NASHVILLE - Legislation spurred by a 2016 Chattanooga school bus crash that killed six children passed the Tennessee Senate Education Committee today with seven senators saying yes and one colleague passing.
The bill now goes on to the Finance Committee.
On Tuesday, the House Transportation Committee approved the bill on a 9-7 vote, moving it along.
Tennessee state Rep. JoAnne Favors visited the Times Free Press for a meeting with the editorial board at the newspaper's offices on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017, in Chattanooga.
5th grader Canasia Williams, who survived last year's deadly Woodmore Elementary School bus crash, hugs her grandmother, Selbrea Rhodes, Tuesday after mandatory bus seat-belt bill clears House panel.The Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, the House sponsor, testified in today's Senate panel meeting.
Favors and Gardenhire introduced the bill after the Nov. 21 deadly Woodmore Elementary School bus crash that killed six children and injured others.
The bill would require all new Tennessee school buses purchased beginning July 1, 2019, to come equipped with safety-restraint systems approved by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, noted that while he has opposed similar bills over the past decade "it's about time we do this as a state" and voted for the measure.
In a successful effort to cut costs to state and local government, Favors earlier this week removed the requirement that all buses must have the safety belts as of July 1, 2023. Instead, the bill relies on new belt-equipped buses eventually replacing buses without belts.
There are an estimated 9,000 school buses in Tennessee with some 600 of them replaced annually, according to a legislative fiscal note. A new bus costs about $100,000. Having them come equipped with seat belts adds about $10,000 more per bus, the fiscal note says.
Favors' move to drop the mandatory 2023 implementation date for seat belts slashed projected costs of the bill dramatically. It now would boost state expenditures by $2.15 million a year going forward, with the money going to local schools. Local schools' cost would be $12.91 million annually going forward.
Originally, the bill would have cost the state nearly $12 million a year for five years and school systems about $70 million a year over a six-year period.
The driver of the Chattanooga school bus, Johnthony Walker, has been indicted by the Hamilton County Grand Jury on six counts of vehicular homicide, four counts of reckless aggravated assault and one count each of reckless endangerment and reckless driving.
Police have said Walker was speeding in the bus, which carried 37 students, when it left a curvy section of Talley Road, struck a utility pole, overturned and slammed into a tree.
Walker worked for Durham School Services, a bus contractor.