NASHVILLE - The state House Monday night voted unanimously to repeal a 2016 law that wound up threatening $13 million in state revolving loans for Hamilton County's sewer authority.
The bill, previously passed by the Senate, now goes to Gov. Bill Haslam for his consideration.
"We effectively, unintentionally, [were going to] put them out of business," Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, explained to colleagues of the impact of last year's legislation on the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority.
Carter said the new legislation "allows them to reorganize and can continue to borrow funds from the state revolving fund."
The 2016 law was intended to force the sewer authority to look at its operations, mission and future with a series of specific reports on its finances.
But the kicker was a provision to dissolve the agency by July 1, 2021 - provided there was a successor entity or entities in place to assume some $10 million in existing debt from state clean water loans.
While Watson and Carter say they thought they had a green light from state officials on the language, Carter has said Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery's office subsequently began raising concerns over who specifically would be legally responsible for repaying the new debt.
That ultimately resulted in Tennessee Environment and Conservation officials refusing to approve an additional $13 million in new clean water loans the sewer authority said were critical to address concerns by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
In other House action Monday, representatives approved a Senate resolution condemning California over its ban on state-funded travel to Tennessee.
California imposed the ban on spending funds to send any officials here following Tennessee lawmakers' passage here last year of a controversial counseling law deemed discriminatory against the LGBT community.
The vote on the Tennessee resolution condemning California was 73-21.
Rep. Tilman Goins, R-Morristown, handled Senate Joint Resolution 111, introduced by Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, and approved earlier by senators in this year's legislative session.
The 2016 Tennessee law that drew Calfornia lawmakers' ire allows therapists and counselors to reject clients based on the professionals' "sincerely held beliefs."
California lawmakers also imposed state-funded travel bans on several other states, including North Carolina over its transgender bathroom bill.
Bell's amended resolution warns that "if states such as California persist in banning travel to certain other states as a punitive action for disagreeing with the policy of those states, the states affected by these travel bans may be forced to take reciprocal action."
"We urge and encourage the Governor, the Speaker of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to communicate with fellow governors and legislative leaders and urge these state officials to refrain from imposing moral judgment on their sister states as California has done in order to prevent escalating foolishness," the Tennessee resolution concludes.
Responding to questions on the House floor, Goins said California's travel ban amounts to "what I would call economic jihad."
"In order to be a union and 50 states, we have to respect states' sovereignty" to "avoid economic warfare," Goins said.
Noting that California's policy prevents officials from sending state employees including economic recruiters to Tennessee, Goins said it was "either short-sighted or stupid."