Governor Open to Redux on DCS Oversight

The Tennessee General Assembly may have gone too far with cost-cutting when it wiped out oversight committees looking out for children.

Governor Bill Haslam was asked whether he supports a push by Democrats to reestablish the panel that looked over the troubled Department of Children’s Services.

“You can’t have 133 bosses,” Haslam says, referring to the combined state house and senate. “That doesn’t work. But having said that, there is a legitimate role for legislative oversight, and we’d love to be a part of that conversation about what that should look like going forward.”

Haslam says the debate should be about more than DCS.

In 2011, the legislature abolished special oversight panels on corrections, education and TennCare, among others. At the time, Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey called it a “pleasure” to “streamline the operations of the legislature.”