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- Local state legislators on COVID, crime, schools, and much more tonight on Behind The Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, and thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by two state house representatives.

First is State Representative Dwayne Thompson, a Democrat, representing the Cordova area.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with State Representative John Gillespie, a Republican representing parts of Bartlett, Cordova and East Memphis.

Thank you for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

You all have been busy for not being in session.

You had two special sessions, and the regular session is really right around the corner, which starts in January and I'm sure there's a lot of planning and prep going on with that.

So we'll talk through a range of issues.

I want to get to the Ford Megasite and the Ford plant there.

We mentioned crime and so on, but let's start with the special session that just ended which the key bills and the key issues were a bunch of restrictions or changes to how the state deals with mask mandates, vaccines, et cetera.

I'm going to do a quick summary of this for those who don't follow it quite as closely as we certainly all do, but the bills, one part of the bills that were passed is government businesses being banned from requiring employees and customers to be vaccinated, that I believe is held up in court right now if I'm not mistaken, Bill can help me.

There are mask mandates imposed by governments including that public schools are banned unless COVID transmission rates are extremely high, private schools and businesses may still require masks, again, that one also is held up in court I believe right now in terms of a lawsuit, workers are eligible for unemployment benefits if they quit their jobs because of a vaccine requirement, independent county health departments are under greater control by the state during states of emergency.

Those are I think the high points of it.

You are the...

I'll start with you Representative Thompson, you've been in this year and your third term, what do you make of these bills and where do we go from here?

Are these good things for the area and good things for your constituents?

- Well, I'll start by saying I agree with my colleague of many things but I have a feeling we may not totally agree on this.

Frankly, I believe this last special session was a waste of time and a waste of taxpayer money.

It was basically a reaction to President Biden's initiatives on COVID-19.

And these bills in my opinion were poorly put together, it was rushed through and just simply, they found out how bad it was when they had to rush through and then make last minute adjustments and then make more adjustments and then more adjustments and then finally passed the main legislation at 1:00 AM on Saturday morning after meeting all day long.

This is not the way legislation should be constructed.

- Let me get you Representative Gillespie, were you in favor of these bills that passed and why?

- So, on the COVID bills, the package that we put together, what we ended up finally doing, thanks to a lot of my effort and others.

I really wanted to protect private businesses rights, private schools rights, and just individual Liberty.

I have a big problem with government dictating what a business can and can't do in this regard and so, I really wanted to make sure that if a private business wanted to vaccinate their employees or wanted to require mask, they could continue to do so if they met certain stipulations.

- What about on the restrictions and control over local health departments?

That is not a private business, obviously that's a function of county government.

But do you want the state to have and they are in the five big cities, I believe that's the five big cities have a lot of autonomy that became obviously a big issue depending on what side you were on a good issue or a bad issue during COVID.

Most people hadn't really been aware of that.

The rest of the state is really subjected to the rules of the state health department, I'm summarizing that.

But should the Shelby County Health Department be under... God forbid, we go into another COVID kind of situation, be under the firm of the state?

- I think just to be clear, the Shelby County Health Department still exist.

They're still operating as normal.

I've met with Director Taylor multiple times and this new law and the scenario that you just stated, we would still be working, the health department here locally would still be working with the state health department.

It's not the state completely taking over.

It is just simply adding one more backstop for that control.

- Let me go back to you Representative Thompson before I go to Bill.

I mean, on that issue of the county health department, I think at various points during COVID, there were very few people happy with how the Shelby County Health Department was operating.

Ultimately, the previous director had to resign.

Both people who wanted more restrictions, more masks and quicker vaccines and people of the entire other spectrum have no masks, no restrictions, vaccine is purely optional, there were points at which no one was happy with how the local health department was operating.

I mean, is that the reason this greater control is being asserted by the state?

- Well, the reason that the leadership in the State House gave is to have a consistency across the board with every county.

And frankly, I'm a little skeptical of that because I mean, we have a lot of variation between the different counties.

Cities act differently or have different needs than rural counties do.

That's why we have our individual health departments in the counties now.

I think we can use reform but again, Like a lot of the legislation this session was rushed too fast and we never got a lot of the entities, the stakeholders, our constituents to really weigh in on this like we should have.

- Alright, let me bring in Bill Dries.

- Representative Gillespie, Dr. Taylor, The Health Department Director, after this legislation was passed, this specific bill was passed, she told the County Commission that she does not think it's a good idea because it means less of a quick response to something like the pandemic or the pandemic itself as Eric mentioned there's a resurgence of it that this is another hoop to jump through.

What do you think about that?

- I don't know if I necessarily buy that because with picking up a phone and calling Nashville, that's not that difficult of a concept and I do believe that everyone in the public health sphere is looking out for us.

I don't think that they're nefarious actions being taken here.

I don't see Nashville or the state health department in the situation not answering that phone call, not taking that advice.

Again, they do work closely together.

I know that Dr. Piercey and Dr. Taylor are friends as well so I just don't understand that.

- The governor did not call this special session, the leaders of the House and Senate instead called it.

Did that give you some pause here about this undertaking?

- No, not really.

I've got a very good relationship with both House and Senate leadership.

I understand where they're coming from.

I understand that it's a big state as well and there are a lot of people to please and there are a lot of people that are upset over some of the mandates and restrictions we've had.

So, I definitely understand why it was called.

- Representative Thompson, same question.

Does the fact that the governor did not call this special session, what does that mean to you in terms of what was accomplished or what wasn't here?

- Well, yeah, as I said before, this was more of a reaction to the president's initiatives on COVID-19 and a lot of it was to counteract what he had done.

In the process, I think they made a lot of people mad.

I mean, the business community which would normally support Republican policies were against it and they're still mad about it too.

It was rushed through, we should have taken our time to really craft this legislation to let our constituents give feedback, to get feedback from the stakeholders involved in this on both sides and probably have adjourn that Friday taking the weekend to get more information and then come back on Monday to finish up.

- What did you hear from business leaders on this?

- Honestly, there was a lot of pushback.

I talked to several business leaders that, again, back to my original statement, that just don't want the government in their affairs, either way you put it.

And that's why I fought to allow private businesses to continue to make their decisions.

Now, everything we do up there is about compromise and working with people and unfortunately, everything that I wanted was not put in that bill but a lot of it was and so I think I did a good job listening to our business communities here in the state and locally.

- What were you looking for?

In an ideal world, what would have been in there that wasn't in there?

- So the vaccine requirements, I was very hesitant with certain industries not being able to ask whether or not their employees were vaccinated.

- We may come back to COVID, but obviously a big issue with COVID throughout COVID was the management of the schools and I wanted to use that as a segue into a couple issues with the schools, both the future of the Germantown, the so-called G3 schools that are still controlled by the Shelby County School system and where they might go in this upcoming session.

But let's start with school funding.

There's a big conversation that Governor Lee has started, the national or national.

Statewide, in meetings, in groups, people talking about should the funding of schools, the formula be changed, huge amounts of state money go into local school, Shelby County and the suburban schools included.

I'll start with you Representative Thompson.

Does that school funding formula need to be changed and if so, how?

- Honestly, I can't really specify exactly how the formula should be changed.

I do believe there should be some reform of the BEP.

One thing that I think we do need to do is invest more money in school system, we're something like 43rd, fourty-fourth in the nation in per people spending, and I think it's shown a lot in a lot of our schools especially our low income schools both in the cities and in the rural areas and we just need to invest more money.

- Is that the direction you think is your early sense of the various meetings and commissions and talk?

Do you think that's what's gonna happen that the school systems are gonna end up with more money?

- I don't really know.

I think I know that several of us on both parties think they really do need to invest more in education.

One thing in sort of in implication is that the governor might be looking to try to include more of a voucher plan or a backdoor voucher plan.

And if so, then I think you'll get a lot of pushback from the legislature on that.

- Well, Representative Gillespie, I think I should have the phrase down but Governor Lee talks about being more student-centered versus more district.

He feels like the funding plan now is district-centered.

A lot of people did take that as student-centered funding would give a voucher to a family and then they can go off to a private school or so on.

Is that the direction you say going in and are you in favor of that?

- So, I'm not gonna speculate on what the governor meant by that but I do agree that we do need to shift from more of a district-wide focus on funding to individual students especially students with disabilities and other learning differences and I think this is a good direction for if that change would still happen.

- But not a kind of broad base, widescale expansion of vouchers.

You're not in favor of that?

- No.

- Okay, for both the...

I mentioned the Germantown schools.

Do both of your districts cover part of that or am I completely... Yours does.

- Yeah it does.

- Yours does.

Okay, so let's go with you in that part.

When you look at a district map for any State House representative, it is an odd octopus.

So, what is your feeling?

I mean, is the state gonna intercede, intercede maybe pejorative, but it get involved with forcing SCS to give those schools to the Germantown Municipal District?

- That's a possibility.

Now, I may back up to show a little bit history.

These three schools have taken students from the neighborhoods around outside of Germantown, adjacent to Germantown and south Cordova and Windyke-Southwind and several areas around there for a long time.

I mean, the students in the legacy Shelby County Schools included students from these areas.

So, it was only a logical move for Shelby County Schools to assume control of these.

Now, I know it's made a lot of people in Germantown mad but there's about 1500 students in these schools and the amendment that was offered last time and possibly will come up this year is to take these schools, give them to Germantown, give and possibly remove all of the students from these three schools, in which case the students would have to, or the Shelby County Schools will have scramble to find schools for them, would have to probably get portable buildings.

And this will be terribly unreasonable for the students and their families.

- We had a Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo on the show probably some months ago and he talked about that.

The Germantown Municipal School District very much wants those schools.

He talked about a multi-year long-term transition if that happens of the non-Germantown students.

And just so I give that point of view that they want them but they don't wanna just get the schools and then kick everybody who's not a Germantown resident out, so they say.

- Well, that was the implication and it was also part of the bill that was on offer before.

Also, a might say that Germantown Board of Education did not see, they had nothing to do with this.

- Yeah, with the state amendment in this- - With the state amendment.

In fact, the mayor presented this to them thirty minutes before he released the press announcement.

And he also said maybe they would make the Germantown High School not a school but convert it to a museum or condos or something like that.

- Okay, much to be determined.

Let me talk to you again, not in your district Representative Gillespie, but this notion, it's been constant and you and I talked a little bit before the show about you're in your first term and it is remarkable if you spend any time, I used to spend more time at the legislature, and how much the legislature does control, oversee have authority over when it comes to Memphis and every city and community it's really striking when you get up there.

Is this an appropriate issue?

School control, the state should be determining or should it be under local control?

I mean, part of the whole argument for breaking the consolidation, deconsolidation and the individual suburban school district was all about local control.

Collierville said, "We know what we need in Collierville."

Bartlett said the same thing.

Millington said the same thing.

Yet the state comes in and dictates things that are contrary sometimes to what local control wants.

How do you balance that?

- I think this isn't exactly my wheelhouse right here with the three Germantown schools.

- That's fine, I mean more as a philosophical question about the state's relationship- - It appears to me that what's happening is you have two school districts that are in a fight, so to speak and the state is having to step in and almost be a judge in this situation.

That's my take on it as to why we're where we are.

- And that's an inappropriate role for the state, for the legislature?

- In this context, yeah, I think so.

- Okay, let me get Bill.

- On the other side of the holidays, there will be redistricting.

Redrawing the [chuckles] redrawing the district lines for the state House and the state Senate and the legislature also redraws the line for the congressional districts but let's stick with the Shelby County delegation to Nashville.

Is our delegation to the State Capitol, to the state legislature, the general assembly going to lose a seat in the process?

Representative Gillespie.

- I think that we probably will.

You look at the population loss in Shelby County and then more so the population gain in Middle Tennessee, people coming from all over the country 'cause we had the lowest taxes here in Tennessee per capita and people like that, businesses like that, so they're flocking and unfortunately they're flocking not to Shelby County and I think there's a lot of reason for that but I don't want to speculate as to why people are leaving Shelby County but the census does show that we are most likely going to lose at least one member.

- Representative Thompson, some apprehension being a Democrat in one of two chambers that have Republican super majorities I take it?

- Well, of course that's always a concern.

Yeah.

I, I agree with Representative Gillespie.

I think we've gained population but very little in Shelby County.

So I think I calculated we'd have a little bit about 13.3 seats which might translate into losing a seat here in Shelby County.

I'm hoping in my case to leave the court have Cordova district still existing as Cordova district.

And I'd like to see as many neighborhoods kept whole as possible in the process of redistricting instead of breaking up neighborhoods like it has happened in the past.

- So, is the, is the goal here to say, "Okay, there's a population decline.

"Here is specifically where it is, within Shelby County and that district is the one effected."

Or is it that precise?

- It's never precise.

There'll be a lot of discussions and before the whole final map is completed.

- And we should point out that while you have some experience in your in your first term, which has included three special sessions including the one before the regular session, that redistricting is a once every decade process so this is new to a lot of people in the legislature.

- Oh, yes.

- Let me go with a few minutes left.

Crime is obviously a huge issue right now.

It's an issue nationally, crime is up across the board, it's up very much.

So, in Memphis and Shelby County, last week we had Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland talking almost exclusively about crime.

The city's role we had District Attorney Amy Weirich the week before that and recently had Floyd Bonner, the Sheriff and then were trying to get the police chief, the new Police Chief Davis for MPD on soon.

All of them have said, we haven't interviewed Chief Davis but her predecessors have said they take some responsibility what they can do but also point to the state.

That a series of laws that have been passed and laws they want passed would help them fight crime and reduce crime.

Represented Gillespie, I'll start with you.

What can the state do and the state legislature do to help in a short term reduce crime in Memphis and Shelby County?

- So, I'm fortunate to again get pretty good relationships with our leadership team in the House and the Senate and one of the things that I'm really focusing on is our sentencing guidelines or what they call truth and sentencing guidelines.

I believe that it should be state law if you commit certain crimes, say aggravated assault or aggravated burglary and above, you should serve that whole time.

And I believe we need to come down very hard on those people that are committing those heinous crimes and stop letting them out early.

- Does that include holding people accountable for use of guns and the state legislature has expanded where you can have a gun.

Every single law enforcement person who comes on says once you can keep a gun in your car, and it was an extension of the home, the lower standards for permitting that correlates directly to the rise in gun crime.

Does the state need to do more to address gun crime?

- Yeah, I believe if you commit a crime with a gun, any crime, you should be held accountable period.

- Okay.

- Representing Thompson from you, your point of view of what the state should do to help reduce crime.

- I'm looking forward to seeing what the truth and sentencing legislation might be.

I would just like to see, again, the Devil's always in the details.

I want to see exactly how that might work.

We're trying to also reduce the prison population for nonviolent criminals or offenders to gradually get them out in programs to get them out to be successfully re-entering the normal society.

I would agree with the law enforcement officials that our gun laws are way too lax and I would like to see some of the recent legislation tightened up.

- But is that possible, I mean, you're a Democrat in the Senate that has super majority as Republican.

Do you see any going backwards in terms of those gun laws?

- Frankly, no, but we will keep trying.

- Let me come back to you for one last thing with just a minute less left, Representative Gillespie on crime that state announced that they're gonna put 12 more highway patrol in Memphis and actually be stationed here and not out of West Tennessee and kind of in and out of here.

It's a long 30-year history of MPD patrolling the highways.

I assume you're in favor of the highway patrol putting more folks here, but is 12 enough?

Does there need to be a much bigger more appropriate presence given the size of Shelby County, its contribution to the state budget, is that just the starting point?

- I believe I'm very excited about it.

I welcome.

I do wanna say that the Tennessee Highway Patrol unfortunately just like MPD does have a shortage of manpower.

Do I think 12 people was enough?

No.

We've got a lot of interstate in Shelby County, 240, 40 and so there are a lot of bad things happening on that.

- Okay, we'll have to leave it there, we are out of time.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

That is all the time we have this week but those past episodes I talked about, you can get them online at wkno.org or you can download podcasts of the show from The Daily Memphian site or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we will see you next week.

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