State Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, calls himself a “problem-fixer, not a policy person.”
“I enjoy diving into a problem,” says the District 10 lawmaker, who is seeking his fourth term in the state legislature’s upper chamber in next month’s election.
Clinica Médicos, which serves the area’s Spanish-speaking population, was in the news this week with the opening of a dental and mental health facility. Gardenhire in the past has helped access funding for the clinic.
A pumping and purification unit was needed to help the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex connect to the Falls Creek Falls Utility District. Gardenhire helped make those connections.
In the past, he has sponsored bills, among others, to allow in-state college tuition for American-born children of illegal immigrant parents, to begin to reform the certificate of need process to further competition for hospitals and to shift state money from one fund to allow for minority scholarships for engineering students at the University of Tennessee.