Gov. Bredesen prevails despite lame duck status
(AP) — A governor's last year in office is often a time to ride out the string, not to offer ambitious education proposals like the ones overwhelmingly approved by Tennessee lawmakers in a two-week special legislative session.
Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen called the rare special session to enact sweeping changes in the way the state evaluates teachers and how it allocates money to public colleges and universities.
The call for a special session originally caused some grumbling among some Democratic lawmakers because they hadn't been given advance notice, and some speculated that the lame duck governor had possibly bitten off more than he could chew.
Republican Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville as recently as November told reporters that major changes in higher education may be "something the next governor will have to address."
"I just can't imagine why any governor in the last year of his administration would want to tackle something that big," said Ramsey, who is seeking the GOP's gubernatorial nomination.
But Bredesen's team had been laying the groundwork on the higher education proposals in a series of meetings with key lawmakers from both parties since last summer.
They also had the compelling argument that the state would be seriously wounding its chances at up to a half-billion dollars in federal "Race to the Top" money if lawmakers didn't approve the K-12 measures.
By the time Bredesen addressed a joint session of the General Assembly to kick off the special session on Jan. 12, lawmakers were already well aware of the governor's argument that Tennessee's education system needs to focus on improving both high school and college graduation rates, which rank near the bottom nationally.
That meant exerting pressure on the Tennessee Education Association, the state's main teachers' union and a traditional Democratic ally, to endorse the bill to base half of a teacher's annual evaluation on student testing data. Previously the state had used no test scores in evaluating teachers.
Success also involved quelling Republicans' fears that the changes weren't being made solely to obtain a federal handout from the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama.
While legislative committees held exhaustive hearings on the K-12 bill, it ultimately passed largely as originally proposed by Bredesen.
House Democratic Caucus Leader Mike Turner said the administration had to strike a fine partisan balance.
"This is about as far as Democrats are willing to go, but this was just the bottom where Republicans want to go, because they want vouchers and things like that," said Turner of Nashville.
The governor's momentum threatened to stall just as the K-12 bill was headed for passage when first House Speaker Kent Williams, R-Elizabethton, and later Ramsey in the Senate suggested that the major element of the higher education bill may have to wait until the regular session.
But both Williams and Ramsey were persuaded to persevere, and the measure to base funding decisions on graduation and student retention rates rather than on the size of a school's enrollment passed Thursday with only two lawmakers casting their votes against the bill.
Turner credited the Bredesen administration's preparation and organization with getting the bills passed.
"His legislative team was probably as good as I've ever seen them," he said. "They were Johnny-on-the-spot when we needed them."
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