State Representative David Hawk addressed the Greene County Republican Party with his annual “legislative update” at the June meeting of the party Monday evening.
The legislative session begins in January and typically ends in April although there was another special session this year.
STATE PROPERTY TAX CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
Hawk spoke Monday evening about a constitutional amendment which will be on the ballot this fall dealing with a state property tax. “Tennessee does not have a state property tax and hasn’t since 1949. A few years back, we had a constitutional amendment that said, we will no longer have the ability for the General Assembly to create an income tax. So we made that unconstitutional in the state of Tennessee. We can no longer have an income tax in the state of Tennessee.”
STATE BUDGET
He also spoke of the $58.3 billion state budget document in which he said “by spending recurring revenues on recurring expenses we don’t go into debt. We have the lowest debt or capita in the country right now, it’s not even close. Tennessee’s done it the right way and we have less debt than any other state in the country. Our state revenues roughly come from 50% state revenues. That’s our sales tax, generally. There’s a few business taxes we have, but generally as a sales tax driven state, we’re a consumption driven state, and it’s been working very well for the state of Tennessee.”
When discussing where the money goes, Hawk says “TennCare takes up $19.2 billion of that budget, actually a little over a third of our budget is TennCare. That’s our federal Medicaid program for children and certain individuals who fall in income parameters who are not able to to be insured. That’s our 10 care program, which says a huge expense, but we do a very good job of managing that at a state level.”
The second largest portion of our state’s budget is education, with $16.1 billion of that $58.3 billion going toward education. Hawk told the group “you may have seen or read a report recently that Tennessee ranks 51st in the country in investments in education and obviously whoever wrote that article ranks 51st in education because we only have 50 states. I’m sure they’re including the District of Columbia, but bless their hearts. That’s not the whole story. That’s a story that’s written by data from an organization that has been talking about these investments for decades and it’s never really the full picture. When you look at what Tennessee has done over the last 15 years, since Republicans have been in control of both the General Assembly in Tennessee and the governor’s office, we have doubled our investment in education. That $16.1 billion is twice the money we were investing in education this time sixteen years ago. So we have made huge investments. And to that point, our investments in education are paying off with our 3rd and 4th grade reading levels and our 3rd and 4th grade math levels. We are the fastest rising of any state in the country in terms of outcomes. That increase in performance is is as good or better than any state in the country. So we are, you are getting your money’s worth in terms of education.”
The third largest line item he says “is social services, 7.4 billion dollars. That’s your food stamp program.”
“$3.5 billion is spent in transportation. And I want to talk a little bit about transportation. I’m fortunate to chair our house subcommittee on transportation, and this is the 6th committee or subcommittee that I have chaired over my length of service, and I joke with the speaker of the house, I have gavel, will travel. So I get to go from committee to committee and I’m the problem solver whenever we get there. And we’ve been trying to figure out a better way to fund our transportation needs across the state of Tennessee for decades. So I came up with a plan nine years ago, it’s about to have its 10th birthday because it hasn’t passed yet, but it’s a plan that would simply take sales tax on vehicles. When you buy a car, that sales tax that you pay on that vehicle, new or used, would go directly towards transportation deeds. What that translates into is an additional billion dollars a year to go toward our transportation needs. So right now we’ve got $3.5 billion going into transportation. Depending on the figures you look at, we’ve got about $30 billion of transportation need across the state of Tennessee, roads, bridges, infrastructure to get folks from point A to point B. We’re not going to get there on $3.5 billion a year. We’ve got to increase that amount that we’re investing in transportation. I’ve got a plan that would get there. It’s affectionately known as the Hawk Plan, I don’t know if that’s if they’re going to keep naming it that after a while. Like I said, it’s been nine years of swing and miss. But that’s another reason I still have the fire in my belly to go back to Nashville, is to try to pass legislation that’s meaningful. It will eventually pass. And I would love to see it in the next two years become law. And hopefully the next governor’s going to make that investment in transportation. As we talk about what we have done in transportation and the reason I’ve got the plan out there, a billion dollars, over the last 4 budget cycles, we have put roughly four billion dollars into transportation from the same fund that I’m looking to take these monies from and to put it toward transportation. So it’s already been in the budget, the four billion dollars over 4 years, one billion a year, has already been in the budget document. I’m just trying to make that recurring. So that’s what my legislation would do.”
“Another thing I’ll talk about in the budget document related to healthcare and the TennCare program. We’ve also qualified and are now on a pathway to receive a billion dollars in President Trump’s rural health transformation fund, roughly $200 million a year to match the shared savings fund that I talked about earlier. So we’re eligible for roughly for monies to go toward rural health outcomes, which are critically important. And I support that 100%. I think it’s something that we need to do and we will continue to do.”
“That will lead me into the next topic of some of the legislation we had to pass to get to the rural health transformation dollars, as well as some of the shared savings dollars. One of the things the Trump administration was looking for was repeal of certificate of need laws. Certificate of Need laws had been put in place maybe between 40 and 45 years ago. Certificate of Need laws were essentially put in place maybe during the Reagan years. When there was concern that there could be an oversaturation of medical services in particular areas, rural areas in particular. And it forced someone who wanted to come into a medical market to show that there was a need for these services. Well, about as quickly as that was implemented on a federal level, it was repealed at a federal level. But some states, Tennessee included, decided to keep these certificate of need laws on the books much longer than they ever should have which created a burden for the medical professional who had the next best mousetrap to come in and improve health outcomes. So part of us being eligible to receive those rural transformation dollars was repeal of our certificate of need laws in the state of Tennessee. We repealed those. It is not going to happen as quickly as I would like for it to. The repeal of the certificate of need laws allowing full competition in the healthcare arena statewide does not go into effect until July one of 2030, four years down the road. The good news for our region of Northeast Tennessee, as we were having these discussions about the certificate of need repeal, the Ballad health organization decided that they would find someone to bring legislation saying if we’re going to repeal the certificate of need, we need to repeal the COPA, the certificate of public advantage that created Ballad. We can have that conversation about was there ever a public advantage ever created in the first place. I say no. There’s an argument that we can have about that particular conversation. But they wanted to go ahead and repeal their certificate of public advantage so they could fall out of compliance, really, with some of these checks that the State Department of Health would have on them. They wanted to do that in two year, July one of 2028. So we worked on legislation at a state level that we matched up the repeal of the certificate of need in the Northeast Tennessee area served by ballot. Along the same date as the repeal of the certificate of public advantage. So in Northeast Tennessee, in particular, the certificate of need is repealed, July one of 2028, the same time the COPA is repealed. July one of 2028. As elected officials, we all hear from our constituents and actively want to hear from our constituents. 75% of my constituents in Greene County have asked me to do something to improve health outcomes in Northeast Tennessee and Greene County specifically. That’s one way we can do that to spur competition to come into the region. I pledge to work with anyone in Greene County or who wants to come into Greene County to improve health outcomes in our community. Again, 75% of our folks in Greene County have asked that I work on that. That’s what I’m doing. So thank you for that.”
SPECIAL SESSION PROTESTS
“Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the special session that we had this past year dealing with redistricting. Oh, wow. We’ve seen protests in the state of Tennessee most recently over the last decade. My 1st fourteen years of service not so much. There would be people holding some signs and standing outside and and very calmly saying, hey, can I talk to you about this piece of legislation, can I talk to you about that piece of legislation? And it was good. It was healthy conversation. It was very peaceful protest. Over the last 10 years, there has been anything but peaceful protests in the state of Tennessee. This year’s special session dealing with redistricting was marred by radical left-wing groups that were purposely coming to attack our way of life in the state of Tennessee. I had legislative colleagues, one lady in particular from Tipton County. She’s retiring this year. As we were finishing our work on the Thursday that the legislative special session was a journey. She was walking outside the Capitol, down some stairs to get to our office building and she was brutally accosted by a gang of women, using words I’ve never heard come from a female’s mouth before, horrible language wishing her to fall down the flight of stairs and die. I have received threats, both at the office in Nashville and on my cell phone. I think my cell phone’s out there way too much. But that’s part of doing the work that we do. But just about every Republican legislator in the state of Tennessee has been threatened in some way, shape, or form now. And we’re better than that. I look at the people in the crowd that are protesting these issues. And I don’t recognize any of them. So I purposely will go and talk to some of these protesters. I had my nephew down there at opening day, opening ceremonies of the legislature back in January. My nephew was interning for a law firm this year. He couldn’t believe what we were experiencing going from a shuttle bus into the Tennessee State Museum, the curse words, the shouts, the screams that were being thrust upon us just in this thirty yards of space we had to go from a bus to a building. And upon leaving we talked to some of these protesters and ask where are you from? Out of every 3 that were there protesting, there’d be one that had some Tennessee tie, but there’d be two that were bused in from somewhere else. I’ll guarantee you mark my word, they’re being paid to protest. They’ll deny it every step of the way. They’re being paid to protest. But we talked to a couple of them as we were leaving that meeting and they said, oh yeah, yeah, there’s a page of what you do to get paid. If you show up, you may get X number dollar, if you hold a sign, you get X number of dollars, if you get arrested they’ll pay your bail and get you out of jail so you can go back and protest some more. So don’t doubt that these protesters in Nashville are being paid. I’m sure of that because they’ve told me so.”
SPECIAL SESSION ON REDISTRICTING
“I’ll talk a little bit about what we did in redistricting. What we came into do during the special session was largely in response to other states that have redistricted their congressional districts outside of the ten year census time frame. And everybody talks about Texas and California, but really this goes back to New Jersey and New York several years ago where you’ve got states in the Northeast that were redistricting after 2022. If you’ll remember in 2022 elections, several New York congressional districts went Republican. Well heaven forbid the general assembly in New York said we can’t have that, so they had a midterm redistricting in New York State years ago before this was even discussed. Then you hear about Texas having a redistricting. And then California has a redistricting. More recently Virginia had their redistrict team which failed. But the state of Tennessee right now, we have nine congressional districts total, 8 congressional districts held by Republicans, one congressional district held by Steve Cohen a Democrat from Memphis. The concern was that right now, Shelby County, Memphis has two congressional districts. There’s two congressmen serving Shelby County. What our redistricting map did was put three congressional districts in Shelby County, Memphis. The uproar was incredible. We were called white supremacists. We were called racists. We were called every word in the book. What these protesters paid from outside Tennessee failed to realize was the last time the Democrat Party was in control of redistricting across the state of Tennessee, Steve Cohen was a state senator and he actually voted on the 2002 redistricting plan that had three congressmen in Memphis, Shelby County. So, much ado about nothing, but it was something to argue about because it’s the national tone, the national tenor, so we’re going to go protest. And I don’t see this as being any way productive at all. I think some folks, liberals wake up in the morning, Donald Trump could say, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning and a liberal is going to say, no, it’s 7 o’clock at night. It’s to that point right now where there’s just an argument about anything that comes from a particular political party, the other political party is going to disagree and say it’s exactly 180 degrees opposite. That’s frustrating. Thankfully, in Greene County, 80% of you have told me that you support Donald Trump and his initiatives. When you go back and look, we’re probably one of the few counties across the state of Tennessee, maybe the whole country, who has voted roughly 80% to 82% for Donald Trump three times in a row. So you’ve told me exactly whose policies that you support as we go forward. So thank you for doing that.”
TENNESSEE IN GOOD SHAPE
DAVID HAWK
Hawk concluded by saying “I do want to end on on a positive note, your state of Tennessee is in good shape. We’re talking about finances. In spite of what you will hear from some of the liberals, the handful of liberals who meet in a phone booth every month or so here in town, Tennessee is in great shape. We have communities that are run well. We have a legislative body that has run well. We’re going to have a great governor coming up later this fall. And we’re going to continue representing you in the Tennessee General Assembly the way that you want to be represented. We’re conservative. Our state of Tennessee is conservative, both financially, fiscally, and socially. We are conservative. We’re going to continue to be that way. It is an honor to serve you. I am truly blessed.”
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Chairman Bible says we have a couple of minutes for a couple of questions.
I-81 REST STOP
“Those of you didn’t hear his question comment was about the Baileyton southbound rest stop on Interstate 81. It has been closed for a long time, and when it was built decades ago it was built with a self contained sewer system that is faulty. So the $400 million additional we’re putting into this year’s budget for transportation needs, repair of that particular Rest Stop is in that list to be repaired. We’re repairing and replacing several rest stops across the state of Tennessee and the money to fix the sewer problem that we’ve got there are in the budget. I don’t know when the completion date. That’s one of the more frustrating things for me being in business. I wake up in the morning and you see a problem and you go fix it tomorrow. But in the governmental entity you move painfully slow. You’ve got to get a request for proposal, and architects, and engineers, designers have got to go through their process, which takes months. And then you’ve got to get into proof of the State Building Commission, and then you’ve got to do all this other rigmarole. So it becomes a challenge to get that project out the door. ”
DATA CENTERS
Where does Tennessee stand in terms of data centers? “Data centers utilize a tremendous amount of energy that, unfortunately, I feel is going to drive up the cost of mining your light bill in the state of Tennessee. Tennessee essentially passed a bill this year that creates a moratorium on any data center coming into the state of Tennessee. absent that data center putting forth a plan to be 100% self-sufficient producing their own energy. And I’ll take you down a couple of paths there. Governor Lee has been a leader in seeking out nuclear energy as a way the future. And that is an issue that could go hand in glove. There’s still concerns about the noise created, the use of land. Is there a better use of those properties? But Tennessee passed legislation this year to essentially put a moratorium on those data centers.”
