In the packed chambers of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Gov. Bill Haslam delivered his second State of the State address Monday night before a joint session of the state General Assembly.

Many in there were armed with laptops, cell phones, and for most of the time, an internet connection.

Haslam’s speech focused on his budget proposals for the coming fiscal year, as well as legislative initiatives including cuts to the estate and grocery sales taxes, efforts to curtail violent crime and drug use and changes to the way the state’s hiring and employment practices. Throughout the 40 minute address, he aimed to outline an effective, efficient state government that he said should stand in contrast to gridlock in Washington.

Below is the story of the day in tweets, Facebook statuses and YouTube videos from people watching the speech in the Capitol and around Tennessee.

Gov. Bill Haslam is proposing a budget he says will make the state more efficient, but it is actually bigger than the one he proposed last year.

But his budget plan — complete with a 2.5 percent pay boost for teachers and state employees and more than a quarter billion dollars for higher education and capital improvements — is still 2.7 percent less than the current year’s spending plan.

“(Taxpayers) want a state government that is accountable and spends their tax dollars as carefully as they spend their own dollars. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Haslam asked a crowded joint assembly of state House and Senate members Monday night at his annual State of the State address.

“It is very hard for folks to spend other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own. Even worse, it is easy for those of us in government to begin to think that the tax dollars are ours. It is here that it is best for all of us to remember what Mark Twain said about the taxpayers’ dollars: “It’s tainted. ‘Taint yours and ‘taint mine.”

Haslam unveiled a $31.08 billion spending plan for the next state budget year. His proposal assumes a 4.03 percent growth in revenues in the budget year that runs from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013.

“So, what is the state of our state? Well, in many ways we are doing great,” Haslam said, lauding the state’s low taxes and debt, balanced budget and slowly falling unemployment rate.

“But yet, all of us realize that we have serious issues to deal with. Unemployment is still too high, and we are consistently only in the mid-40s when states are ranked for educational achievement. I don’t think any of us should be satisfied. So I stand here tonight and ask you: Is the current state of our state good enough? I think the answer is no. I think we can believe in better.”

The governor’s budget includes eliminating 1,166 state government jobs, through layoffs of 617 workers and nixing 549 vacant positions. The state employs about 45,000 people.

“We have been cut to the bone here in as far as state services,” said union leader Bob O’Connell, with the Tennessee State Employees Association, which opposes the governor’s call to reduce staff and change how the state hires government workers. ”There’s no more fat to offer and from here on out it’s all muscle so it’s going to hurt to cut those folks out. We hope that money can be found to restore all of those positions.”

Meanwhile, the administration wants to dole out 2.5 percent pay raises for state employees, teachers and higher education workers at a cost of $123.8 million. That would mean an extra $95 pre-taxes a month for the average Tennessee teacher, who makes $45,891 a year.

Haslam also wants to readjust salaries for some state employees to bring them up to comparable market rates, costing taxpayers about $30 million a year.

His proposal includes cutting the tax on food and raising the threshold for exemptions to the inheritance tax, which combined will mean a collective reduction of $33 million — or less than 1 percent of the state’s total revenues.

“I’m well satisfied with what he’s laying out here,” Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, told TNReport after the 40-minute speech. “Not only are we going to be able to cut taxes in the state of Tennessee, with the death tax and the tax on food, but also we’re going to increase services, and I think the governor’s set the priority in the right place to make Tennessee an efficient and effective government that serves the people well.”

Democrats say they like some of what they heard from the governor, but are concerned with some of the issues he didn’t talk about, like his plan to give school districts the authority to adjust class sizes.

“Our teachers just went through a year with a different kind of ABCs,” said Sen. Lowe Finney, D-Jackson. “They were attacked, they were belittled and they were criticized. This year it seems to be new math: fewer teachers with bigger classrooms is supposed to equal better results. But that really does not add up.”

The budget comes after months of the governor speculating the state would be in tough shape come the next budget year amid growing yet unreliable tax revenues. He has asked state agencies to plan for cuts up to 5 percent, although departments average about 2 percent cuts in the governor’s plan.

Haslam’s budget for the current fiscal year was proposed at $30.2 billion and relied heavily on former Gov. Phil Bredesen’s spending strategy.

The Legislature ultimately endorsed his plan after making a handful of edits. But between increases in revenues and a stack of federal funds officials say couldn’t be spent right away, the budget ballooned to $31.93 billion, or 5.7 percent greater than proposed, according to the governor’s administration.

State funds make up 45 percent of the governor’s proposed budget while federal funds account for 39.5 percent of the state’s spending plan. The rest is made up of other funds including higher education tuition and bonds. The federal portion is down from making up 41.1 percent of last year’s state budget.

Steven Hale contributed to this report.

Gov. Bill Haslam is scheduled to pitch his roughly $30 billion spending plan to lawmakers on Capitol Hill Monday evening. During the annual State of the State address before a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly, the governor is expected to outline his fiscal priorities and policy vision for the coming year.

It’s unclear exactly what the governor’s budget for fiscal year 2013 will look like. But Haslam and his staff have consistently said it will include some cuts.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey told reporters Thursday he doesn’t expect many surprises in Haslam’s proposed budget, which lawmakers will spend the next weeks and months delving into and fine-tuning before they adjourn to hit the campaign trail.

Ramsey warned, though, that the various government program constituencies shouldn’t get too excited by the state’s growing tax revenue.

“I think there will still be cuts in this year’s budget, but compared to what we’ve been through the last two or three years, it’ll be easier,” said Ramsey.

The state anticipates collecting about $300 million more in tax revenues next fiscal year than this year as the economy continues to recover. However, rising costs mandated by state or federal law in education, TennCare and pensions will mean roughly $500 million in additional expenses this year, according to the administration.

“Our job (in state government) is to provide the very best service that we can at the lowest price,” Gov. Haslam told civic and business leaders in Cookeville Monday. “People every day depend on the State of Tennessee to go get a driver’s license and not have to wait in line forever, to make sure that I-40 out here is safe, to make sure TennCare is provided for our most needy families.”

Over the last six months, state agencies have handed several cost-cutting proposals to the governor’s office. One plan showed how Tennessee government departments and personnel would acclimate if the feds lopped off 30 percent of their Volunteer State spending. The resulting $4.5 billion budget contraction would require state government to lay off 5,100 of its roughly 40,000 employees. That plan acted mainly as a test exercise to prove to federal bond rating agencies the state is not overly dependent on federal dollars, according to the Haslam administration.

The other budget requests, presented during a series of budget hearings around the state in November, revealed how each department would cut 5 percent from yearly spending, with many departments writing off unfilled jobs.

With the state’s financial future looking rosier now than it did when the governor asked for those cuts, Haslam has signaled he’s willing to make some fiscal moves that previously he’d said weren’t in the cards for 2012. The administration is indicating tax cuts are now a possibility — like  trimming back the food tax, which would mean the government eating up $18 million less of Tennesseans’ aggregate food purchases. Another priority for the administration is raising the exemption on the estate tax — sometimes referred to as the “death tax” — which would mean a $14 million reduction in state revenue. The governor has also suggested allocating $6 million toward anti-crime measures annually.

“We’re all just kind of sitting on pins and needles waiting to see what the governor will recommend in the budget,” Board of Regents Chancellor John Morgan told the Higher Education Commission Thursday. “We’re very hopeful that this is going to be a good year for our education budgets, which would be a very pleasant experience given the string of the last several years, which had not been so good.”

Haslam has hinted a willingness to put money in his budget to check the immigration status of people collecting government entitlements like food stamps, which would cost $5.8 million, according to a 2011 estimate.

The governor has asked each commissioner to conduct a “top to bottom” review to identify how each would rebuild their organization to find efficiencies and better determine what services state government should be providing. Whether or how the governor will build the results of those studies into state government in the next year is not known.

The governor will unveil his budget plan at 3 p.m. followed by his State of the State address at 6 p.m.

Here are stories we’ve written about state agencies’ budget proposals:

Board of Regents

Bureau of Investigation

Department of Correction

Department of Education

Department of Health

Department of Tourism

Department of Transportation

Departments of Economic and Community Development, Financial Institutions, Labor and Workforce Development, and Safety and Homeland Security

Departments of Safety and Homeland Security, Human Services, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Labor and Workforce Development

Letter from Gov. Bill Haslam; Jan. 27, 2012: 

A Campaign Promise Kept

Throughout the campaign and my first year as governor, I’ve been quite serious about tracking our performance and using data to measure our progress.

Let me explain: as a candidate for governor, I promised to take a data-driven approach to governance and accountability by building a “dashboard” to measure our progress against a set of objectives and measurements. I made this promise in Nashville at a meeting of the Nashville Rotary Club on Monday, September 13, 2010.

As I expected, it’s taken a while to establish a set of objectives and measurements, but now that our comprehensive review of state government is almost complete, I’m proud to announce the creation of the Tennessee Data Dashboard » Our team has worked incredibly hard on this important resource, but this is very much a first step. We’ll be updating the tool over the days and months to come, so feel free to share your ideas and feedback for version two.

Thanks so much for your continued support and please remember to tune-in to next Monday’s State of the State address at 6:00 p.m. CST at the State Capitol. I’m very much looking forward to sharing more of my plan aimed at moving Tennessee Forward.

Regards,?Bill

Press Release from the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, Jan. 25, 2012:

Organization Will “Listen and Gather Feedback on Successes and Challenges”

(Nashville) – The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) today announced details of a statewide feedback process on Tennessee’s new teacher evaluation system at a meeting of the State Board of Education. The process, which is designed to gather input from a wide range of voices, particularly from educators, follows a charge by Governor Bill Haslam to conduct a formal feedback process, independent of state government.

“Great teaching is the number one school-based factor in improving student achievement,” SCORE President and CEO Jamie Woodson said. “Our state is now in the first year of implementing a teacher evaluation system to identify and foster great teaching. Critical to the success of this implementation work is robust and extensive feedback from educators and community leaders to identify what is working and what can be improved. Over the next four months, SCORE’s role will be to listen.”

From February through May 2012, SCORE will gather feedback and input in four ways:

• Regional Roundtables: SCORE will facilitate eight public regional roundtables across the state. Roundtable participants will include teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, and community and business leaders.
• Online Survey: Beginning March 1, SCORE will launch an online survey to gather feedback on current teacher evaluation practices and policies from educators.
• Discussions with existing groups and networks: SCORE will gather feedback from existing groups, such as superintendent, principal, and supervisor study councils, as well as leaders and educators from each of the four evaluation models.
• Educator Work Team: SCORE will convene a representative group of teachers and principals from across the state to provide ongoing feedback.

Seven organizations have partnered with SCORE to gather feedback from educators and community leaders. They include: Tennessee Education Association (TEA), Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA), Tennessee Business Roundtable, Tennessee PTA, Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents (TOSS), Professional Educators of Tennessee (PET), and the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

More details on the regional roundtables and educator survey are available at www.tnscore.org/feedback.

Following the feedback process, SCORE will produce a report to the Tennessee State Board of Education and Department of Education. The report, which will be completed by June 1, will provide a catalogue of feedback from across the state on the four approved evaluation models and will propose a range of policy considerations for teacher evaluation moving forward. SCORE’s work will be led by Dr. Sharon Roberts, who has served as a teacher, principal, and superintendent in Tennessee, and now works as the Chief Operating Officer at SCORE.

The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) collaboratively supports Tennessee’s work to prepare students for college and the workforce. We are an independent, non-profit, and non-partisan advocacy and research institution, founded by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Lawmakers say they’re hearing concerns about the governor’s plan to authorize more local control on class size and teacher pay, but they predict the outcry will not be as heated as last year’s.

“We’re going to work real hard to get some consensus. Everybody may not agree 100 percent, but I think we’re going to be doing some moving here before we do anything to make sure everybody’s kind of on board and is fairly happy with it,” said House Education Chairman Richard Montgomery, R-Sevierville. “If everyone is unhappy with it, we may have even done a pretty good job.”

Gov. Bill Haslam wants to give local school districts the discretion to disregard existing pay scales based on longevity or degree accumulation and instead set their own teacher salary plan. He also wants each district to have the power to set class size restrictions for itself.

“The change in anything is painful. It is. I understand that. We’re in the middle of some of those growing pains right now. The worst thing in the world to do would be let our foot off the pedal,” Haslam told civic and business leaders in Cookeville Monday.

Lawmakers last year raised the bar on how teachers reach tenure, built in grading scales to measure teacher performance and eliminated mandatory collective bargaining over teacher contracts.

Senate Education Chairwoman Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, said members of her education committee haven’t dug through the governor’s new bills yet, but she’s heard some public criticism of the legislation centered on potential changes, in particular with respect to class sizes.

“Most teachers and parents are concerned about the classroom issue. They want effective teaching, and an effective teacher can just do more with fewer students,” said Senate Education Committee member Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga. “People see that more as a direct problem for results than the merit pay issue.”

The Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, says it’ll push back against the governor’s latest initiatives as vigorously as they did with last year’s GOP-sponsored reforms. In 2011, the TEA held protests and rallies that turned out teachers by the dozens to sometimes thousands.However, the legislation they were protesting passed, albeit without much Democrat support.

“I think it’s a huge political battle that’s shaping up,” said Jerry Winters, the TEA lobbyist. “It caught us off guard. I think it caught a lot of legislators off guard.”

A measure making it illegal for public elementary or middle schools in Tennessee to teach about homosexuality has cropped up again in the state Legislature and suffered a minor setback Wednesday.

But Rep. Joey Hensley delayed committee action on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, after a request from House Education Committee Chairman Richard Montgomery.

Hensley, R-Hohenwald, who serves as the number two man on the committee and chairs the subcommittee where the bill currently rests, told TNReport Wednesday the controversial legislation will most likely reappear in three weeks.

House Bill 229, which has become the source of an annual hubbub on the Hill and was to be the target of protests Wednesday, would prohibit schools from providing “instruction or materials” that discuss sexual orientations other than heterosexuality.

The proposal has previously drawn national media attention, falling on sympathetic ears as well as eliciting criticism that it turned the state Senate into “a national laughing stock” when that body last year passed a version of the bill – Senate Bill 49 – by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville. The measure died in the House.

Montgomery, R-Sevierville, said he asked Hensley for the delay after several committee members asked for more time to look at it. Explaining the move to the committee, Montgomery said the bill would be packaged with other curriculum legislation and taken up at a later date.

Hensley recently replaced Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, as the bill’s lead sponsor. Dunn, who still appears as a co-sponsor, said, “The key point was strategy.”

As a committee leader, Hensley is well-positioned to shepherd the bill forward, and Dunn noted Hensley’s status as a father, a doctor and a former school board member as reasons his sponsorship might be advantageous for the legislation.

Hensley has also just announced plans to to run for a new state Senate seat.

Montgomery said he hasn’t surveyed the committee’s membership and that he’s still on the fence himself.

“I’m not sure yet where I’m at,” he said. “I’d like to get all the knowledge we can first.”

One leading statehouse Democrat said the early appearance of such a controversial bill sets the wrong tone for the legislative session.

“Why are we doing this? It’s just a political move,” said Democratic House Leader Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, of Ripley. “The first meeting out of the box, I think you have to set the tone, and this is not a good tone to set.”

Both Hensley and Dunn said they feel confident they have the votes to get the bill out of committee this time. But if they don’t, that doesn’t mean it’s going away. Campfield, who has pushed the measure for years, said another delay wouldn’t phase him.

“Hopefully it will make it up to the House,” he said. “But if not, we’ll be back again next year.”

The Department of Education plans to shave about 43 positions from its administrative staff, though 17 of them are already vacant, the Haslam administration said Thursday.

The department represents the second largest chunk of state government in terms of dollars it consumes, the largest being the agency that administers TennCare.

This year’s Department of Education budget topped off at $5.6 billion, which includes state and federal dollars. It employs some 1,341 workers — which means the staff reductions amount to 3 percent of personnel.

The current budget climate makes it unlikely that the department will receive much, if any, additional funding besides standard inflation in the upcoming year, said Kelli Gauthier, spokesperson for the Department of Education. The department needs to be structured in a way that ensures that goals in its strategic plan are met, she said.

“One of the things I’m constantly emphasizing is we’re about providing the service,” Gov. Bill Haslam said. “It’s not about us as the employer. It’s about how do we provide that service in the most effective way we can.”

Alex Harris and Andrea Zelinski contributed to this report.

Citing several months of complaints from teachers about new state-mandated evaluations, Gov. Bill Haslam is calling in a third-party education advocate to sort out the new system.

The State Collaborative on Reforming Education has agreed to independently grade the state’s new evaluation process and report back by this summer with feedback and recommendations to be used going into the 2012-13 school year.

“Any time you implement something that’s this comprehensive, I think if you don’t consistently re-evaluate it, you’re not doing your job,” Haslam told reporters after a press conference announcing the partnership at the Capitol Building Wednesday.

“We knew this is going to be a huge rollout, and we knew there would be some people that didn’t necessarily take to it very well, and we knew that we would be evaluating the evaluations,” he said.

SCORE has been involved in several Tennessee education initiatives, including advocating for data-driven teacher evaluations. The nonprofit, bipartisan organization is run by Jamie Woodson, a former Republican senator from Knoxville who bowed out this year to become the group’s executive director. She took over for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, also a Republican, who launched the organization in 2009.

School districts across the state began using the new annual evaluations this schools year, which include grading teachers based on a mix of student test scores and classroom evaluations and scoring them on a five-point scale. Previously, teachers were heavily evaluated in the three years prior to earning tenure, sporadically after that point.

“The implementation and execution of these reform efforts are truly where the rubber meets the road,” said Woodson, who said SCORE will facilitate roundtable discussions with teachers across the state in addition to soliciting feedback online. “Critical to our mission and to success of this effort is the opportunity for feedback and input from educators and community members throughout the state.”

Haslam said SCORE’s advocacy work for a teacher evaluation system is an asset, not a bias.

“It’s not a question of should we have (the teacher evaluation system). It’s a question of, is the one that we have working well, and I think that’s what we’ve tasked (SCORE) with,” Haslam told reporters.

House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh applauded the governor’s call to study the new evaluation, but said he should also put the system on pause.

“The Legislature rushed this evaluation process, and in many situations it has been to the detriment of Tennessee’s teachers and students,” wrote Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, in an emailed statement. “I hope that the governor and the Legislature agree that we need to delay the evaluations until a thorough bi-partisan review is complete.”

While SCORE picks through the evaluation process, Haslam said he wants the Legislature to avoid passing bills that would change the current process, saying any adjustments should go through the Board of Education.

Halams has also, in recent weeks, asked the Legislature to take a pass on legislation that would allow students to transfer to a public, charter or private school using vouchers while a task force — which includes Woodson — studies that concept.

Press Release from the State of Tennessee, Dec. 21, 2011:

Governor calls upon independent organization and department to take a closer look

NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam today announced that there will be both an external and internal review of the new teacher evaluation system.

He has charged the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) with conducting an independent, third-party evaluation and is asking the state Department of Education to formalize a review process, which the department has already begun.

Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) and Rep. John Forgety (R-Athens) are sponsors of a resolution that outlines the review process for the department, which the governor said the administration supports.

“There has been a lot of discussion about teacher evaluations over the past several months,” Haslam said. “As we continue to have conversations with educators, I see a lot of value in reviewing the process both from an external and internal perspective and to compare observation results with student achievement data at the end of the year.

“These evaluations were a critical piece of the Race to the Top initiative, and it is important for Tennessee to maintain strong accountability measures as we build upon our momentum to improve education. As we work through this first year of implementation, I do not support legislative changes during this session. It is appropriate to give the process time to work and to learn more about what changes might be necessary.”

Haslam was joined for the announcement in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol by Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, SCORE president and CEO Jamie Woodson, and key legislators including Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville), House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), Sen. Delores Gresham (R-Somerville), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Rep. Richard Montgomery (R-Sevierville), chairman of the House Education Committee and Tracy and Forgety, sponsors of the resolution.

SCORE’s report will be due to the state Board of Education and Department of Education on June 1, 2012.