After some aggressive debate, the Tennessee House passed a $39.45 billion budget Wednesday that reduces spending and eliminates all pay increases for state employees, including teachers.
The House and Senate disagree on budget specifics. The House’s version spreads $1.5 billion worth of cuts over a two-year period, and the Senate spreads them out over a three-year period. The disagreements likely will need to be hashed out via a joint conference committee.
“This shrinks the size of our government,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, said on the House floor before the chamber passed amended versions of three Senate budget bills. Lamberth was the primary sponsor of the House version of each of these bills.
Before COVID-19 spread across the U.S., Gov. Bill Lee and legislative leaders intended to include more spending in the budget for education initiatives and a pay raise for most state employees, including a 4 percent raise for teachers. With revenue projections significantly lower and uncertainty surrounding the long-term effects of the coronavirus, these initiatives were gutted from the proposal.
The budget proposal still fully funds Tennessee’s K-12 schools based on the state’s Basic Education Program, which provides a formula for statewide school funding.
Although lawmakers could not find space for a pay increase, the chamber adopted an amendment that provides a one-time $1,000 bonus for most teachers. The bonus, which was not present in the Senate’s proposal, would apply to teachers graded level three, four or five on the state’s five-point scale, which accounts for more than 90 percent of teachers.
Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, who proposed the amendment, said the bonus would show the state appreciates the work teachers do. He said a salary increase would be fiscally irresponsible because it would force the state to budget for a recurring fund with non-recurring revenue sources. A one-time, non-recurring bonus, on the other hand, could be paid for with money that was initially proposed for the rainy day fund without running into that problem.
The amendment was adopted almost unanimously, but some Democrats wanted more. Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, complained that some of the hardest-working teachers unfairly get poor ratings because they are in struggling schools that do not get the resources they need. She said the state should look into providing all teachers with the bonus.
Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, said it was shameful to offer teachers only a bonus when the state can afford to give them a raise.
Hill said he understood the concerns, but the amendment did everything the state could afford to do with the current budget constraints.
Democrats unsuccessfully introduced several legislative amendments to increase spending for TennCare and salary increases for teachers and other employees.
Democrats also introduced two amendments related to monuments of former Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, which failed. One amendment would have allowed trees that would obstruct the view of a monument from the interstate. Another would have allocated funding for the removal of a bust in the Capitol.
After the amendment vote, a protester who was shouting got ejected from the balcony and some Democrats expressed discontent over the decision, alleging non-whites do not have a voice in the government. Republicans countered those allegations by saying all voices have been heard in the budget process, but not every member gets everything he or she wants.
The budget also uses bonds to fund certain projects that already were approved because the state doesn’t have the money to pay for them up front. Tennessee still will be one of the least indebted states in the country.
The three bills were amended versions of Senate Bill 2931, Senate Bill 2932 and Senate Bill 2935.
