And so, it begins. 2024 will be the last regular legislative session of the 113th General Assembly which will begin at 12:00pm on Tuesday, January 9th.
Over the next few months, you will have several opportunities to engage with your elected representatives on a variety of topics and we encourage you to do so. Your involvement is key to the legislative process and working to ensure that conservative values are protected in our state.
We are already keeping an eye on the bills being filed for this upcoming legislative session. Things that we are already keeping an eye on have to do with the Governor’s plans for school choice, homeschool, limiting the Governor’s emergency powers, mental health in public education, school safety, mental health and gun control, abortion, illegal immigration, constitutional amendments, concerns over ESG, medical freedom and vaccination requirements, religious liberty, and efforts to assert state sovereignty against federal overreach.
As this year’s bill filing deadline approaches (likely the 3rd or 4th week of January – to be determined), we are certain that our list of bills we are watching will grow. There are already a myriad of bills that we expect to see, but we can’t predict everything that will be filed and certainly what will be amended in the future through the committee process.
Stay tuned to Tennessee Stands and our channels on social media @tennesseestands. Together, we can make meaningful strides in defending liberty right here in Tennessee.
Support roll call votes in the Tennessee House.
Urgent action required. The House Select Committee on Rules is set to meet on Monday, Jan 8th at 11:00am.
The Problem
The Constitution of the State of Tennessee gives each chamber of the legislature the power to make its own rules. One of those rules concerns how votes are taken in committee hearings during the legislative session.
Currently, the Tennessee House of Representatives allows for voice votes to be taken on a bill as it makes its way through the committee process. That means (2) key things:
- The committee chairman has the sole power to determine whether or not a bill receives a majority of YES or NO votes in the committee hearing. The vote is determined by who he or she hears.
- Once the vote is taken, the clerk only reports to the legislative record whether the AYES or NOES prevail. Meaning, citizens are not afforded a look at how their State Representative voted on a certain bill in committee.
The current voice vote process in the House leaves room for corruption and a lack of accountability as chairmen have the power to determine the vote and voters are often unable to see how their elected representatives are voting in committee.
The Solution
As the House has the constitutional authority to set its own rules, it also has the ability to amend them. Coming into the beginning of the 2024 session, an amendment to the rules has been filed requiring that all votes taken in committee be recorded by roll call.
Roll call votes mean that your State Representative’s name is now attached to a recorded YES or NO vote in every committee hearing. It also means that the Chairman of each committee no longer has the sole discretion of determining whether or not a bill succeeds in his or her committee.
Roll call votes are already the rule in the Senate. It is time to bring that same level of accountability and transparency to the House.
