Tennessee Democrats outline legislative agenda aimed at supporting working-class families

Tennessee House Democrats this year will push for an agenda aimed at supporting working-class families, including proposals to cut taxes, expand Medicaid, address the state’s teacher shortage, and heighten penalties for irresponsible gun use.

A dozen members of the caucus unveiled a package of bills they will work to pass this year at the state Capitol on Tuesday — a platform House Minority Leader Karen Camper, D-Memphis, described as “an agenda that puts families first.”

“We Democrats are here to represent the folks who are not represented by high-dollar lobbyists – the people who truly make this state great,” House Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, said. “We are promoting an agenda that focuses exactly on what Democrats would do if we were in charge.”

Democrats are in the superminority in the state House, with just 24 out of the chamber's 99 seats and said they would work to coalesce support for their proposals. But they acknowledged a distinct lack of support from Republican colleagues, challenging members of the GOP to lend their support.

“It’s on them to join us in these efforts,” Camper said. “They’re really going to have to have the political courage to do it. But we can do it. It can be done, and we’re not going to stop fighting until we do it.”

Rep. Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, who is sponsoring a full repeal of the state’s 4% grocery tax, said that despite support in previous years for a temporary grocery tax holiday, her Republican counterparts have not yet voiced support for a similar grocery tax break this year.

“When I’ve asked my Republican colleagues whether they will put forth a proposal to provide another tax break, they’ve been absolutely silent,” Behn told reporters Tuesday. “Their silence speaks volumes.”

Behn’s grocery tax repeal bill would “shift the tax burden from working Tennessee families to corporations who are not paying what they owe in taxes,” she said, by requiring corporations doing business in Tennessee to pay taxes based on their global business.

Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville, is sponsoring a proposal to reduce the state gasoline tax from 26 cents to 20 cents per gallon. State road projects are funded with gas tax revenue.

Caucus members are sponsoring a large series of bills aimed at preventing gun-related violence.

Among them are multiple proposals to create penalties for gun owners who fail to safely store firearms in their vehicles – or authorize local governments to do so. More than 1,200 guns were stolen from vehicles in Nashville last year. Currently there is no penalty under state law for failing to safely store firearms. Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, is sponsoring a bill to require gun owners to report loss or theft of a firearm within 48 hours of discovering it missing, or face a $500 fine.

“Safe neighborhoods don’t mean building private jails and additional jails to lock people up. Safe neighborhoods means let’s get to the crux of what's going on in our neighborhoods, and let's give more resources and do some early intervention to prevent,” Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, said Tuesday.

Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, is sponsoring legislation to prohibit gun dealers from delivering trigger cranks, bump stocks, bump-fire devices and other attachments to accelerate the rate of fire from a gun until 72 hours after the accessory is sought by the purchaser. Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, has a bill that would delay delivery of a gun to the purchaser for 15 days.

Pearson is also sponsoring legislation with Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, aimed at increasing data openly available about toxic releases near Tennessee’s natural resources.

“Tennessee families deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and plant in clean soil,” Pearson said Tuesday. “We have a responsibility to our environment to protect aquifers in West Tennessee and East Tennessee that are vulnerable due to pollutants, but also due to poor management, poor policy, and inaction.”

Pearson’s bill would direct the Department of Environment and Conservation to create and maintain a public informational tool to allow residents to look up the location of facilities that are federally required to submit toxic release data to the Environmental Protection Agency.

House Democrats also have filed multiple bills that would explicitly clarify that contraceptive use will remain legal, bills to expand Medicaid eligibility, and that would repeal the state’s restrictive abortion ban.

The caucus universally opposes Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to expand state-funded vouchers for students to attend private schools – something Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, called “a tapeworm on the education budgets.”

Instead the caucus will push for universal pre-kindergarten, reducing maximum class sizes in kindergarten through second grade in priority schools, and providing fully-funded school breakfasts and lunches for school children.

“Tennessee families should be free to live in a fiscally sound state where state officials are not constantly shifting a heavier financial burden onto the backs of local governments working families,” Hemmer said.

Rep. Ronnie Glynn, D-Clarksville, said he will also sponsor bills to incentivize Tennessee students to become teachers, especially in math and science, in an aim to end the state’s teacher shortage. The caucus will also back legislation to provide an hour of conflict resolution for any student in ISS.

“We need to invest our tax dollars into our kids,” Glynn said.

Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TN Democrats outline agenda aimed at supporting working-class families