Gov. Bill Lee with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Nashville on Nov. 28, 2023, for Lee’s announcement he will push to provide private school vouchers statewide. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Gov. Bill Lee hasn’t even presented a new education voucher bill for 2025, and its prospects are dimming already, especially if it seeks money for all students to attend private schools.
Street talk hasn’t been kind to to the governor’s obsession with school vouchers the last two months. Echoing that sentiment, state Rep. Rick Eldridge told the Lookout this week he’s heard East Tennessee commentators discuss the issue and notes, “They don’t see it.”
Rural Republicans, especially, are feeling the heat from school boards and administrators. Many lawmakers, when asked about it, hem and haw, saying they don’t know what will happen.
“I don’t personally have an issue with it, but I want to see what the bill looks like and what it is actually going to do,” says Eldridge, a Morristown Republican. “But a lot of people don’t think that the votes are there.”
One of the biggest sticking points is Lee’s push for a “universal” scholarship — if it remains in the new version — after the governor wanted passage of a bill last session that in the second year would have offered $7,000 for every student in the state to enroll in private schools, a proposition likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lee sustained a crushing political loss in the session as the private-school voucher bill died, even though backers such as Americans for Prosperity and the American Federation for Children spent $1.125 million lobbying lawmakers. Despite the setback, Lee then took the unusual step of endorsing pro-voucher candidates in this summer’s Republican primaries but made only minimal headway — if any — even as secretive groups, including the School Freedom Fund, spent more than $4.5 million manipulating voters and squashing candidates.
Lee says he will continue to work on “school choice” in every county, even though competing proposals from the House, Senate and governor couldn’t find enough support from either chamber this year.
Sen. Jon Lundberg, the Bristol Republican who carried Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher bill during the last legislative session, lost his seat and won’t be back. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Passing it could prove even more difficult than it did in the 2024 session.
The Senate is losing Bristol Republican Jon Lundberg, who carried the fight for Lee, in favor of Bobby Harshbarger, who hasn’t made clear his stance on the matter. Then again, outgoing Republican Frank Niceley of Strawberry Plains lost his seat, in part because he opposed vouchers. He thinks he might have gotten sideways with the governor, too, over a farm bill and started cleaning out his Senate office this week.
Asked what he’s going to do with all of his memorabilia — besides the nice paintings on the wall — Niceley quips that nobody wants it, so he might use the stuff for target practice in the backyard.
Republican Sen. Brent Taylor Memphis, a 2004 congressional candidate, is among those who doesn’t shy away from saying he supports the governor’s proposal, noting he sent his children to private schools, instead of Memphis schools, and it helped them excel.
Taylor, a funeral home owner, acknowledges he had the ability to pay for private school, and he wants single mothers from inner-city Memphis who are working two jobs to be able to give their children the same option he had. He contends that will break the cycle of “generational poverty,” and he might have a point. (The only oddity with that scenario is that Shelby County already has private-school vouchers in the form of the state’s Education Savings Account program.)
Taylor points out, though, “For it to pass, I think there needs to be more leadership from the governor’s office in trying to get that bill across the finish line.”
House Education Committee Chairman Mark White plans to talk to the governor after last session’s House version, which contained enticements such as funds for teacher insurance premiums and school improvements, failed to reach a floor vote. He also appears more amenable to a program such as the one being offered in Davidson, Shelby and Hamilton counties that has limits on family incomes.
The state is about 6,450 students short of reaching its max for vouchers in the program’s third official year.
The Department of Education approved 4,529 applications out of 6,347 submitted for this school year, and of those, 3,549 students enrolled in a school participating in the voucher program. The state approved 2,445 for Memphis-Shelby, 1,451 for Metro Nashville, 609 for Hamilton County and 24 for the state’s Achievement School District, according to state information.
For (school voucher legislation) to pass, I think there needs to be more leadership from the governor’s office in trying to get that bill across the finish line.
– Sen. Brent Taylor, R-Memphis
When lawmakers narrowly passed the voucher bill after a tie vote in the House on a rancor-filled day (oops, that’s nearly every day) followed by FBI snooping that likely continues to this very day, the program was limited to 5,000 students in Shelby and Davidson at a cost of about $25 million and was allowed to increase by 2,500 every year to a maximum of 10,000 in the third year and 15,000 in year five.
The underwhelming start could be laid at the feet of a protracted lawsuit resolved only after the Tennessee Supreme Court decided the Constitution didn’t mean exactly what it says and that local governments had no choice in the matter, in spite of the Home Rule provision requiring local votes on bills targeting one or two localities.
The governor is likely to introduce a new plan in November. He put on the Ritz last fall with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders performing at the Tennessee Library & Archives. By the time the Legislature wrapped up in April, the plan limped home with tail tucked.
We’ll see if he brings greater fanfare this year to an idea that appears to be melting, melt … me … m.
Mea culpa?
The executive director of Tennessee’s Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance is preparing a response to the governor’s request for an opinion on whether he erred in allowing a nonprofit Christian group to fund his trip to a Florida island to speak at its summer conference.
The solution seems pretty simple. But he needs the Ethics Commission to raise eyebrows before he’ll pay it back.
Bureau chief Bill Young started reviewing a letter by Lee’s attorney last week and will put together an informal staff reaction for the Ethics Commission to review and approve. Young notes he wasn’t inclined to issue an informal opinion without the commission’s approval because of the sensitive nature of the request and media attention.
The commission doesn’t meet, though, until Dec. 3, when Young expects the opinion to be ready for review.
My gosh, how will we be able to sleep until then?
Ethics questions plaguing Tennessee governor’s administration
The governor said last week he did nothing wrong in allowing Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group, to pay for his travel expenses. The organization has an arm called ADF Action that hires a lobbyist to work on Tennessee bills.
Two days later, the governor’s chief counsel, Erin Merrick, claimed in a letter to the Ethics Commission that Lee is “committed to ethics and transparency” and wants clarification about his travel and “clarity” for executive branch officials about prohibitions on accepting gifts from groups that do business with the state.
In a defense that would make the Attorney General’s Office proud, Merrick argued that Alliance Defending Freedom and ADF Action are “meaningfully different,” with different corporation structures, separate incorporation, separate tax IDs, different missions and bylaws, separate bank accounts and financial records and separate boards of directors.
Merrick also claimed ADF Action’s lobbyist Matt Lorimer, who isn’t in the Tennessee Lobbyist guide, doesn’t lobby for Alliance Defending Freedom and didn’t influence any part of the governor’s conference trip.
Yet while admitting Lorimer is a registered Tennessee lobbyist for ADF Action, she said he’s also an employee of Alliance Defending Freedom, even though the latter is not an employer of a lobbyist “for purposes of Tennessee ethics law.”
Under this line of thinking, Lorimer works for both entities but lobbies only for ADF Action, which spent between $20,000 and $50,000 in 2023 on lobbying and $10,000 to $25,000 in the first half of 2024, according to a Tennessee Lookout analysis.
We are to surmise that Lorimer did his lobbying without any direction from Alliance Defending Freedom, even though he works for the group.
Merrick blames “political opponents” for suggesting it was improper for the governor to let Alliance Defending Freedom pay for his trip.
Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, has been raising questions about ethics in Gov. Bill Lee’s administration. (Photo: Tennessee General Assembly)
Democratic Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat who has raised the biggest stink about the governor’s trip, is questioning Lee’s ethical stance more than anyone, but to call Hemmer a “political opponent” is a little off the mark. Besides, several Republican lawmakers are holding their noses privately about this deal. Please spare us the sob story.
(Incidentally, if the Governor’s Office put this much legal effort into the private-school voucher bill, it might pass. Then again, if it expects people to buy this argument, no wonder the bill didn’t pass this year.)
The Ethics Commission recently dismissed a similar case but called the situation “disappointing” after Hemmer filed a sworn complaint contending that Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds violated state ethics policy by taking two out-of-state trips to conferences funded by her former employer, ExcelInEd, a pro-voucher group that hires a lobbyist. The decision came after Reynolds paid back the group and was reimbursed by the state, a measly $2,000, which is barely a notation on the state books but a nice chunk for average folk.
Lee has been defending her to the hilt as she pushes his private-school voucher bill. It’s not surprising, of course, since he took the same type of trip she did, only to a beachy destination.
“Never Can Say Goodbye”
Some journalists — well maybe one — are going to miss state Rep. John Ragan as he leaves the Legislature after losing a challenge of his defeat by Rick Scarbrough in the District 33 Republican primary. While gruff and irritating to many, mainly the LGBTQ community, he was somewhat accessible as he generated one outrageous story after another.
And, of course, he enabled us to come up with yet another catchy lawmaker nickname, “The Ray-gun.”
This time, though, it was Ragan’s hopes that were shot down when the Republican State Executive Committee voted 41-7 against the Oak Ridge Republican’s claim that Democrats crossed over into the primary and cost him the election, by 258 votes. That’s funny, are we certain Anderson County has 258 Democrats?
I’m very disappointed in the outcome, and I really think the Legislature needs to take action to close primaries because, quite frankly, an opposition party shouldn’t have any say in another party’s choice for their primary candidate.
– Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge
The Lookout caught up with Ragan this week, and it appears to be the end of the road. He isn’t planning to make any further challenge.
“I could take it to court, but I’d have to mortgage my house to do it,” Ragan says. “I’m not gonna do that.”
He says he has no other option, but if he were “independently wealthy” he would consider it.
Does he have any parting words?
“I’m very disappointed in the outcome, and I really think the Legislature needs to take action to close primaries because, quite frankly, an opposition party shouldn’t have any say in another party’s choice for their primary candidate,” Ragan says.
The problem is a lot of Republicans are benefiting from those Democrats’ votes, and they don’t want to lose them and the supermajority control they have over Tennessee.
The day will come, though, when Republicans close primaries, and then we’ll have a run on shovels at the local hardware store to start tossing dirt on their political graves.
More backing
The Memphis-Shelby County School Board, which is struggling with threats at high schools, voted to support the Memphis City Council in its quest to put three gun-restriction questions on the November ballot.
The charter amendment referendum, which involves handgun permits, assault weapon restrictions and extreme risk protection orders, is considered a “trigger” mechanism by City Council sponsors. Yet House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally threatened to cut Memphis’ $78 million share of state sales tax revenue if it put the questions to voters.
GOP leaders promise punitive tax move if Memphis passes gun restrictions; state moves to block them
The City Council refused to back down – after the Secretary of State’s Office said the gun-related questions weren’t allowed – and persuaded a chancellor to issue an order to put them up to a vote.
No word yet on whether the state will challenge the chancellor’s ruling.
Sen. Brent Taylor, a former City Council member, pointed this week, though, he’s not sure the state has a leg to stand on because the Supreme Court ruled some 20 years ago that Memphis could put a payroll tax question on the ballot.
In light of that, we have to wonder who’s providing political advice to the Senate and House speakers. They didn’t need the backing of Tennessee’s only majority minority city to ascend to the pinnacle of politics. But this isn’t exactly a sign of benevolent dictatorship.
“It’s good to get high and never come down / It’s good to be king of your own little town.” *
* “It’s Good to be King,” Tom Petty
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