Legislative Alert: May, 2001
by Louise Browning, CAE
Executive Director and Lobbyist
Taxes
Taxation remains the pivotal issue as the General Assembly grinds toward adjournment. The Senate today voted for a half-cent sales tax increase and now awaits House action. House members who have been divided into a number of working groups to come up with revenue options or cuts have been holding budget meetings for the last couple of weeks. Today (May 17), House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh charged the chairs of these groups to poll their members to gauge support for four options that include an income tax and broadening the sales tax base.
The House is expected to pass a somewhat different revenue measure that will ultimately send the legislation to a joint House-Senate conference committee where a final revenue measure, if any, will be hammered out. Both houses will then have one vote up or down on any tax measures included in the conference report.
APRN Bill
TNA’s APRN bill (SB1823/HB1795) will be rolled until next year. Both the Senate and the House have shut down all their committees except Finance. Senator Jerry Cooper, sponsor of the Senate bill, called a meeting at our request of the lobbyists for TMA, anesthesiologists, and family physicians to discuss the language in our bill. We had sent suggested amendment language regarding collaboration to TMA and requested they bring to us a reaction to the language, but their chief lobbyist did not attend the meeting and there was no message from their Legislative Committee.
We will spend the remainder of the year working on compromise language with our opponents. We also need to gather additional data to support our bill, build coalitions with consumers of health care, and better organize the troops for lobbying individual legislators while they are in their home districts between June and January. Plan now to invite legislators to your work place. Nothing makes as vivid an impression on the importance of advanced practice nursing as actually seeing the practice settings and witnessing the need for these services in their legislative districts.
Workforce Planning and Development
Our bill to fund an agency for workplace planning and development (HB1795/SB1762) passed the House on the Consent Calendar May 14. In the House it will be on the Calendar and Rules Committee on Thursday, May 24, and will more than likely be on the House floor on Monday evening, May 28. There should be no problem with it being placed on the Consent Calendar in the House also, as there are no amendments and no known opposition.
Coordinated School Health
Calls need to be made now to all legislators asking them to protect the tobacco monies from the budget or the Governor’s rainy day fund. Here are some talking points:
Thank you for passing the Coordinated School Health (CHS) bill last year and also for funding it for $1 million even though the state budget was in such a “crunch”.
Because of your vision, the Tennessee Department of Education has been able to funnel your state dollars into 10 new project sites for coordinated school health across Tennessee’s public school systems.
I’m very concerned that the Governor and some legislators may be in favor of using the tobacco settlement money to balance this year’s budget. I am opposed to using this money to balance the budget. It should be used for treating tobacco related diseases, cessation programs, and school based coordinated efforts as it was intended.
The model currently being implemented in Tennessee for Coordinated School Health Programs is one that has been developed by the Center for Disease Control out of Atlanta. This model has a proven track record of being highly effective in curbing tobacco use and addiction.
The delivery mechanism for this program has already been developed and is partially funded by the BEP (school nurses, school counselors, school social workers, physical education and fitness teachers, wellness programs, food nutrition, healthy and safe schools, and community outreach).
What is truly needed is that the existing infrastructure be “beefed up” so that the ratio of provider of services to children is lowered. Plus, some school systems have used their discretionary BEP funds for other needed items. Thus, their school nurse to student ratio is extremely high or they don’t have one at all.
With the $15 million CSH is asking for, Tennessee school children in all 139 public school systems would have the opportunity to receive health services (some health problems are a direct effect of living with parents who smoke), prevention to reduce the use of tobacco (children are in school each day and parents usually come to school for programs), and intervention for those underlying problems that lead children to use tobacco products (unhappy out-of-school lives).
Thank you for protecting the tobacco monies to fund programs that will help our children learn!
