Gov. Bill Haslam seems poised to slide straight back into his chair in Tennessee’s Capitol building this November and that’s really too bad for Tennesseans.
It’s too bad because Volunteer State taxpayers need more from their governor than the dithering Haslam has done with TennCare, with Common Core, with the Department of Children’s Services and any number of other problems and departments.
It’s true that Haslam must walk a fine line between common-sense governing and the disconnected far right that unfortunately controls the Tennessee General Assembly. But that’s just the point. He doesn’t seem up to the job of corralling — or even just cajoling — the lawmakers who have managed to delay education reforms and recently passed a law that probably will torpedo his effort to finally bring Affordable Care Act money to Tennessee.
On top of all that, he’s now talking more slashes to departments in a state where teenagers are turning juvenile detention facilities into escape houses and would-be TennCare enrollees have to sue to get their applications screened because of computer programming problems.
On Friday, Haslam administration officials confirmed that the governor has ordered state agencies to slash discretionary spending by up to 7 percent as his administration builds the new budget to be presented to lawmakers in early 2015. The state’s general fund, which pays for most functions of government including education, shows a $302.4 million revenue shortfall for fiscal 2014 that ended June 30.