The majority of Hamilton County's state lawmakers will begin the new 109th Tennessee General Assembly session on Tuesday with vim and vinegar. But they need our help to clear their thinking.
Five of our lawmakers -- as indicated by their comments last week at the Chattanooga Times Free Press -- have doubts about casting a sure vote for Volkswagen's expected $300 million in SUV-expansion incentives.
More concerning, however, is that four of the five members of our visiting delegation -- Republicans Bo Watson, Todd Gardenhire, Mark Gravitt and Mike Carter -- also had obvious contempt for local officials' calls to fully fund the state's Hamilton County BEP school allocation.
And, our lawmakers said they are dubious of why they should vote for Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee plan that would return our federal tax dollars to Tennessee under the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid -- known in the Volunteer State as TennCare.
Democrat Jo Anne Favors offered an opposing view. She supports fully funding Hamilton County's BEP allocation, and she said she is "excited" that the governor's plan will allow Tennessee to expand the state's Medicaid program.
The GOP lawmakers mistakenly seem unable to separate their understandable anger with Erlanger from a reasonable and no-brainer voucher plan by the governor to finally expand access to health insurance to more than 400,000 working poor people in Tennessee.
Senate Speaker Pro Tempore Watson, who represents Hixson, said Erlanger's decision to pay out $2.7 million in performance-related bonuses to 99 managers after getting some federal money had "clouded" their view of Haslam's Medicaid expansion plan. The bonuses vote by hospital trustees came after closed-door discussions and followed a financially turbulent year during which the hospital froze vacation time, tightened benefits and phased out pensions and retiree insurance. Then in the spring, the hospital received a $19 million infusion of federal funds after lobbying local, state and federal officials. The windfall meant the hospital went from ending the year in the red to ending the year with a profit.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, said the Erlanger payouts "could be the most expensive bonuses anybody has ever gotten."
A second Insure Tennessee concern, according to delegation members, is that in a few years, the federal money (now expected to pay for the expansion in full for two years and at 90 percent in later years) dries up?
We believe our delegation surely is smarter than this.
The Erlanger bonuses vote was tone deaf and foolhardy, without a doubt. The managers probably do deserve the bonuses, but this was not the time nor the way.
If the money formula changes, you adjust. In the meantime, why, why, why would reasonable men and women punish 400,000 Tennesseans and prevent our already-paid tax dollars from helping our own state?
Our lawmakers should put their irritation over those bone-headed bonuses where it belongs -- on Erlanger. Follow through with Sen. Gardenhire and Rep. Carter's plan to introduce a bill that could remove public meeting exemptions from the public hospital that shouldn't have the exemptions in the first place. Or require a court reporter to keep a verbatim transcript. Don't resurrect the hospital's hoped-for bill to grant it a 501(c)(3) non-profit designation which would further shield the hospital from public transparency. Punish the guilty, not the innocent.
We also sincerely hope our delegation is smarter than they sound on the VW incentives, estimated at nearly $300 million in state and local money to leverage VW's $600 million investment to bring 2,000 new jobs and the plant's SUV expansion here. Again, don't hurt the innocent to poke at VW and the United Auto Workers union, which continues to work toward representing VW workers.
But our hopes could be dashed.
"I start with a jaundiced view," said state Rep. Carter, of Ooltewah. Sen. Gardenhire added that VW officials are "in your face. It's their way or no way. They've decided by golly they want the UAW here. They're not listening to the community." And Rep. Marc Gravitt, R-East Ridge, said many in his family had once been union members but now oppose unions, believing they have become top-heavy with administrators.
Finally, judging by the delegation's school talk, perhaps we're simply over-optimistic about the delegation's reasoning skills.
Rep. Carter said he would tell local officials to "raise the taxes in your own county" for education. And Watson justified not fully funding schools by noting Tennessee was among a handful of states that didn't lower education funding after the recession.
He's right, in a sense. The General Assembly passed the current BEP funding formula just before the recession, and since then, with the natural growth in school students, health care costs and industrial incentives on the heels of two bumper job-growth years in the state, there just hasn't been enough money to fully fund the allocations.
Our lawmakers didn't lower education funding to its previous depths. They just didn't fund it, either.
Let's help them rethink some of these issues.