Photo: Stephen Elliott

When Republican Gov. Bill Lee took office earlier this year, his legislative director Brent Easley assured members of the Tennessee General Assembly that the governor’s office would no longer issue “flag letters,” a tactic previously used by the executive branch to signal opposition to a bill.

Instead, under Lee, executive-branch liaisons would meet with sponsors of flagged bills one on one.

Now, more than two months deep in the session, most legislation is reaching — or has reached — a decision point. The governor’s weekly list of “philosophical flags,” provided by his office to the Scene, features equal-opportunity opposition.

Some is unsurprising: Lee has flagged two Democratic bills that would direct the governor to negotiate with the federal government on Medicaid expansion, something he has repeatedly said he does not want to do. Lee also flagged a bill that would decriminalize small amounts of marijuana and a resolution that would urge the Department of Education “to address the negative impacts of recent legislation on local education agencies.”

But he’s also pushing back against members in his own party. One of the flagged bills would give the legislature confirmation authority over the governor’s picks for vacant lower-court judgeships, district attorney positions and other judicial positions below the level of appellate courts and the Supreme Court. The bill is sponsored by Republicans in both chambers, and House Republican Caucus Chair Cameron Sexton and Majority Leader William Lamberth, the lawmakers generally tasked with pushing the governor’s own legislation, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Nearly three-quarters of the flagged legislation have a Republican sponsor (that tracks with the overall partisan makeup of the General Assembly). Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) leads the pack with five flagged bills.

Below is the full list of the Lee’s philosophical flags, sent to legislative leadership earlier this week. (Note: Some of the bills have already been effectively killed for the year, and others are so-called caption bills, in which the language in the summary is a placeholder for sometimes dramatically different legislation.)

• SB1198 (White)/HB1080 (Rudd): “redefines ‘passive investment income’ for family-owned noncorporate entities to include rents from commercial property for entities who qualified as an obligated member entity as of January 1, 2019”

• SB551 (Swann)/HB423 (Carr): “makes permanent the removal of the cap on the amount of state shared sales tax revenue remitted to premiere type tourist resort municipalities”

• SB1461 (Bailey)/HB1382 (Williams): “requires the state funding board to report a single estimate of state revenue for the upcoming fiscal year as opposed to a range or multiple estimates”

• SB382 (Yarbro)/HB382 (Thompson): “deletes exemption from sales and use tax for industrial machinery; deletes credit against franchise and excise tax liability for industrial machinery purchases”

• SB421 (Hensley)/HB417 (Zachary): “exempts, over a period of three fiscal years, the sales price of tickets for admission to an intercollegiate athletic event hosted by a college or university from the amusement sales tax”

• SB1505 (Hensley)/HB1379 (Zachary): “allocates all amusement tax revenue generated from an event hosted by a college or university to the college or university to be used exclusively for repairs, maintenance, renovation, enhancements, or debt service on facilities funded with approval of the state school bond authority”

• SB621 (Hensley)/HB644 (Hill, T.): “requires a state agency in any proceeding to suspend, terminate, or discipline an employee in state service to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the employee violated state law or a rule or policy of the agency prior to taking such action”

• SB689 (Jackson)/HB900 (Sparks): “restores longevity pay for employees of the executive branch in the service of the state hired after June 30, 2015”

• SB987 (Reeves)/HB1179 (Terry): “removes the use of state-funded pharmacy benefits managers; removes certain exemption under public records law”

• SB1467 (Bailey)/HB741 (M. Hill): “corrects a reference to the insurance and banking committee of the house of representatives by replacing it with a reference to the insurance committee of the house of representatives” (An amendment rewrites the bill to set up a rural health care access task force to study struggling rural health centers and other relevant issues.)

• SB1062 (Dickerson)/HB919 (Terry): “authorizes electronic transmission of the summary of the data concerning high-volume prescribers and any disciplinary action by the department to the health committees of the senate and house of representatives”

• SB1267 (Pody)/HB1394 (Cepicky): “requires the department of education to provide LEAs with access to their students' TCAP and end-of-course assessment items and the students' answers within 60 days following the administration of the assessments; requires an LEA to provide each teacher with access to the teacher's students' assessment information within 90 days following the administration of the assessments; requires that the provided information include all questions posed to students”

• SB33 (Dickerson)/HB25 (Jernigan): “removes the Tennessee School for the Deaf from the Tennessee School for the Blind facilities beginning with the 2022-2023 school year; changes from Davidson County to middle Tennessee the location at which a Tennessee School for the Deaf branch must operate; prohibits certain schools from sharing certain leadership positions at the same time”

• HB1480 (Hardaway)/SB1317 (Kyle): “changes from five days to one business day, the timeframe by which the department of human services must send notice of an administrative order of seizure or sale of assets to the child support obligor”

• HB1209 (Mitchell)/SB1225 (Niceley): “vests only certain qualified special agents and the director of internal affairs with law enforcement powers under the [Department of Correction]”

• HB234 (G. Johnson)/SB260 (Kyle): “declares that a person who holds a valid medical marijuana patient identification card issued by another state does not commit an offense in this state if the person possesses, or distributes to another cardholder, marijuana not in excess of one-half ounce”

• HB235 (G. Johnson)/SB256 (Kyle): “decriminalizes the possession of less than one ounce of marijuana”

• HB804 (Haston)/SB669 (Hensley): “requires an assessment provider responsible for the misadministration of an assessment to provide an incident report to the department and the LEA or LEAs in which the misadministration occurred no later than 30 days after the misadministration of the assessment”

• HB632 (Terry)/SB565 (Bowling): “allows a teacher who demonstrates an overall performance effectiveness level of ‘above expectations’ or ‘significantly above expectations for three consecutive years to receive an overall evaluation score of ‘above expectations in certain years under certain circumstances”

• HB1115 (Coley)/SB1221 (Niceley): “prohibits a state governmental entity from conducting a financial audit of a business entity more than once in a 12-month period unless the entity finds substantial evidence of egregious financial misconduct”

• HB1421 (Towns)/SB817 (Akbari): “enacts the ‘Horse Racing Control Act of 2019,’ authorizing and regulating parimutuel wagering on horse racing”

• HB1075 (Sanderson)/SB302 (Yager): “creates the Tennessee wine and grape board; establishes the powers and duties of the board; creates the wine and grape fund; provides for the funding of the fund and the manner in which such funds may be used by the board”

• HB1438 (Stewart)/SB944 (Kyle): “prohibits the operation of a virtual school by an LEA after July 1, 2019”

• HB1351 (Clemmons)/SB1177 (Dickerson): “creates transportation services district consisting of certain counties; authorizes special allocation of surplus state tax revenue within district to eligible counties for transportation services”

• HJR149 (Powell): “Urges the Department of Education to address the negative impacts of recent legislation on local education agencies”

• HB753 (Smith)/SB1169 (Swann): “adds a patient's residence and place of employment, if equipped to engage in telehealth communications, as locations a patient may be and receive telehealth services covered by health insurance; revises other telehealth provisions”

• HB1366 (Sparks)/SB1502 (Hensley): “clarifies that the time period in which insurance premiums deducted from the salaries of participating employees to be deposited into the county insurance fund is three calendar days rather than three business days” (An amendment rewrites the bill to set up a health care marketplace in which enrollees could pocket some of the savings resulting from shopping around for medical services.)

• HB1174 (Weaver)/SB891 (Niceley): “requires state agencies to produce an economic impact statement prior to entering a contract with a private party if either the contract is in excess of $2.5 million or the contract will result in the furlough or layoff of any state employees, instead of both”

• HB1430 (Stewart)/SB1029 (Yarbro): “authorizes the governor to expand Medicaid pursuant to the Affordable Care Act; authorizes the governor to negotiate with the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services to determine the terms of the expansion”

• HB1092 (Hodges)/SB983 (Gilmore): authorizes the governor to expand Medicaid pursuant to the Affordable Care Act; authorizes the governor to negotiate with the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services to determine the terms of the expansion”

• HB1257 (Curcio)/SB1408 (Bell): “requires that appointments to the offices of senior judge, chancellor, circuit court judge, criminal court judge, or judge of any other trial court of record, district attorney general, and district public defender be confirmed by general assembly before appointees take office”

• HB180 (Howell)/SB43 (Massey): “authorizes an electronic format of the report provided by the department to each member of the general assembly regarding the status of highway projects in the county or counties represented by the member” (An amendment rewrites the bill to set up a railroad crossing improvement fund.)