paul Stanley, who resigned his seat in August after a sex and blackmail scandal involving the 47-year-old married senator and a 22-year-old legislative intern.

The Republican-leaning district covers most of Germantown and parts of Bartlett, Cordova, East Memphis and Hickory Hill.

There is one year left in Stanley’s term. The regular GOP primary is in August, followed by the November general election for a full four-year term.

As a state senator, Kelsey will earn $19,009 in annual pay. Other legislative perks are state-subsidized health insurance for life; a $1,000 monthly home and office expense allowance; $171 a day for expenses; and 54 cents a mile in reimbursement or weekly round-trip airfare during the legislative session.

I have rarely been as outraged as I was when I awoke on January 30th to read in the Tennessean the new ethics proposal from Democratic Majority Leader Gary Odom. In place of the lobbyist gift ban, or “no cup of coffee law,” Odom proposed that each of the over 500 lobbyists in Tennessee be allowed to give legislators up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in personal gifts per year! He was not talking about a lift on the ban on contributing to a campaign account, which goes for buying signs and mail pieces. He was talking about drinks, trips, jewelry, and even cash—and all this not even three years since the exposure of the Tennessee Waltz bribery scandal. Have we learned nothing at all? I, for one, was not about to see us slide back into that practice, so I filed an amendment which said that if the special ethics committee continued to meet, it could not discuss such an outrageous proposal. In fear of having to discuss or, heaven forbid, vote on my amendment, the House continued to postpone discussion of the resolution to extend the existence of the committee. The committee even went ahead and met illegally after the law had sunset its existence. In the end, however, I am happy to report that the committee never took up the issue again publicly, and the lobbyist gift ban remains intact. Killing bad legislation is often more important than passing good legislation.

        I hope you enjoy reading below my further efforts on your behalf during the 2008 legislative session.

Scholarships
Budget Woes
Education Pays
Crime
Health Care
Abortion
Judicial “Elections”
No Investment in Iran
Racial Profiling
Self Protection
Cable
Conclusion

Scholarships

       If you had asked me at the beginning of the year which one position of mine would get more attention than any other, I never would have guessed it would involve a vote on the lottery scholarships. But when all 92 members voting vote the other way, your vote gets noticed. I was the lone vote in the House for upholding the 3.0 grade point average required to keep HOPE lottery scholarships for college. When we are paying students up to $5000 per year to go to college, I think it is reasonable to expect a certain amount of academic success from those students. The lottery was sold to the public as a way to keep the “best and the brightest” students in Tennessee. If we had wanted a needs-based rather than a merit-based scholarship program, then we would have enacted a scholarship for everyone who gets accepted to college, based purely on financial need with no minimum GPA requirement at all. But that is not what the people of Tennessee voted for when they adopted the constitutional amendment permitting the lottery in 2002. The Republican-controlled Senate recognized this and agreed with my desire of keeping standards high to receive scholarship money. Ultimately, a compromise was reached with the Democratic-controlled House in which students may maintain a 2.75 GPA through their junior year and must earn a 3.0 each subsequent semester to keep their HOPE scholarships. This was yet another slide toward what our President has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Budget Woes

       What a difference a year makes. Just last year we were awash in money in state government and spending it with reckless abandon. I am proud of my record in 2007 opposing pork spending in the form of giving individual legislators hundreds of thousands of dollars to dole out to pet nonprofit and government agencies in their districts in return for political loyalty. I think my position opposing such pork was proven correct when we went from a $500 million surplus in 2007 to a $500 million proposed budget shortfall this year. We ended up having to offer early retirement to 2000 state employees this year to cut down on spending. Tough times call for tough measures. I did not oppose this cutback, but I did oppose the hypocrisy of doing so while continuing other pork projects.

The most egregious pork project this year was a $20 million underground ballroom at the Governor’s mansion. The ballroom included such over-the-top expenditures as $265 soap dispensers and towel dispensers, and it was being built primarily for the governor to entertain legislators. The vast majority of the people of Tennessee will never see the inside of the ballroom, and they should not have to pay for it either. What started as a well-intentioned, less than $10 million project to renovate the residence paid for by private donations turned into a $20 million project for an underground ballroom funded primarily by taxpayer dollars. In an effort to subject the governor and the legislature to the same cutbacks as experienced in the rest of the budget, I offered an amendment to the budget that would have cut public funding for the ballroom. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, given the intense lobbying for the project by the governor and his wife, the amendment garnered only 37 votes, all but two of which were Republican. I hope that when the project is finished, all 6 million Tennesseans will demand to visit the opulence funded by their tax dollars.

Education Pays 

       The Education Pays Act has the potential to do more good in our state than any other bill I introduced this year. It would create a pilot program in four failing schools to pay students $100 each and their parents $50 for finishing in the top quarter of their class each semester. We already spend $8,000 each year per student on education, so another $300 a year is nothing in comparison. However, it could make a big difference in education outcomes, as many more affluent parents have already acknowledged when they give their kids rewards for good grades. Hopefully, the monetary valuing of education in the short run will lead students to see the value of education in the long run. Such has been the experience of students in Georgia, according to the testimony we received from my guest Jackie Cushman Gingrich, daughter of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A variation of the program has also now been implemented by Mayor Bloomberg in New York as part of his anti-poverty program and has been implemented in at least twelve other states. The Education Pays Act passed the House Education Committee with only one “no” vote but got lost in the Finance Committee due to lack of funding this year. In the Senate, which allows bills costing under $100,000 to bypass the Finance Committee, it passed 25 to 3 under the leadership of my Senate sponsor, Senator Dwayne Bunch (R-Cleveland). I will continue to work with private foundations to get this idea started in Tennessee as we continue to make progress in the legislature.

I introduced another economic incentive bill this year to reduce welfare payments to parents whose kids skip school. I firmly believe that people respond to such economic incentives. We just have to ensure that the right incentives are in place to reward good behavior.

Crime

       The greatest travesty of the year was that we did virtually nothing to solve the crime problem in Tennessee. Protecting the lives of its citizens is the first duty of government. While we did pass half of the “Crooks with Guns Bill” in 2007 to increase sentences for felonies committed with firearms, we still did not include such basic felonies as aggravated burglary. We owe it to the citizens of Shelby County and to the entire state to pass the full “Crooks with Guns Bill” and to hire more assistant district attorneys to prosecute the vast number of criminals moving through our criminal justice system. In 2007 only two of the thirty-two prosecutors we funded were assigned to Shelby County, even though the county accounts for twenty percent of the state population and has its worst crime problem. If this problem is not addressed soon, people will continue to move away from our community.

Health Care 

       While the general public thinks that we fixed TennCare three years ago, we really only stopped the problem from getting worse. We failed to address the underlying problem: we are still number two among states in the percentage of our citizens receiving Medicaid and number three among states in the percentage of our budget spent on Medicaid. We are, however, nowhere near the top three in overall health, where we deserve to be. It is for that reason that I introduced a bill this term to allow individuals receiving Medicaid to shift from traditional insurance coverage to a personal health account to be spent on the medical services and private health insurance plans of each recipient’s choice. The accounts would be funded each quarter by the state, and any unspent funds would roll over into the next quarter’s personal account. I am proud that this plan, originally introduced by Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, was backed by the House Republican Caucus as our official plan for Medicaid reform.

Tennessee took a step in the right direction this year in passing the long term care bill to allow seniors and other disabled persons on Medicaid to receive their care in-home, when appropriate, rather than having to go to a nursing home. I applaud Governor Bredesen for finally lending his support to this initiative that many House and Senate Republicans have been pushing for years.

I doubt that health care costs will go down with the watered down version of medical malpractice reform that was passed this year, but at least it was a step in the right direction. More than 80% of lawsuits filed against medical providers in Tennessee are found to end in no payment whatsoever from the providers. Yet, when medical providers have to pay lawyers to defend these meritless claims, it raises the cost of health care for all of us. The medical malpractice bill we passed this year begins to address the problem by requiring a medical expert to declare that there is a good faith basis to file the lawsuit. Republicans in the Senate and the House had hoped to rein in the amount of damages that plaintiffs could receive beyond their actual economic losses, but Democrats in the House continue to block such legislation.

Abortion

       Did you know that conservative Tennessee has one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country? That is the case because four of the five unelected Supreme Court justices divined in 2000 that the Tennessee constitution, which makes no mention of abortion, protects the practice even more so than does the U.S. Constitution as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. For the second session in a row, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a constitutional amendment to return the power to regulate abortion to the people through their elected representatives in the legislature. And for the second year in a row, the Democratic House leadership refused to allow the issue to come to a vote. The resolution was killed on a party-line vote in the Public Health Subcommittee. The Democratic House leadership uses the six members of that subcommittee, who represent constituencies in which it is politically acceptable to be pro-abortion, to prevent the amendment from coming to a vote on the House floor. If the amendment were to come to a vote on the House floor, a number of moderate Democratic members would be forced with the choice of either voting pro-abortion, in which case they would likely be defeated in the next election, or voting their consciences, in which case the amendment would pass. But House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) cannot allow the amendment to pass for fear of alienating his supporters among the liberal, urban Democratic legislators. As long as both liberal and moderate legislators vote for a Democratic Speaker of the House, this issue will continue to be kept out of the hands of the people. It will take four more Republican seats in the House for the people to finally have a voice on the issue.

Judicial “Elections”

       The state constitution states very clearly that the Supreme Court justices “shall be elected by the qualified voters of the state.” This is the same language used to describe the special election of legislators to vacated seats. Yet we continue to allow a group of fourteen lawyers and three nonlawyers to select a list of three nominees from which the governor picks one judge, who later stands for a “yes/no” retention decision. As former Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Jay Hooker says, only a lawyer could perform the mental gymnastics required to reason that such a system follows the constitution. Specifically, the system was held constitutional by five lawyers appointed by the governor to hear a case years ago after the actual Supreme Court justices had recused themselves from hearing the case because they had been placed in office by the very system that was in question. According to Mr. Hooker, the real reason behind the plan was that after Republicans had swept the statewide elected offices on the ballot in 1970, Democratic leaders instituted the plan to avoid losing the upcoming judicial elections as well. The Republican-controlled Senate this year refused to continue the charade that a “yes/no” retention decision is an election “by the qualified voters of the state.” The Senate refused to pass a routine bill that would have extended the judicial selection commission for another year. The commission now has to be extended in 2009 or it will cease to exist. With Republican gains in the Senate almost guaranteed in the November elections, it is encouraging to think about the possibility of returning the state Supreme Court to the Jacksonian electoral system of accountability with which it was designed.

No Investment in Iran

       How would you feel if you knew your pension funds were helping support the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran, the same nation that is actively seeking nuclear weapons and whose President has vowed to “wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?” If you are a state employee, that is exactly what is happening. I partnered with Representative Steve McManus (R-Cordova) and Senator Beverly Marrero (D-Memphis) to introduce the “No Investment in Iran Act” to end investment of state pension funds in companies that support Iran. Iran is sitting on the third largest proven oil reserves in the world, but it cannot retrieve this oil and profit from it without significant foreign investment. At least twenty-three other states have now passed similar legislation. State Treasurer, Dale Sims, however, opposed the legislation and legislation to end investments in companies that invest in genocide-stricken Sudan. We ultimately passed legislation simply directing the Treasurer to compile a list of state holdings in companies that invest in nations which sponsor terrorism. With the list in hand, we will have to try again next year to pass the “No Investment in Iran Act.”

Racial Profiling

       It is rare that Rep. Ulysses Jones (D-Memphis) and I end up on the same side of a controversial issue, but I happily supported his bill this year requiring police and sheriff’s departments to develop policies to prohibit racial profiling. There is a wide disparity among the perceptions of different racial groups as to the extent to which racial profiling occurs, but we should all agree that if it occurs even once, that is one time too many. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we long for the day that our children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I certainly do not claim to be responsible for passing this bill, but in co-sponsoring and speaking in favor of it on the House floor, I do think I played an integral role in its passing the House unanimously, and that is an effort for which I am proud. Racial division continues to be the greatest sin plaguing Memphis and Shelby County, and we will only realize our full potential as a community if we continue to work together to address the issue.

Self Protection

       House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) continued his personal crusade against the right to bear arms this year by making a special appearance in the Criminal Practice Subcommittee to vote against and kill three bills that would have allowed law-abiding citizens with permits to carry firearms in state parks, restaurants which serve alcohol, and university campuses, respectively. I will never forget hearing law students at Appalachian School of Law recount to me when I was a law student the untold story of how two student heroes went to their trucks and retrieved their firearms to bring to his knees a maniacal shooter who had killed three people and was holding the law school campus hostage. A campus ban on firearms would not have fazed that killer nor did it faze the Virginia Tech killer of last year. Unfortunately, the Virginia Tech tragedy did occur on a state school campus which banned firearms, and there were no heroes to be found. The law-abiding heroes that could have saved the day were hamstrung by the laws that they were abiding. I hope we never find ourselves in this situation in Tennessee, but we remain open to the possibility as long as Jimmy Naifeh remains Speaker of the House.

One bill that did pass this year after years of opposition was an expansion of the castle doctrine law. The castle doctrine law says that a person may use deadly force in self defense if a criminal has invaded his home. The bill this year included a person’s business as well as his home. It is a mystery to me why this bill, which caused so much consternation in years past, passed this year by a vote of 97 to 0. I can only venture to guess the difference was that it had a Democratic sponsor this year instead of a Republican sponsor last year. Such petty partisanship seems that it should be beneath grown men and women, but, sadly, it is quite common in the House. I only hope that it will not continue when we have a Republican majority.

Cable

       The statewide cable franchising bill passed this year by a vote of 93 to 2, so you will now have another choice for your cable service if you are not happy with your current local cable provider. Local municipalities supported the compromise bill this year because it protected their control over public rights of way and protected funding by cable companies for such community access channels as Germantown High School TV.

In Conclusion 


       It has been an honor to serve you once again in the legislature. It is an opportunity that I cherish and hope no public servant, including myself, ever takes for granted. On vacation this year I had pleasure of reading Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers, and it reminded me of the immense sacrifices that our Founding Fathers made to ensure liberty to themselves and their posterity. As I mentioned in my very first campaign speech four years ago, my favorite painting in the U.S. Capitol rotunda is of George Washington resigning his commission as Commander of the Continental Army. To turn over the reigns of power back to the people and their elected representatives after defeating the greatest military power on Earth was an act of great humility. Washington could have made himself king for life, and very few Americans would have objected. Yet he chose to sacrifice his personal good for the good of the people. What I had failed to pay attention to until reading Founding Brothers was that Washington made this sacrifice twice. After his second term as President of the United States, had he chosen to run again, he would have been elected in a landslide. And had he died in office, he would have set a terrible precedent that the chief executive was an office to be held for life. Yet he chose to retire to the grounds of Mt. Vernon and let the next generation assume the reigns of power. It is the knowledge of this spirit of sacrifice which inspires me to serve our generation.

Whenever I feel frustrated by the actions of the House, I am reminded of the words of Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” It is in this spirit that I want to thank you once again for re-electing me to serve you for two more years. As usual, I would like to think no one is running against me this year because of the good job I am doing though I suspect that there was simply no one in my district willing to travel back and forth to Nashville for so little pay. Either way, it has been a pleasure, and I look forward to two more years of representing you

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

Smoking

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.

Pork

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.

Ethics

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.

Minimum wage

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.

Health care

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.

In conclusion

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.