WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): A week after the Tennessee General Assembly addressed school vouchers, immigration and disaster relief, Gov. Bill Lee gave his sixth State of the State address. In it are budget priorities. With us again to talk about that and some other issues is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me back.
BLANK: Otis, Gov. Lee said 2025 was the year to "think bigger" and to "think boldly." What would you say are the boldest ideas in the governor's budget, maybe outside of private school vouchers?
SANFORD: Well, honestly, I didn't really see anything that was overly bold unless you're talking about investments for more nuclear energy or things related to immigration. Actually, the budget itself is smaller than last year. He's going to have to explain that boldness a little bit more.
BLANK: Right, not even boldly tackling the repairs to the highways. There's billions worth of repairs that still need to happen and he said he would find $1 billion dollars for that.
SANFORD: Which is not going to be enough and even though he touted trying to do that, that's not going to be enough, and plus that's a long-term thing. You know, it takes forever.
BLANK: Well, the Democratic response is that the governor's budget seems to favor the wealthy. School vouchers are among them. There were also $1.5 billion in tax breaks for corporations at a time when state revenue is expected to drop. On the other hand, there are some proposed earmarks for groups like the Boys and Girls Club, the Memphis Zoo. What does this budget signal to you about what lawmakers in Tennessee find worthy of government help?
SANFORD: Cracking down on immigration, going along with [Gov. Lee] on the voucher plan, which to the Democrats' point, two-thirds of the students who will likely receive these vouchers are already in private schools. So I don't see that as being a big benefit. Now, he did talk a lot about childcare being too expensive and wanting to deal with that. But that was a vague plan. And of course, I also read that if you're going to put extra money into Boys and Girls Clubs, they don't serve any children under five. So again, I'm a little confused about where the governor and the Republican leadership are headed here, when it comes to, really, trying to take care of a huge majority of the needs of Tennesseans.
BLANK: Shelby County, as we know, has had difficulty getting state funding for some of its larger projects. And one that has been on the to-do list for a while is a new county jail. The current one, also known as 201 Poplar, is a huge mess. It has broken doors. There's been a spate of recent deaths. Without state funding, Shelby County taxpayers are going to have to foot a billion dollar bill for a new jail. And that's going to mean raising local sales taxes. Lawmakers have proposed raising those taxes. They're now going to the state legislature to ask that they increase the maximum amount of local sales tax we can have here. Local voters will then have to pass a referendum to increase that sales taxes. Otis, is this the best way to go about doing this? And is this the best solution so that we can have a new jail?
SANFORD: It seems like it is, Chris. I don't see where that kind of money is going to come from other than some kind of a tax increase. This is a tough sell primarily because you're trying to finance a jail on the backs of the poorest of Tennesseans because sales tax increases adversely affect them.
BLANK: Sales tax, right now, it's nearly 10 percent. To add another percent to that: It's going to cost a lot to live here just to to buy food.
SANFORD: We're talking about penny sales tax. That's going to take us way over 10 percent. And that is very regressive. And we're talking about a jail and most people don't care about people in jail, anyway. So, again, it's a tough sell.
BLANK: Well, finally Otis, for about a year now State Sen. Brent Taylor from Eads has been trying to get Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy out of office. Taylor had filed an ethics complaint against Mulroy, which the State Board of Professional Responsibility dismissed this week. So what's next for Taylor's crusade? And and why is he still pursuing this?
SANFORD: A lot of it is stubbornness. He's gone too far to turn around now. The problem here is that this was a stretch from the start. It was a lot of ego involved here on the part of Sen. Taylor. But now that you have the Board of Professional Responsibility saying -- at least on one charge -- there's no merit to it and they dismissed it, it's going to be hard for a majority of even Republicans to go along with this. So, I mean, if he had any shred of decency, he would just drop the whole thing and move on to something else. But he's gone too far, now, Chris. And so I just don't see him doing that, at least not right now.
