WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): It's that time of year for making new Tennessee laws. The 114th General Assembly kicked off Tuesday. With us to talk about that and other things is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back!
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Always good to be with you.
BLANK: Otis, just as this session was getting started, Gov. Bill Lee called a special session for the end of the month. This one is dedicated to just three things: hurricane relief, funding school vouchers and immigration laws. Why does he want to separate these things from the session that's already in progress?
SANFORD: Well, it's a political tactic really, designed, I believe, to force the Republican supermajority to go along with the voucher program. That's probably going to be his toughest sell in all of the three things that you just mentioned. And so the idea is that if [the voucher vote] was being held during the regular session, lawmakers would likely get distracted with some other things. By putting it in a special session, it puts the pressure on the Republicans to pass the voucher program, which is the governor's sort of signature political objective.
BLANK: Except that Republicans have not really supported vouchers, at least entirely, these last few years. They passed limited vouchers because those vouchers only applied to urban areas and Lee had kind of made this case that they would help poor kids get better educations. But now this whole program would really be a massive money giveaway to upper-middle class families, whose kids are already enrolled in private schools. So what is selling this idea to fiscal conservatives now?
SANFORD: And I'm not totally sure, Chris, that it is selling it to everybody. But what we have seen is that the leadership -- Senate Speaker Randy McNally, the House Speaker Cameron Sexton and other top Republican leaders -- seem to be on board with Gov. Lee on this issue now. And they released a statement earlier this week saying that the majority of Tennesseans, regardless of party, are supportive of what they call "school choice." Now, they didn't say "vouchers." They said "school choice." But a recent Vanderbilt poll said that only about 47% of Tennesseans support vouchers, 44% oppose it and 7% are neutral. So that's not a majority. And so I think they're playing fast and loose with some of the facts here. But regardless, leadership is on board here and they're going to try to pressure their members to go along with this.
BLANK: Finally, Gov. Lee says he wants stronger immigration laws that line up with Donald Trump's upcoming policies on immigration. But here's the thing: immigration law is really federal law. What can Lee do here, state-wise?
SANFORD: This is really just window-dressing for the governor and probably some other Republicans in the legislature to say that whatever Trump wants, Trump will get in Tennessee. If Trump wants to start mass deportations, even of people who are not convicted or accused criminals, Tennessee is going to go along with that. If Trump wants to end the DACA program, Tennessee is willing to do that as well. This is just the governor saying whatever Trump wants on immigration, he's going to get cooperation in Tennessee.
BLANK: Well, we'll have more state law to talk about in the coming weeks. I want to turn for a minute to an ongoing local controversy over Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent, Marie Feagins. As of this week's school board meeting, it still seems like a majority of the members want to fire her. But outside pressure is getting intense. The Shelby County Board of Commissioners passed a no confidence resolution. State Representative G.A. Hardaway is proposing a bill that would let voters recall school board members. State Republican leaders have threatened to take over the school district. This is a lot of drama around a superintendent who has not committed a crime or an ethical violation, as far as we know, and she's only been in the job for a year. How did we get to this level of toxicity Otis?
SANFORD: There are a lot of reasons why we got to this level. The most recent one being awful decision-making by the current school board. That December 17th meeting that drew a lot of people to that meeting and became one of the most disruptive and raucous sessions I've seen in several decades here. It was an unmitigated disaster. I do believe that the school board is going to stand down on this. They will likely go along with a proposal by one of the board members to put Superintendent Feagins under an action plan to improve, certainly, her communication skills, the reporting skills within the administration. I also believe that G.A. Hardaway's proposal is likely going to pass some time in this legislature because I think there's a clamor for everybody -- if they're a bad school board member -- they need to be gotten rid of through a recall. But Dr. Feagins is not blameless in all of this, either. She has had very poor communication skills. She has sort of dismissed people in this community who wanted to help her succeed. But the main problem right now has been the current school board.
