NASHVILLE - A state resolution that condemns Calfornia's ban on state-funded travel to Tennessee and urges Gov. Bill Haslam and top House and Senate leaders to retaliate with similar actions is now headed to the Senate floor.
The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, narrowly passed the Tennessee Senate Finance Committee this morning with six yes votes, the bare minimum in the 11-member committee. Two senators voted while three lawmakers, including Chairman Bo Watson, R-Hixson, abstained.
Bell brought the non-binding resolution this year after California last fall implemented state-funded travel bans to states, including Tennessee, that have passed laws Golden State lawmakers call discriminatory against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.
Tennessee's law, also passed in 2016, allows therapists and counselors to reject clients based on the professionals' "sincerely held beliefs."
Bell's resolution accuses California of trying to "blackmail" Tennessee and other states like North Carolina which have passed what opponents charge amounts to anti-LGBT legislation.
"I'm hoping what this does is not escalate" the situation, Bell told Finance Committee members about his resolution, which he wants to send to every state legislature and every legislator across the U.S. . "I'm hoping what this does is throw cold water on states getting into economic war with other states."
Watson sounded a cautious note, reminding Bell that California has the world's 7th largest economy. Tennessee, the chairman said, receives about 47 percent of its overall funding from the federal government while California gets about 16 percent.
"So be careful whose bow you choose to shoot across and how much pain you can inflict because my concern with this is economic development," Watson said. "I don't know how you can ban elgislators from going on a trip and then turn around allow economic development people to go meet with businesses that are wanting to come and move to Tennessee, which we want them to do."
Watson said he believes "actually being more embracing is a strategy that may be more effective in terms of bringing people from a higher-tax state or what we would consider in Tennessee a more oppressive state may be a better strategy."
Voting for Bell's resolution was Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. But the deciding vote for approval appears to have come from an unlikely sources: Sen. Thelma Harper, D-Nashville.