Governor pitches legislative agenda to Kingsport crowd
KINGSPORT — Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam pitched his 2012 legislative package to a receptive crowd Friday just as the state’s unemployment rate hit its lowest point in three years.
Tennessee added more than 11,200 jobs in November, giving the state an 8.7 percent December unemployment rate — close to the 8.4 percent unemployment rate reported in December 2008.
“It is significant that (the unemployment rate) is under 9 percent) for the first time in three years,” Haslam, a Republican, told reporters after addressing about 200 chamber members and others at the Kingsport Higher Education Center. “I do think the economy across the country is getting slowly better. ... Jobs in Tennessee grew at a faster rate than the national average. ... I do think the signals are encouraging for Tennessee. I’m particularly encouraged a lot of that growth happened in the manufacturing sector.”
About half of that job growth occurred in business and professional services, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Haslam, in his second year as governor, said his legislative agenda supports his goal to make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high-quality jobs.
While accompanied by Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, Haslam also shared the core details of that agenda at stops with chamber audiences in Bristol and Johnson City.
He asked the Kingsport crowd what he should be doing in his job — and he was told to be the state’s ambassador and fiscal caretaker.
“I love selling Tennessee. I’ve sold things that are easy and sold things that are hard. Selling Tennessee is easy...” Haslam responded. “We have the second lowest debt of any state in the country, and our combined state and local property tax is the third or fourth lowest in the country. ... We should be offering the very best service for the lowest price.”
Haslam’s agenda calls for more flexibility in allocating economic development grants and giving local school boards more options to establish class size and pay teachers.
In higher education, Haslam said Kingsport, with its downtown Academic Village, has become a model to increase community college attendance.
“In Tennessee only 21 percent of the people over 25 (years old) have a degree, and nationally that number is about 30 percent,” Haslam said. “It is estimated that of the new jobs in the next five years, well over half are going to require a degree.”
The governor also wants to restructure 22 of more than 200 state boards and commissions, and change state government’s employment system.
The boards and commissions, said Haslam, have become “almost like a fourth branch” of government.
“They get so independent they don’t think anybody is looking,” Ramsey, R-Blountville, said of the boards and commissions.
Haslam described the state’s employment system, where most new hires are taken from a registry, like a “football team that can’t recruit the best players.”
Haslam also advocated for raising the state’s inheritance tax exemption from $1 million to $1.25 million, and for cutting the state sales tax on food from 5.5 percent to 5.3 percent.
His public safety legislative package includes tougher jail sentencing for gang-related crimes, repeat domestic violence offenders and gun-related crimes.
Haslam also wants to tighten up oversight of Tennessee’s prescription drug database.
“The average citizen in the country has 12 prescriptions a year. Tennessee has 17 or 18,” he told the crowd. “The concerning thing is how many end up in the wrong hands. Right now in a hospital emergency room in Tennessee, you are more likely to be there from prescription drug abuse than from drug abuse that you think of like cocaine and heroin.”
For more about Haslam’s agenda, go to www.forward.tn.gov.
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Of course it was a receptive crowd; it was a bunch of Republicans in the Chamber of Commerce. It is easy pitching anything to your base. The reception would not be nearly as warm if it were teachers, state employees, and the unemployed that he was addressing. Don't report it like everybody is happy with it. We are not!