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- "The State of the State" election season heating up, all that and more, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Welcome back to my apartment.

We're doing the show virtually this week, not because of COVID, but obviously, because of the ice storm.

I should note that we are recording this Thursday morning as the storm has started.

So we won't touch too much [audio distorts] with everyone is safe, obviously by the time this airs on Friday, a whole lot more will be known, so... but we will... we do have, this week, a roundtable of journalists to talk about some of the other biggest stories of the week.

I'll start with Abigail Warren, who covers the suburbs for us at The Daily Memphian.

Abigail, thanks for joining us by Zoom.

- Thanks for having me.

Toby Sells is the news editor with The Memphis Flyer, Toby, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you, sir.

- Bill Dries, of course, with The Daily Memphian.

Thank you, Bill.

I thought I would start with "The State of the State" was this week, which, you know, the legislature was already in session, and obviously there's a lot of stuff that happens before they even go into session.

But it is kind of the official opening of the legislative season with "The State of the State", from the governor, and a whole lot of priorities, many of which we knew, but now we have maybe some more details, and there's just... this season, there's a lot that goes on with the legislature, that affects, of course, the whole state, but has huge impacts on Memphis, the suburbs, and surrounding area.

I think maybe, Bill, we start with Senator Katrina Robinson, the State Senator from the Memphis area, she was expelled this week.

The first time that the State Senate, I believe, has ever expelled a member, it was... She was convicted of what, two wire fraud charges, two felonies.

Many of the charges against her were dismissed.

And it got pretty ugly, in terms, and of course, really very partisan, in terms of how people voted, and how they responded.

- Well, especially because the Senate has a Republican member also from the Shelby County delegation, who is under indictment, and awaiting trial at this time, that's Brian Kelsey, who is awaiting trial.

The key difference, the Republicans point out, is that Robinson was convicted on criminal charges.

Robinson and her supporters say that this was conduct that was before her tenure in the Senate began.

That might not seem like an important distinction, but it has been used in some other cases, in the House, as well.

The House actually had a member back in the '80s, and early '90s, Tommy Burnett from Jamestown, Tennessee, who was reelected to the Tennessee legislature while he was literally in a jail cell, serving a prison sentence.

- Wait, stop, stop, you're making this up, you're making this up on an icy snowy day.

- No, no.

So, that there is no blanket rule for this, the times, and the status of people in the legislature, and who is the majority, actually do play a role in how these kind of matters are handled.

- Right, and I think it's worth looking at, you know, Democrats at have brought out an opinion from Herbert Slatery, who was the, of course, the General Attorney, Attorney General, for the state of Tennessee, back... issued an opinion in 2019, when Representative David Byrd was under investigation, they were considering expelling him from the House of Representatives.

So they put the question to Slatery.

He said that the expulsion power is best exercised only in extreme circumstances, and with extreme caution.

And the very first part of his opinion said, "There is no historical precedent of expelling a member, other than for conduct that occurred while the member was in office."

There are so many people pointing to this opinion as a sort of, "Good for the goose, good for the gander" kind of a situation, and has a lot of people scratching their heads.

And yeah, as Bill mentioned, you know, Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, right now, is under investigation on some election finance charges, and things like that.

So, if I was Kelsey, I'm really paying attention closely to what's happened in this case.

And well, what happened in Katrina Robinson's case, and thinking about my future here.

- Any thoughts, Abigail, or things you've heard?

I mean, Brian Kelsey, State Senator, his trial's been pushed back to, I think, after the election, I think he's up for election, someone can correct me if I'm wrong for that.

Any reactions out in the suburbs?

- That's the main thing, people are still reaching out to him, because for now, he does represent Germantown.

So Germantown's looking at different legislative issues, they do contact Kelsey.

Kelsey is gonna be the sponsor on the bill that would affect ownership of the 3 G schools.

It's been filed as a caption bill, but we expect an amendment that has the language about transferring schools that are operating within another district's boundaries.

The language is not filed yet, but the caption bill is there, and I expect that to come in an amendment, and he is carrying that bill in the Senate.

- He did step down, if I'm not mistaken, from his... what he was chair of, one of the big committees in the State Senate, but is still an active State Senator.

And to reiterate, is accused.

I mean, the trial hasn't happened.

And critics, and I know others have said, "Well, Katrina Robinson was convicted of these two charges."

I think their point, also, is that while there's still an appeals process, you know, there were 38 charges that were thrown out.

I mean, the justice system moves on, and that process isn't complete, but I cut you off, Abigail, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, he did step down from being Chairman of the Education Committee, while the trial unfolds, and the investigation continues.

So, for now, he will not be Chairman of the Education Committee.

- Right, and we'll say, you know, with education, there's a lot of news coming out of "The State of the State" with the governor, on education.

You know, there'd been... he had begun, he and his administration, began to talk in the fall about a change to the Basic Education Program, BEP, which is the formula that has, for many decades, now been used.

If somewhat, I dunno, strangely, I don't wanna say "unevenly", but it has been the basis, if not the exact letter, of how funding has gone to schools.

The... Lee's overall proposed budget, I'll run through a few things here, is a $52.6 billion budget.

There's about $8 billion in new recurring spending.

And Bill Lee, Governor Lee, proposed $1 billion in new education funding.

Seven hundred and fifty of that is new recurring funding for BEP, of that 750, $125 million would go into... go to fund teacher salaries, and that would...

I mean, $125 million is a huge number.

There are 80,000 educators across, give or take, across the state.

So basically, on average, a raise of about $1,500 for each teacher.

I should also know, again, election season is what it is.

And this is an election season for Governor Lee, we can talk about that as well.

But again, back to you, Abigail, the three Gs, you know, the Germantown schools that were not transferred from Shelby County to the Germantown Municipal School District, has been a sore spot, we've talked about it.

We talked about it with the new Memphis Shelby County School District Board Chair, just a couple weeks ago on Behind the Headlines.

It seems that they would vary SCS, or as they're now known, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, we'd like to hang on to those schools.

There have been negotiations between Germantown, and the Shelby school system.

But this bill, this caption bill, which is kind of a placeholder, a legislative maneuver of maneuvers, you know, a legislative process.

They have the right, to just pass a bill up at the state, and move those schools over?

I mean, could it be that simple?

- It depends on the language of the bill.

The last bill that we saw, last session, did give... it asked the school boards to kind of work together, and kind of laid out some groundwork.

I do know that the mayor and some SCS board members have had meetings.

Germantown Municipal School District has not been part of those meetings up to this point, but there have been conversations.

But I do know that Mark White wants to get this issue solved this year.

He was very clear about that when I talked to him this week, that this is an issue that's been going on for several years, and he wants to end it this session.

- And Mark White being a long-time state legislator from the Germantown area.

But Bill, or Toby, I mean, thoughts on education funding, the three Gs, and so on.

I mean, what did you see?

We'll talk, also, about a lot of money going to public universities, but anything on schools, Bill, that caught your eye?

- What caught my eye, in the entire State of the State, as well as on education, was the governor's rhetoric.

It was a very political speech, in what is a reelection year for him.

In terms of education, the governor talked, generally, about the need for these pay raises for teachers, to go directly to the teachers.

No interpretation of a formula, in which the raises translate to something else, which has been the case, in terms of past pay raises from the state, for teachers specifically in Shelby County Schools.

- We'll segue into public education, I should... Let me mention, also, we talked about the election season.

Some early numbers coming out, the governor's race will be voted on in, unless Bill corrects me, in November.

The governor comes into this with, you know, his reelection with a very big war chest, some $5+ million, I think, is where he is on the latest report, is that right, Bill?

- Yeah, around $5 million was his balance, at the end of the most recent reporting period, which was a few days into January, the reports were due on January 31st.

And the governor had a balance of about $5 million.

Five million dollars, it is kind of a ballpark estimate, of what it takes to run a credible campaign for Governor in Tennessee, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, mainly because Tennessee is a state of 95 counties, it covers two time zones.

If you wanted to do a fly-around as a candidate, to just the major cities in the state, it would take you two days.

Mountain City, Tennessee, is closer to Canada than it is to Memphis, geographically, as well as culturally.

So you need several million dollars.

And right now, Bill Lee is the only candidate who seems to have that wherewithal in this race.

It's still going early, but let's not forget that the Gubernatorial Primaries, Democratic and Republican, come up on the August ballot, with the general election in November.

- Yeah, thank you for that.

And by the way, Bill is as ahead, two to zero, on just obscure amazing facts, but the...

I should also note that the main Democratic candidate, Jason Martin, again, these reports are oddly timed.

So I don't wanna say this, you know, it's not really apples to oranges, but he had about... having raised about $400,000 over the six months, prior to the recent reporting deadline, so... And neither of them look to have serious challengers, unless I'm missing something.

- Well, you do have JB Smiley, who's on the City Council.

- That's the ice storm speaking, I'm sorry to interrupt.

- He's the Democratic primary for governor.

- Yes.

- And Councilman Smiley has raised a good amount of money.

Martin was the leading Democratic contender, in terms of his fundraising for the period.

Again, not apples to apples, because you have to remember that for this reporting period, people launched, or started their campaigns, at different times.

Governor Lee announced his reelection effort, really, I think, early last year, he made it known that he would be seeking reelection.

And he is the incumbent, and incumbents have a strong advantage in statewide races, here, for the reasons that we talked about earlier.

- And again, apologies to Councilman Smiley, 'cause we're kind of piecing this together today, during the ice storm Thursday morning.

Toby, thoughts on the election, thoughts on the governor's race, thoughts on anything else going on?

I mean, we'll talk about public education in a second, college education in a second.

- Yeah, I think before we leave the legislature, it's been and kind of a strange beginning here.

Usually they are just chomping at the bit to get their bills filed, get 'em in committee, and get 'em rolling; we haven't seen that yet, it's been kind of quiet up there.

I think, you know, they had, what, three special sessions last year, these guys have just been legislating their little hearts out, and they've probably got everything they wanted done, done.

So it's been a little quiet up there.

There have been some interesting things, some interesting presentations, from different departments that I thought were really, really neat.

Another Kelsey bill that he got, he wants just a blanket ban on Rank Choice Voting, RCV, which we've done here.

And he brought it to committee, those committee members had a lot of questions about it.

What was it?

They weren't really familiar with it.

He wanted to go ahead and get a vote on it quickly.

They said, "Let's wait and get some testimony from some people."

There was kind of a funny moment where they said, "Did you bring anybody with you to talk against your bill?"

And he said, "No, of course I didn't bring anyone "to talk against my bill, but they're gonna try to get some folks here to talk about it, have it out."

Bill, do you remember how many times has this been on referendum?

How many times have Memphians passed... wanted Ranked Choice Voting, do you remember?

- Well, it was approved initially, I believe, in the 1990s.

In 2019, the City Council put a series of charter changes on the ballot.

One of them was to eliminate Rank Choice Voting.

- Right.

- And the voters rejected that.

Part of that package was also to eliminate runoff elections, in the single-member council district races.

And that, too, was voted down by voters.

Rank Choice Voting is meant to really do away with the runoff process.

So Rank Choice Voting is a big issue here, arguably a much bigger issue here, than it is in other parts of the state.

- That's right, and when he was asked about it, you know, "What problem does this solve?"

Kelsey just said that, you know, "This really clears up any kind of confusion across the state about how we do elections in the state."

And so they rolled the bill, we'll come back next week, and see who talks about that.

Again, there was a really interesting presentation from a labor market expert, from the University of Tennessee.

The real gist of the thing was, of course, right now we have a very tight labor market across the US, and Tennessee is no different.

But there were some population shifts that will become really important to the states.

Our death rate exceeded our birth rate, which means that our population is not growing in Tennessee.

The only reason that it grew is because people were moving in from other states.

The expert provided some really interesting data about where people are moving to, in the state, looked at change of addresses from the US Postal Service.

Knoxville, East Tennessee cities, they grew by leaps and bounds out there.

Knoxville added about 8,000 households, which is about 16,000 people in Memphis.

Over two years, 2020 and '21, we lost about 17,000 people to other parts of the state, or, you know, other states.

So, you know, the labor market in Memphis, if you're just looking at population, is gonna be really, really tough, tough thing to solve, going forward.

So we'll have to see how it shakes out.

- I should note that we're not ignoring Abigail, we lost Abigail- - Oh, no.

- again.

Yeah, we lost her, internet, or power, or both.

So we're, again, hanging on by a thread, so I appreciate everybody, their patience, as my camera gets really blurry, I don't know why.

I'll say, also, legislature, big, you know, amount of proposals, funding for the university system.

You know, I'll go through it here.

Two hundred and fifty million dollars for infrastructure at Tennessee State University, state's only historically black public university, which is a huge, huge amount.

And, in part, was meant to address some decades of, what many people thought, was really pointed underfunding of Tennessee State University.

Two hundred million for Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, back, in some ways, to what Toby was talking about with workforce.

You know, that whole system, which provides, you know, free education to anyone in Tennessee who wants it, at least a two-year degree.

It will be interesting to see where that goes.

And you start thinking about the Megasite, and the Ford plant coming in.

And I think $90 million, I think I have this right, invest in the state's outcome-based funding formula for the state university system.

Lee said that, because of that increase, he expected no tuition increase this year, in state public university, which is a... obviously, a huge... would be great for students and families, who are helping to pay for those students.

In Memphis, there was big news that I thought that, you know, already, the University of Memphis has achieved Carnegie R1 status for their research university.

It was a huge goal for David Rudd, outgoing President, it's been a goal for the university for many years.

It really is a big deal, within the world of universities.

There's $50 million, in one-time money, going to an endowment fund from the state, in the proposed budget, that'll be matched.

President Rudd, outgoing President Rudd, from University of Memphis, said the university is attempting to match that $50 million.

So that was also big news.

Any other news from... on public education, that caught anybody's eye?

- What caught my ear on this was that vouchers are still very much an issue in the Tennessee Legislature.

And the funding for education has some strings on it, under the governor's proposals, that indicate that the Legislature is not done with the voucher issue.

And that could wind up being the biggest issue, of what will be a short session this year, because it is an election year for all 99 House seats, and for about half of the 33 members' Senate.

- A couple more things, you had highlighted, Toby, at the Legislature.

The...

I lost track of my notes here, and again, apologies to everyone for my... for this taping on an icy day.

One was about refugees, and there was another one, Toby.

- Yeah, and the other one was about cannabis, and we can get to that.

The situation with the refugee children is really more questions than there are answers.

It began...

Some legislator saw there was some mysterious midnight, or dark of the night, flight into Chattanooga, that was filled with refugee children.

They, state lawmakers, got involved, they started asking questions to the federal government, who did not give them very many answers at all, about how many refugee children were placed in Tennessee, how they were moved through the state.

They went through a year-long process to try to get more information about this.

They were stonewalled on information, and then just don't have a whole lot.

And at the same time that those questions were being asked, and how this moved in Tennessee, one of the big... You know, the only place, the residential house, for refugee children in the state, and three employees there were investigated and arrested for conduct while they were at work.

They wanted to get more information about that, they didn't find a whole lot, their license was suspended, it wasn't revoked, just under due process, they're still under investigation.

No children are living in this house right now, but it's brought about all these questions for all these, especially conservative lawmakers, that are concerned about how these children are placed in Tennessee, how many, where they are, all those things.

And they just don't have a whole lot of answers yet.

So they're, right now, they're asking the, you know, the federal lawmakers, to help 'em out, give 'em some information, but I don't see that they're gonna get a whole lot of questions answered any time soon.

The other one, if we wanna go ahead and talk about cannabis- - Yep.

- Again, it's been pretty quiet.

However, there have been three cannabis bills that I have seen, that have been filed so far.

Two of 'em, just of messing around a little bit with what we already have in the state.

As far as other drugs, like Delta-8, and then another one, would kind of open up what our medical system, that we already have, a little bit more.

But the third one is from Bob Freeman, he's a Democrat from Nashville.

And it opens the door, he says that, you know, rips the bandaid off, and it would fully legalize cannabis for medical and recreational use.

And it would set up the whole system.

He developed this bill with the Tennessee Growers Coalition, which grows marijuana, hemp, and other products in Tennessee already.

It's a 33-page bill, it's super detailed.

Under the bill, Tennesseans would be able to possess nearly a 10th of a pound of marijuana, at any time.

They could grow 12 plants on their own property, but it wouldn't be visible from the road, have to be locked up.

And then also, if anybody is in jail, prison right now, on only marijuana charges, then they would be eligible for parole.

It's a big bill that does a whole lot things, but even he told the Nashville Scene that he doesn't expect it to pass.

He said 68% of Tennesseans approve of medical... or, you know, marijuana legalization in the state, but he doubt that he's gonna get sixty-eight percent of the votes in Nashville.

- Yeah, one more bill, one more proposal, in the governments, as we come down to the end of the show today, and Bill Lee's proposal was 100 Tennessee Highway Patrol Troopers, and 50 personnel at TBI.

I am assuming that 100 new Highway Patrol would help the governor fulfill his pledge, to what was it, Bill, some 16, 12 or 16 State Troopers that would begin to patrol the highways around the Memphis area.

It is a strange anomaly, you've written about it.

It goes way back that Memphis, for many decades now, Memphis City Police have patrolled the state highways, not the Tennessee Highway Patrol, which patrols the highways all across the rest of the state.

And that gets in, also, to drag racing, reckless driving.

You've done a bunch of work on that, Bill, other folks at Daily Memphian have, and it has gotten...

Whether or not it was because of that reporting, it's been a big discussion among a lot of people.

The City Council is asking questions about the police policies, around not pursuing reckless drivers, high-speed drivers; what's going on there?

- Well, Worth Morgan is the only council member, so far, who has talked about, or actually pushed for, changing the pursuit policy.

The other council members are much more cautious on this.

And this is one of those things that there are two sides to.

You can certainly argue that the stunt driving, the reckless driving that we've seen, is different than someone who's just trying to get somewhere fast, and that it poses dramatic risks to the people around them.

So possibly, the police should be allowed to pursue, in those cases.

zhe other side of that, is that, do you really want to add a police pursuit to high-speed driving, that's really already prevalent on the interstate system?

And it turns out that police agencies across the country, and adopting very similar policies on pursuit, have a lot of data that shows, that when police visibly stop the pursuit at some point, and turn the lights off, pull over to the side of the road, so the person fleeing them can see them do that, that they usually slow down, too.

There's a lot of data that is behind this discussion, and more discussion on it to come.

The bills in the legislature, John Gillespie's bill in the House, would make reckless driving a higher misdemeanor, but the catch there is "misdemeanor".

It would remain a misdemeanor, and our police policy is they do not chase people for traffic misdemeanors.

- I think before we...

I'm amazed we kept two out of three, actually three out of four, I guess.

I think I'm gonna end it there a little bit early.

Thank you, thanks for joining us, I hope everyone is safe.

Again, recording this Thursday morning, as the ice storm is starting, and so we don't... we didn't dwell a lot on that today, just because we don't know what's going on.

And obviously, our tech's a little blurry today, or I should say, mine is, but thank you to the crew for pulling this off.

Thank you, Bill, thank you, Toby, thank you, Abigail.

We were glad to have her for as long as we did.

That is all we got this week, join us again next week.

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