State lawmakers adjourned for the year last night, passing a drastically reduced state budget and major changes to the lottery scholarship program.
The $27 billion budget includes the elimination of 2,000 state jobs, cuts to Tenncare and reduced spending on pre-kindergarten classrooms – something that was hard for Governor Phil Bredesen to give, but necessary because of this year’s nearly $500 million shortfall.
House Finance Chairman Craig Fitzhugh says this year’s budget is a reflection of the economy.
“It reflects a reduction of over $400 million to our original budget, about $1 billion considering what we are doing on this current year and next. It reflects, as we know, a lot of tough choices that were necessary to provide the budget so that we can live within our expected revenues.”
Legislators worked until nearly midnight. Changes to the lottery scholarship bill held up progress on the budget, but house and senate leaders finally agreed on changes to the GPA requirements. Fitzhugh explains the new guidelines.
“For the first six semesters, you keep your scholarship with a 2.75. After that, you can forget about that cumulative average that you have to keep, you just continue, you make a 3.0. After that, and you keep your scholarship. Should you, for one semester, fail to make that 3.0, you lose it for the next semester. However, if you regain that three-point for that particular semester, you got it back.”
Fitzhugh was one of those who worked long hours to reach the compromise. The bill stymied the General Assembly for more than 24 hours. The lawmakers ran out of official “paid” days on Tuesday and worked for free yesterday, passing different versions of the scholarship bill.
After several House Democrats vented against a new, compromise measure in caucus meetings yesterday afternoon, the House passed the final measure 92-2. One member abstained.
Within a half hour the Senate unanimously approved the conference committee report.
Senate Education Chair Jamie Woodson says it represents the best of many good ideas.
“Our goal was to impact as many students as possible with a financially balanced proposal. This proposal will accomplish that mission.”
The bill also removes a previous 120 hour cap on the scholarship. That means students can now maintain their scholarships for a full 5 years. Woodson says the bill, as passed, will allow an additional 12,000 students to get or keep a lottery scholarship.
WEB EXTRA
The General Assembly will reconvene the second Tuesday in January, when the winners of this summer and fall’s elections will take office.
The appropriations bill is SB4213 Kyle/HB4219 Fitzhugh. It makes appropriations to end out the fiscal year 2007-2008 and to fund 2008-2009, which begins July 1. The appropriations bill lagged behind the lottery bill because some of the provisions of that bill were expected to come out of other reserves than the lottery accounts. That would have thrown off the totals for the rest of the budget. Traditionally, the budget is the last substantive bill passed by any General Assembly.
An unusual bill passed this year was the “reserve” bill, called the “cascade” bill by administration drafters. It would allow a “cascade” of funds to tumble out of various reserve funds and accounts holding professional fees. It passed parallel to the appropriations bill and funds part of the budget that state revenues aren’t expected to cover.
The biggest issue that erupted was the economy, with revenues driven into negative numbers by a crash in housing-related buying and by higher gasoline taxes. The governor unveiled a sharply slashed budget May 12 to a joint session of the General Assembly, one that cut about $468 million from the spending plan.
Details of the new plan were stark, including the year-to-date revenue figures as of April. Sales tax had grown only 1.11%, and franchise and excise taxes were down 6%.
That story wasn’t unique to Capitol Hill:
·Realtors say home sales down 30%
·Higher education faces lower appropriations
·Bredesen says Medicaid cuts will cost state millions
When the governor proposed voluntary buyouts of more than 2,000 state employees, labor oriented House members balked. That obstacle was removed when the governor agreed not to pursue involuntary layoffs until legislators return in January.
The lottery bill is SB0611/HB0653. It had passed in the House the previous year, in the Senate early Wednesday with a different form. The final vote was on a version adopted by the conference committee made up of both houses. The plan adopted ultimately makes it easier for a student to continue on a scholarship while trying to bring up thier grade point average.
The compromise didn’t fund lower-achieving scholars as well as the Democrats had wanted. It assigned a low priority to easing the way for home-schoolers, which Republicans didn’t like.
In the end the two houses were bickering over amounts of less than $100,000. Within hours after the lottery measure cleared the bar, both houses passed a $27 billion budget with far less fuss.
Senator Randy McNally chaired the conference committee that forged the compromise, including Republicans and Democrats from both houses.
“I think it’s a good conference committee report. They worked hard. There were individuals on a number of different issues that were very strong advocates on those issues, and we came together and I think we’ve got a good work product.”
How does this “2.75” thing work?
House members, mostly Democrats, had wanted to fund students whose grade slipped to 2.75 to continue on scholarship indefinitely, sophomore through senior years. (The average graduation grade from a Tennessee public university is said to be a 2.65.)
1. Today a HOPE scholar can slip from 3.0 to 2.75 and stay on the scholarship until he/she reaches 48 hours of work. Then the student’s cumulative GPA must be back up to 3.0. So, a slipped scholar loses the scholarship just as they would approach the junior year.
2. Under the new rule, a student can receive the scholarship with a 2.75 until he or she reaches 72 credit hours. That semester, and each semester afterwards, the student must post a 3.0 (“B”) for the semester in order to keep the scholarship. But the overall average doesn’t have to be back up to 3.0, just the semester grade.
3. For all the time and temper invested, the new change will be funded by just $14.1 million of lottery reserves.
Senator Jamie Woodson Woodson said part of the bill will fund new energy efficient construction at county schools systems across the state.
“That’s related to excess dollars; $90,000,000 will have the opportunity to be utilized by our 136 systems across the state. In this particularly challenging economy combined with high-growth areas and high-challenge needs for maintenance and new buildings, it certainly will be a relief to those students and their families and communities all around the state.”
The energy efficiency program was a program sponsored by State Representative Les Winningham, chair of the House Education Committee. In the shootout over ideas, the energy efficiency program (schools get loans to buy air conditioning, etc.) beat out a true “brick and mortar” program that had been sought by House Republicans.
Other Bills that Passed:
Lawmakers approved a “technical corrections” revenue bill after removing a provision that would have changed how some family trusts are taxed.
After two years of scrapping, the cable industry bowed to what finally became inevitable: AT&T got a statewide license to over video service to consumers.
The legislature passed a bill to require counties to upgrade their voting machines to ones which leave a paper trail – but put off implementation until after the general election in November.
Early on, the governor promised a revamp of the way TennCare deals with the long-term health issues of the eldery. That bill finally passed in the last week of the session.
After two years of avoiding taking a stand on open records and open meetings, the legislature passed a watered-down “open records” law (SB3280/HB3637) to make it easier for Tennesseans to get to documents that are supposed to be public. The law defines the rights of residents to get the records and renames the former “ombudsman” office as the Office of Open Records Counsel in the Comptroller’s Office. Frank Gibson of The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, the non-profit that got the proposal through the legislative system, noted that the issue isn’t finished yet:
“The legislation also recognizes that more work needs to be done in this area by creating the Advisory Committee on Open Government to help the ORC [Open Records Counsel] and to continue to address other weaknesses in the law.”
The bill avoided one of those issues – the matter of exactly how many members of a body constitute a meeting.
Failed Bills
Among those bills that failed this year was a measure that would have made an open container of alcohol in a vehicle a violation of state law.
Senate Joint Resolution 127 would have set a constitutional amendment question for the 2010 general election ballot – but it failed to survive a pummeling in the state House.
Jacqueline Fellows, Dan Potter, Mary Perren and Associated Press reports contributed to this story.
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