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Cut in food tax, crime bill close
By Richard Locker, Commercial Appeal
June 9, 2007
NASHVILLE -- State legislative leaders reached tentative budget deals Friday that include a half-cent cut in Tennessee's sales tax on food and a crime bill with mandatory longer prison terms for gun crimes.
House and Senate Finance committees met in rare Friday sessions with other top leaders of both parties, and sent budget bills totaling more than $28 billion to the floors of both chambers for votes next week.
None of the agreements are final until they have won full legislative approval and are signed into law by Gov. Phil Bredesen. But the bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders and the governor's finance commissioner, Dave Goetz, said there is substantial agreement on the larger spending issues and disagreement on smaller ones.
There is still big disagreement over plans for a major revision of the lottery scholarship program, which Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey said could force delay of any revisions until 2008.
The House and Senate agree on increasing the dollar amounts of the scholarships by at least $200 across the board. But senators oppose a House plan to lower from 3.0 to 2.75 the grade-point average that college students must maintain to keep the grants past their freshman year.
After daylong and late-night sessions most of this week, these tentative agreements emerged Friday:
Tax relief. The $60 million plan would permanently cut the state sales tax on grocery food from the current 6 percent to 5.5 percent (local sales taxes ranging up to 2.75 percent would not be cut); add another three-day sales tax holiday next spring (in addition to the back-to-school tax holiday plan in August); raise the income ceiling for homeowners 65 and up to qualify for the existing local property-tax rebate program from the current $20,000 to $24,000 a year; and broaden the property-tax rebate that now exists for veterans totally disabled in combat to include those with to service-related disabilities.
The tax rebate program is different from a property-tax freeze for older homeowners authorized in a constitutional referendum last year and to be debated separately next week.
The food tax cut is the most tenuous. "There is a lot of anxiety on both sides of the aisle (in the Senate) about this reduction in recurring revenues," said Senate Republican Leader Mark Norris of Collierville.
Crime. The crime package long sought by Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons, Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin, Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell and their counterparts across the state has been trimmed down to target the "greatest threat," said House Judiciary Committee chairman Rob Briley, D-Nashville.
It would require mandatory additional sentences of three, five, six or 10 years -- depending on whether the convict has a prior felony record, and on whether a gun was actually fired -- for a dozen felonies involving a gun.
All of the enhanced sentences would be served in addition to sentences for the underlying crime. At least 85 percent of the enhanced sentences would have to be served before parole.
In addition, the budget would fund 32 new assistant district attorneys and 19 new assistant public defenders statewide to help speed up the criminal justice process. The prosecutors and defenders would be assigned to judicial districts based on caseloads and it's too early to say how many additional prosecutors Shelby County would get.
All parties agreed, as Briley said, that "it does not do everything everybody wanted to do" but is a step toward combating crime.
"I think it is a step in the right direction. It does not represent the kind of comprehensive approach taken by other states such as New York and Florida because it does not include the most violent crimes, such as second-degree murder, robbery and aggravated assault," Gibbons said Friday night.
Briley said some of the crimes in law enforcement's original bill were excluded from the compromise because current law requires the presence of firearms for the underlying charge in the first place.
The crimes targeted by the new bill are attempted second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, carjacking, aggravated kidnapping, especially aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, especially aggravated burglary, aggravated stalking, especially aggravated stalking, manufacturing methamphetamine, felony drug sales, or any attempt to commit any of those crimes.
In addition, a person convicted of aggravated robbery for a second time would have to serve 85 percent of their sentences without parole.
Education. For the school year that starts this summer, the budget would fund about $300 million of the total $500 million in improvements for public education the legislature approved last week. It will put in reserve an additional $100 million to fund the second year, in fiscal 2008-09, with the expectation that full funding would occur the following year.
The budget would increase higher education funding another $7 million beyond the $48 million increase sought by the governor, with the intent that tuition increases be held to 6 percent this fall.
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