Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam speaks to supporters in Nashville after being re-elected Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014.NASHVILLE — The state’s largest teachers’ union on Tuesday called on Gov. Bill Haslam to provide educators with a 6 percent pay increase next year to start carrying out his pledge to make Tennessee the “fastest improving state” in the nation on teacher pay.
Carolyn Crowder, executive director of the Tennessee Education Association, said in a statement that teachers “are eagerly anticipating” Haslam’s budget hearing on Friday with Education Department officials “to see if he will start living up to that promise.”
Haslam’s original fiscal year 2014-2015 budget, unveiled last winter, provided teachers a 2 percent increase. But the governor was forced to renege after tax collections fell $300 million below projections.
This year the governor has asked state agencies to outline plans to cut up to 7 percent from their 2015-2016 budgets, a figure he has called a worst-case scenario but one he says allows him to cut here and there to present a balanced budget to lawmakers in early 2015.
Last week and into this week, Haslam has been holding public budget hearings where departments outline potential cuts.