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Gov. Invoice Lee desires state lawmakers to take up his common faculty voucher invoice rapidly in hopes of beginning a statewide program this fall to let extra Tennessee households use taxpayer funding to ship their kids to personal colleges.
And he might name a particular legislative session this month to deal completely along with his Schooling Freedom Act, plus emergency reduction for flood-ravaged counties in northeast Tennessee.
“There’s nothing off the desk,” Lee informed reporters Wednesday in Nashville when requested concerning the chance of a particular session.
The term-limited Republican governor mentioned the 2 issues should be addressed early this 12 months and added that he’s “finalizing a method and a plan.”
Lee is in search of to keep away from a protracted legislative battle just like the one which led to the collapse of his 2024 common voucher proposal in finance committees.
However he’ll must act rapidly.
The common session of the 114th Common Meeting is ready to convene Jan. 14, with committee assignments and different organizational enterprise first on the agenda. The legislature plans to pause its work for the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, which Lee and plenty of members of Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature plan to attend.
The week of Jan. 27 is a risk for a particular session, based on a number of sources.
In a clause that means a way of urgency or emergency, the Tennessee Structure says the governor might convene a particular legislative session “on extraordinary events” to deal with particular issues.
There’s no disagreement that northeast Tennessee urgently wants extra state help after Hurricane Helene brought on tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} of injury to public infrastructure, together with roads, bridges, and colleges, in late September.
However Lee’s critics say his voucher proposal isn’t the type of precedence that warrants an pressing particular session.
“Utilizing storm reduction as a pretext to advertise a voucher scheme is a disservice to our households and undermines the true challenges we face,” mentioned Sen. London Lamar, of Memphis, who chairs her chamber’s Democratic caucus.
Rep. John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville, mentioned Lee ought to have known as a particular session months in the past to assist Tennessee’s inland mountain communities battered by Helene’s storms, which killed 18 folks within the state.
As a substitute, he “clearly and purposefully waited virtually 4 months till he thought he had sufficient votes to cross his voucher rip-off,” mentioned Clemmons, who chairs the Home Democratic caucus.
If Lee does name a particular session, it’s possible that he believes he has the votes to cross a voucher coverage that has been one in every of his high goals since he took workplace in 2019.
Since latest legislative races delivered the governor a mixture of wins and losses on the problems, his administration has been working to impress assist for a revised plan.
The governor is touting his Schooling Freedom Act in 30-second advertisements paid for by the pro-voucher American Federation for Youngsters and operating within the state’s 4 largest TV markets earlier than the legislature convenes.
The AFC, which is affiliated with Kansas billionaire Charles Koch’s conservative advocacy community, introduced Wednesday that it’s additionally beginning to run radio advertisements supporting Lee’s proposal and that includes U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a probable candidate for governor in 2026.
In the meantime, a grassroots group of Tennesseans calling itself Public Faculty Sturdy hosted a digital city corridor on Tuesday night to rally opposition to the invoice. The group plans to carry in-person boards and rallies Jan. 11-14 in Knoxville, Winchester, Memphis, Clarksville, Smyrna, and Chattanooga.
“It’s no shock that on a regular basis Tennesseans are usually not those asking for Lee’s entitlement program for the rich,” the group wrote in an organizational letter. “As a substitute, it’s out-of-state billionaire teams like Individuals for Prosperity main the cost by pouring tens of millions upon tens of millions of {dollars} into campaigns in our small cities and threatening our native elected leaders in the event that they dare to aspect with their constituents.”
Lee’s newest proposal would supply of about $7,100 every to twenty,000 college students within the first 12 months, half of which might be topic to revenue limits of thrice the brink to qualify for diminished worth faculty meals, or about $173,000 for a household of 4.
In 2019, the legislature handed Lee’s first voucher invoice to create a smaller voucher program for college kids in Memphis and Nashville. On the time, the governor mentioned vouchers had been wanted to provide extra academic decisions to low-income college students attending low-performing colleges.
The brand new plan would finally remove revenue limits and open up vouchers to college students anyplace within the state.
You’ll be able to learn the brand new invoice right here and monitor its motion within the legislature right here.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.