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| Phil Bredesen | |
NASHVILLE — Environmental issues took center stage during this year’s General Assembly, but the curtain fell on most initiatives, ranging from the Bredesen administration efforts to regulate rock mining to environmentalists’ attempts to ban mountain-top coal mining.
Budget shortfalls forced Gov. Phil Bredesen to scrap a major water planning bill because of $2.4 million in costs. Flagging revenues also forced the governor to retreat from his efforts to provide $10 million for new land acquisitions.
Sen. Andy Berke, R-Chattanooga, sponsored the administration’s water-planning bill, which would have required water utilities to plan for growth and drought.
2008 GENERAL ASSEMBLY HIGHLIGHTS Here are some of the major highlights of the 2008 Tennessee General Assembly session:
Budget: After watching state revenues plummet, Gov. Phil Bredesen and lawmakers slashed proposed state spending next year by $468 million and enacted a $27.74 billion spending plan that is 1.2 percent less than the current budget. The appropriations bill authorizes raids on several reserve funds and offers 2,011 employees voluntary buyout packages.
Lottery: House Democrats and Senate Republicans broke a two-year logjam on how to spend excess lottery revenues, approving changes to make it easier for students to maintain scholarships through lower grade-point retention standards. Other changes expand scholarship opportunities to lower-income and older students. Also approved was a $90 million program to help K-12 schools become more energy-efficient.
Economic development: The budget uses $100 million from reserves to create an economic development “contingency” fund that will be used to offer economic incentives to prospects. Volkswagen is considering several sites, including the Enterprise South industrial park in Hamilton County, for a new plant.
Long-term care: With considerable nudging from Gov. Bredesen, lawmakers broke the decades-old virtual monopoly of nursing homes over long-term care Medicaid dollars. The reforms promote more community- and homebased services and encourage nursing homes to enter such businesses.
Border dispute: Efforts by droughtparched Georgia lawmakers to revive a 19th century border dispute to grab a portion of the Tennessee River in Marion County raised the hackles of Volunteer State legislators. They passed a resolution rejecting Georgia’s effort to create a boundary commission.
Abortion: Lawmakers failed to agree on a proposed constitutional amendment that would strip abortion protections from the Tennessee Constitution.
Open Records: Lawmakers passed new requirements on government to make records available to residents, imposing a seven-day limit for records custodians to respond to information requests or state why they need more time. But lawmakers also passed a law shutting down public access to state and local government employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers. Another bill authorizes public hospital officials to meet behind closed doors on marketing strategies.
Ethics: Three years after four sitting legislators and one former member were indicted on bribery charges in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz bribery sting, lawmakers showed signs of restiveness on the ethics front. They rejected legislation that would have stripped health insurance benefits from legislators convicted of felonies related to their office. Waiting until the last day, lawmakers capped the number of random audits on lobbyists and eliminated the ability of staff at the state Ethics Commission to issue advisory opinions. Instead, only Ethics commissioners can.
AT&T vs. cable: AT&T’s two-year, multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz finally succeeded in passage of a law that allows the telecommunications giant to seek a statewide cable franchise.
EPB/rural co-ops vs. cable: The cable industry’s own lobbying blitz succeeded in killing efforts by Chattanooga’s public power provider, EPB, to expand its ability to offer cable and broadband outside its service area.
Medical malpractice: Years of battles between Tennessee trial lawyers and physicians resulted in a compromise aimed at cutting down frivolous lawsuits. The bill, now law, requires 60-day notice before filing a malpractice lawsuit and mandates plaintiffs have an independent medical expert support the merits of the case.
Judicial Selection Commission: Senate Republicans slammed the door shut on efforts to extend the life of the commission, which forwards recommendations on judicial appointments to governors. The move sends the commission into a yearlong wind down.
Election commissions: State and local election commission members no longer can serve as political campaign managers under a law based on proposals by Wes Kliner, an attorney who formerly served on the Hamilton County and the state election commissions.
“This turned out to be a conservation issue. Unfortunately, it was about conserving money,” Sen. Berke said.
And when lobbying by business interests prompted lawmakers to back away from closing a business tax break, desperate legislative leaders seized $11.9 million from land conservation and soil conservation funds to help make up the difference.
Rep. Mike McDonald, D-Portland, who sponsored the unsuccessful efforts to regulate so-called rock “harvesting” and coal mining along mountain vistas, said from an environmental perspective, 105th General Assembly did “not go particularly well.” The session ended last week.
“I can’t think of any advancement or improvement,” Rep. McDonald said.
The rock harvesting bill arose out of concern about mineral rights owners or contractors taking mountain stone from land where surface rights are owned by someone else. The stone is used for building as well as decorative purposes.
State Department of Conservation and Environment officials became embroiled in the issue when harvesters working for Florida-based Lahiere/Hill Partnership ripped up 75 to 100 yards of the state-owned Cumberland Trail near Soddy-Daisy in the Cumberland Trail State Park.
But state officials backed off the legislation after Lahiere/Hill, Tennessee Consolidated Coal, other owners of mineral rights and rock harvest contractors blitzed the legislature.
Opposition “was stout,” Rep. McDonald said. “Any time you got paid lobbyists working against legislation like that and on the environmental side you got volunteers, it’s tough.”
Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, was a co-sponsor of the bill. He said the problem remains unresolved, although the state has a pending lawsuit against Lahiere/Hill.
“Right now the homeowner is hung out to dry, and the rock harvesters are unregulated,” Rep. Floyd said. “They can tear your land all to pieces and by law they don’t have to reclaim anything.”
North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy Executive Larry Cook said surface rights owners are having their rights “stomped upon.”
Advocates, he said, “didn’t do a good enough job at making the general public understand that this is the real issue here.”
He said rock-mining interests “did a much better job of making their voices heard at the legislative level.”
Tennessee Conservation Voters Executive Director Chris Ford put a more positive spin on the year. He said there was progress on energy conservation legislation. Environmentalists also blocked legislation they considered to be harmful to clean water laws.
“I would characterize it as OK,” he said of the overall legislative session.
Gov. Bredesen told reporters last week some environmental issues remain on his “to-do” list.
“There are certain issues relating to mountain-top removal that I certainly would have a natural interest in and would like to get a little more engaged in that process,” he said.
Those are fighting words for Charles W. Kite, senior vice president of National Coal Corp. The Knoxville-based coal-mining company fought a fierce and ultimately successful lobbying battle to persuade the House Environment Subcommittee to scuttle the bill.
“If they (state officials) pass a law they can assure themselves they will be sued,” warned Mr. Kite, whose company owns mineral rights on thousands of acres in the state’s 74,000-acre Sundquist Wildlife Management Area in the northern Cumberland Plateau.
The state owns only surface and timber rights.
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