Tennessee lawmakers set to return for the 2024 legislative session: 4 key issues to watch

Tennessee lawmakers will return to the state Capitol on Tuesday to kick off the 2024 legislative session, which is expected to largely feature Gov. Bill Lee's education voucher proposal and the lingering aftershocks of a divisive 2023 session and an August special session that produced little action on gun safety.

It is the second year of the 113th Tennessee General Assembly, meaning lawmakers could still consider bills filed for last year's regular session in the coming months.

Meanwhile, new bills began trickling in last month, and lawmakers will likely have until the end of the month to file their legislation.

Here's a look at some of the top issues lawmakers may grapple with through the spring.

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School choice vouchers will be key

Five years after barely pushing through a limited school voucher program, Lee now seeks to expand his signature program statewide. Key Republicans are backing the governor, but it's not necessarily a slam-dunk deal yet.

Lee’s proposed Education Freedom Scholarship Act would offer 20,000 students about $7,075 to attend a private school or cover other educational expenses. The first 10,000 slots would have an income requirement and in 2025, the program would expand to universal eligibility.

The governor's office has said funding for the program would come from the General Fund but Lee has not yet released proposed legislation, so specific details are still under wraps. Lee and his office continue to dance around whether the proposed bill will include explicit accountability measures like the testing requirements the state imposes on public schools.

"Private schools already use a variety of national norm-referenced tests and TCAP scores to measure performance, similar to their counterparts in traditional public schools," Lee spokesperson Elizabeth Johnson said in December.

"While details are still being finalized with legislative leadership, parents are the best form of accountability, because they have their child’s best interest in mind and will hold schools accountable to that end. Ultimately, parents make the best decisions for their child and know when a school is the right fit for their student's needs. Often that means sending kids to their local school district, but a child’s future should never be dictated by their ZIP code."

Some Republicans, such as Rep. Sam Whitson, R-Franklin, are concerned about the long-term costs of a program underwritten by the state General Fund. Meanwhile, some suburban school districts have slammed the proposal as an existential threat to public education in Tennessee that will drain resources from public schools and fund private schools with little to no oversight.

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Democrats have long opposed the voucher program in any iteration. All eyes may be on the nearly two dozen Republican lawmakers still in office who opposed the 2019 legislation to establish the voucher program in Davidson and Shelby counties.

Gun safety proposals will be back 

The August special session ended with a whimper after Senate stonewalling sparked animosity between the two chambers and controversial House GOP leadership decisions on public signage prompted an immediate lawsuit.

Lee in November confirmed he does not plan to bring back an extreme risk proposal in 2024, an effort he attempted to launch in April by floating draft legislation with a speech saying "we owe Tennesseans a vote."

Lee's plan faltered immediately. Republican lawmakers moved to adjourn the spring session without addressing the plan, with the House GOP particularly motivated to close up shop after weeks of high-profile gun control protests and ensuing backlash from the Tennessee Three expulsions.

Lee pledged to bring lawmakers back to address the issue. The pledge drifted into the summer before the General Assembly returned in August, where once again political infighting defined days of highly charged public protests and a legislative agenda that resulted in few significant bills.

How lawmakers address Tennesseans' continued concerns about gun violence — or if they do so at all — will likely remain a top issue in the legislature this year. Recent polling from Vanderbilt University and an exclusive Tennessean/Siena College poll shows a widespread majority of Republicans and Democrats support gun safety reforms similar to Lee's proposal and Democratic-backed safe storage laws.

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Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Nashville, has pledged to bring a similar extreme risk proposal this year.

"Tennessee has one of the highest rates of gun related deaths in the country, more than half of which are suicides," Freeman said. "Temporarily removing a firearm from someone who poses an immediate threat is the right thing to do, and I will plan to bring forward a bill that will do so.

Democrats are eyeing a slew of bills that were often blocked from late filing last April and by the narrow tailoring of the August special session. Among them will be Rep. Harold Love, D-Nashville, who aims to file legislation on high-capacity magazines.

"I think we were given mandate when we left regular session last year that we did not fulfill in our special session," Love said, pointing to gun violence reduction as a high priority for 2024.

Still, legislative Republicans, increasingly wary of getting a primary challenge from the right, remain largely resistant to explicit gun reform proposals.

As in the August special session, GOP members may float additional legislation related to mental health issues.

On Friday, House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, filed a bill to require criminal defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial to be committed to an appropriate treatment facility. The legislation would also prevent these individuals from buying or owing a gun

“This closes a loophole that puts the public’s safety at serious risk by allowing dangerous individuals back into society to languish and re-offend without receiving the appropriate mental health services and supervision they desperately need," Lamberth said, citing the shooting death of Jillian Ludwig last year.

Ludwig, a Belmont University freshman, was killed by a stray bullet fired by Shaquille Taylor, who had previously been deemed incompetent to stand trial for another violent crime but did not meet the standards for involuntary commitment.

Budget tightening

After years of surplus revenues, Tennessee is likely due for some belt-tightening amid a string of underperforming months.

Revenues for the first four months of fiscal year have all fallen under budgeted estimates. By December, annual revenue was $197.3 million less than the budget estimate. However, revenues remain higher than pre-pandemic levels, and the state is in a strong position, the governor has said.

"We've had remarkable years of surplus for the last couple of years. We knew that couldn't continue forever," Lee said in October. "We had the fastest growing economy in America and that generates really big surpluses when you have such a low tax structure as we do. But it can't last forever and it's beginning to taper off, we just need to predict it appropriately."

Lawmakers may rein in some one-time expenditures, and the economic slowdown has already thrown some cold water on the hotly contested possibility of Tennessee giving up millions in federal education funding. Whether it bleeds into conversations about expanding the voucher program remains to be seen.

Still, state reserves grew significantly in the previous fiscal year, on top of a hefty rainy day fund. Democrats have long criticized state Republicans for sitting on reserves while underfunding public programs, and the Senate Democratic Caucus in January said the GOP "hoards" tax dollars "instead of investing the people’s money in solutions for the people."

Decorum rules

Will House Republicans bring back the hotly contested rules package for the regular session?

The House rules committee would have to re-adopt the rules, which would then require another full House vote. But it's likely Republicans would again support the measures. The rules committee is set to meet at 11 a.m. CT on Monday.

In August, the GOP supermajority approved new rules allowing a House majority to block a lawmaker from speaking in committees and on the House floor if they cause a disruption or "impugn the reputation" of another House member. The new rules also banned members of the public from carrying signs in House galleries and committee meetings, which had long been allowed.

The rules were a thinly veiled response to the gun reform chants led by Democratic Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson in April. The incident infuriated the GOP, who moved quickly to oust the three and incited widespread backlash and days of chaotic protests inside the state Capitol.

House Republicans successfully expelled Jones and Pearson and failed by one vote to kick out Johnson. But local legislative bodies in Nashville and Memphis quickly reappointed the two and each won a special election later in the year.

The expulsion thrust the three into the national spotlight and led to a fundraising boon.

Democrats last year argued Republicans, who hold a supermajority power in the General Assembly, control the ability to define what constitutes a disruption or what is, or isn’t, on topic. Jones was briefly silenced under the new rule in August.

Some Republicans have already expressed support for additional House rules. Rep. Sabi Kumar, R-Springfield, cited "legislative disruptions that make it difficult to accomplish our mutual goals" as the biggest challenge the legislature will have to address in 2024.

Rep. Jake McCalmon, R-Franklin, said he supports rules to ensure the "Tennessee state capitol remains a respected institution for the people of Tennessee – not a political theater."

Freshman Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, would oppose bringing back the special session rules, she said, and thinks the chamber should adopt the Senate rules.

"The more draconian the policies, the more chaos ensues," Behn said.

Reach Melissa Brown at mabrown@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee legislative session: School vouchers, gun control top list