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Stockard on the Stump: Tennessee Senate works on cleaning up House of horrors • Tennessee Lookout [1]
['Sam Stockard', 'More From Author', 'March']
Date: 2024-03-15
Tennessee lawmakers are chipping away at a spate of bills with lingering constitutional questions, starting with the defeat of a measure that would remove lower courts from jurisdiction over House and Senate rules challenges.
The Senate Judiciary Committee declined this week to advance the bill by Rep. Gino Bulso and Sen. Adam Lowe after questioning why those types of challenges wouldn’t go to the state’s so-called “super” chancery court. It failed to receive a majority vote.
Bulso, R-Brentwood, birthed the bill after he and other lawmakers got peeved that a Davidson County chancellor overturned House rules limiting signs during a 2023 special session on public safety. They decided the best way to subvert public opposition was to remove the courts closest to the people. In other words, if you don’t like the rules, change them.
So far this year, the Senate country clubbers appear to be outdoing the House frat boys, and the response to this bill fits that scenario.
“If we had a rule that any reasonable person would look at and say that’s unconstitutional or that violates … a discrimination law or something like that, who then hears it?” Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, asked during committee debate.
Lowe responded that under this bill a challenge could be made to the U.S. District Court, which could certify the filing, and then send it to the Tennessee Supreme Court, filled by Gov. Bill Lee appointees, of course.
If we had a rule that any reasonable person would look at and say that’s unconstitutional or that violates … a discrimination law or something like that, who then hears it? – Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield
Roberts’ query is apropos, because this scenario is trending upward, especially in the House.
Republican lawmakers also got mad four years ago when Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled the COVID-19 pandemic and fear of contracting the disease provided enough reason to request an absentee ballot in the August primary election. She then blasted top election officials for failing to follow her order and add that option to absentee request forms.
What did they do? Filed a bill to get rid of her. It failed, of course. But they also passed the law that led to the so-called “super” chancery court to create a panel of judges statewide to decide constitutional questions. They’re finding out Davidson’s judges aren’t quite as liberal as they thought.
Also, as Sen. Frank Niceley said last week, the Legislature ought to pick a “soft-on-crime” judge every session and remove them from office. Nevermind undercutting the will of the voting public.
Nobody took Niceley’s suggestion seriously (or did they?), and even Republican senators could see through the ruse of this Bulso-Lowe bill. Ironically, someone could have challenged the law but not the rules, which are pretty much adopted at the whim of the House and Senate speakers.
Sens. Jon Lundberg, Paul Rose, Brent Taylor and Dawn White voted in favor; Sens. London Lamar, John Stevens and Todd Gardenhire voted no; and Sens. Sara Kyle and Kerry Roberts passed. The 4-3 vote with two present not voting kept the bill in committee for the year.
Noose tightens on flag bill
Bulso’s bill placing restrictions in schools on certain flags, such as the Pride rainbow banner, narrowly escaped the Senate Education Committee on a 5-4 vote and could be headed to the Senate floor.
Lt. Gov. Randy McNally told reporters recently he believes the bill has constitutional problems because Bulso targeted at least two types of flags during House floor debate, creating the potential for discrimination and a legal challenge.
Sen. Joey Hensley, a Republican physician from Hohenwald, told the Lookout he plans to carry the measure to the Senate floor. He contends he really wants to require only the U.S. and Tennessee flags to be flown at schools, which is already done, but he doesn’t believe the Pride flag or other types of political flags should be hoisted.
“I don’t have concerns with it being unconstitutional,” Hensley told the Lookout. “I’m trying to keep it from being ideological and just listing the flags that can be displayed.”
He contends children should go to school to learn to read and write and do math and let parents teach values. Unfortunately, a lot of parents have no values, which leaves schools to do the parenting.
Bulso acknowledged during floor debate the bill originated from complaints he received about a Williamson County teacher keeping a Pride flag on the desk. We don’t know much past that. But by God, it’s got to be worth passing a state law.
Thus, we have Bulso the Busy BS Bee and Hensley the Hippocratic — who was placed on probation by the Board of Medical Examiners in 2021 (this is not ancient history) for prescribing drugs to his second cousin, with whom he was having an affair — deciding morality for the entire state.
It’s unclear when the bill will go to the Senate floor, but expect this to be a rare close vote.
Garrett owns this one
The move to prohibit local governing bodies from returning expelled lawmakers to the Legislature appears to be struggling along in the Senate.
Already passed in the House despite legal advice that it violates the Constitution, the Senate version will go to the final calendar of the State and Local Government Committee, according to Sen. Ferrell Haile, R-Gallatin, who is carrying it.
Haile said this week he thinks questions about its constitutionality have been cleared up and deferred further questions to Rep. Johnny Garrett, R-Goodlettsville, who apparently remains injured by the return of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson to the Legislature after he led the hearing for their expulsion last year. Less than a week after the Republican-controlled chamber ousted them for holding an anti-gun rally on the House floor in reaction to the deadly Covenant School mass shooting, the Metro Nashville Council and Memphis City Council reappointed them.
Thank you, Mr. Magna Carta: Despite legislative legal staff advising such a measure is unconstitutional, Rep. Johnny Garrett, a Goodlettsville Republican, insists his bill to ban expelled lawmakers from returning to office meets constitutional muster.
Questioned about how constitutional concerns might have been worked out, Garrett said, “It’s always been constitutional.”
Well, thank you Mr. Magna Carta.
Fine lawyering brought us the worthless expulsion of Jones and Pearson — and the non-expulsion of Rep. Gloria Johnson — along with a host of bills designed to punish the Metro Nashville Council for refusing to go for the 2024 Republican National Convention.
Maybe someone ought to sponsor a bill requiring lawmakers to pay litigation costs out of their own pockets every time they pass a bill that winds up being struck down in court. Maybe they’d think twice – or at least once – about putting the king and his government above the law.
Garrett’s explanations in committee and on the House floor don’t exactly engender confidence in this bill’s ability to withstand constitutional muster. And Haile’s demurring signals hesitation on the Senate’s part to put Humpty Dumpty back together again
“Overreach” versus law and order
The Senate ignored the pleas of Tyre Nichols’ parents, and those of Shelby County Democrats, and passed a bill Thursday that endorses “pretextual” police stops.
Rodney and RowVaughn Wells visited the Senate chamber for a short time and spoke with Sen. Brent Taylor, who sponsored the bill that overturns Memphis’ prohibition on a handful of minor traffic offenses such as driving with a broken tail light or a bad bumper. They left with Mrs. Wells in tears.
The Wells claimed Rep. John Gillespie lied to them last week about when he would bring the bill to the House floor. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been standing at the Speaker’s podium sobbing, the bill would have passed anyway.
The same would have happened in the Senate where Taylor, a Memphis Republican, said he sympathized with the family but added, “We can’t let that empathy cloud our judgment in protecting 7 million Tennesseans.” Earlier, he gave statistics on the number of arrests and drug and gun seizures Memphis police made in recent initiatives
The Memphis ordinance, though, is a cry in the dark to stop police from pulling people over for minor offenses that escalate into shootouts and deaths. Police detained Nichols in January 2023 for allegedly speeding and reckless driving, then beat him to death as he cried for his mother. Everyone now admits they don’t know why he was pulled over.
Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis, argued Friday that the bill won’t reduce crime.
RowVaughn Wells, mother of the late Tyre Nichols, makes a point as she addresses Sen. Brent Taylor, R-Memphis. (Photo: John Partipilo) "Extreme overreach," Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, labeled a GOP-led bill to strip authority from Memphis on a local policing ordinance. "It’s a slap in the face of the Wells family.” Rodney and RowVaughn Wells address members of the media at the Legislature on Thursday: "This legislation was clearly targeted to take down the ordinances named after our son." (Photo: John Partipilo)
The Wells family issued a statement later Thursday saying they hoped to find middle ground with lawmakers and authorities after working “tirelessly” to pass an ordinance in their son’s name.
“This legislation was clearly targeted to take down the ordinances named after our son, and while we miss him dearly, this is about so much more than Tyre. There are many other Memphians that have experienced pretextual stops with police that ended with violence. Our goal was to create something in Memphis that could protect our community, but even after doing so, our success is fleeting,” the family said
“We wish that instead of this political sabotage, we could have come together to discuss what is working and what isn’t. Compromise could have happened, but we were never given the opportunity to try.”
Afterward, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally admitted the measure “codifies” pretextual pull-overs, stops made for minor traffic violations that lead to bigger busts.
The measure passed in the House already and if signed into law by the governor will officially create an even bigger police state than we have already.
This tax is your tax, this tax is my tax
Well, not exactly. It’s a tax break for the state’s largest companies, $1.56 billion this year through a rebate on the property portion of the franchise tax and $4.1 billion over the next decade.
Rep. John Ray Clemmons and Sen. Jeff Yarbro, Nashville Democrats, unveiled a competing bill early this week they say will dial back the franchise tax by providing a tax credit without costing the state billions of dollars. Their bill is considered financially insignificant on the state’s books.
Meanwhile, the duo continued to call for Gov. Bill Lee to provide “relevant tax documents” from the Lee Co., a giant HVAC and plumbing company, to determine how much it could benefit from the refund and tax break. The governor placed his portion of the company in a blind trust to avoid conflicts, yet when he leaves office in three years, he can reap a windfall from his massive break if the company requests it.
“The working families of Tennessee deserve to know” whether the governor and his companies will benefit, Clemmons said.
Yarbro argues the governor’s proposal is “not a refund” but a change in law to make it seem as if the state government owes companies money. He and Clemmons said they worked with the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Revenue, scholars and lawyers to propose a small tax credit to make sure no company is “subject to improper taxing.”
“It solves the exact same legal problem the Lee Administration seeks to solve but does it for $2 billion less,” Yarbro said.
Clemmons noted in their early-week press conference he also met with Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and an adviser and said the AG “did not own the governor’s proposal at all” and, instead, “went out of his way to distance himself.”
The problem with their plan is twofold. According to the governor’s office, when the governor stepped down from his position in the company and put his holdings in a blind trust, under state law he became prohibited from accessing Lee Co. tax records and has nothing to do with the company’s operations or business decisions. The governor could commit Lee Co. to refusing to file for the break, by the newsroom prediction is: He’ll do it when dogs get wings.
The other problem is that even though senators seem hell-bent on spreading this money across the state, Clemmons wound up taking his version off notice Wednesday. Yarbro deferred action on his bill until March 19.
Fox in the henhouse
Gov. Bill Lee’s policy director, Michael Hendrix, and a group called Parents Defending Education Action is inviting people to a School Choice Roundtable at the State Capitol March 22.
Fox in the henhouse: Why is Gov. Bill Lee having a private-school voucher roundtable after committees have already approved his measure?
According to invitations obtained by the Lookout, the Governor’s office wants to hear from people about the “school choice” legislation being considered in the General Assembly.
First question: Why are they waiting until bills have passed committees already to hold this roundtable? Second: Why is the Governor’s Office inviting a pro-school choice group to weigh in on private-school vouchers when Gov. Lee already knows what he wants?
Third: Do the voucher bills going through Legislature need more arm-twisting before they hit the floor? Probably so.
“I remember you so clearly / The first one through the door / And I return to find you drifting too far from the shore.” *
(* “Don’t Fade on Me,” Tom Petty)
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