Legislative Update – Week of March 4, 2019
A look ahead to this week’s legislative activities.
State of the State Address Tonight
At 5:45 this evening, the House and Senate will meet in joint convention in the House Chamber in anticipation of Governor Bill Lee’s first State of the State Address. This speech provides the first public opportunity for the Governor to outline his legislative and budgetary priorities. On Thursday of last week, the Governor announced that he would take this speech on the road and provide an opportunity for those in west and east Tennessee to hear it in person. For details on the speeches scheduled in Memphis and Knoxville, click here.
Over the past few weeks, Governor Lee has announced several highlights of his legislative priorities, and last week he announced funding priorities for criminal justice reform. In the announcement, his areas of focus include supplementing mental health efforts by expanding the recovery court system and recovery court programming; eliminating the $180 state expungement fee; and expanding higher education programming for incarcerated individuals. If the elimination of the state expungement fee is approved by the General Assembly, over the past three years, Tennessee will have gone from the state with the highest state cost for an expungement to one that has no state level costs. His proposal, though, would keep the local expungement fees in place. To see the full press release, click here.
Bills to Watch this Week
HB 733 by C. Johnson/SB 82 by Kurita - this bill would require certain out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales taxes to the department of revenue.
On June 21, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state may require out-of-state sellers to collect and pay sales taxes on purchases within the state. The 5-4 decision overturned a 1992 decision whereby a state was only authorized to require the collection and payment of sales taxes of sellers with a physical presence in the state. If this legislation were to pass, it would generate hundreds of millions of tax dollars for the state and local governments, but it remains to be seen if any of these dollars will be earmarked for specific purposes or simply deposited into the state’s general fund.
This bill is scheduled for a hearing the in the House Finance, Ways & Means Subcommittee on Wednesday at 11:00 a.m.
SB 0355 by *Gardenhire (HB 0327) by *Howell - this bill would require brownfield redevelopment projects to be sites located only in mid-size and small counties.
Current law authorizes local governments, in counties with 80,000 or more residents, to provide economic incentives for the development of large brownfield sites in economically disadvantaged areas. This bill would change the law and only allow local governments in small and mid-sized counties to provide such incentives. These incentives would be statutorily prohibited in Davidson, Hamilton, Knox, and Shelby counties.
This bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate State & Local Government Committee tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.
To see the status of all the bills being tracked by the Chamber, click here.