Legislators say they want to make sure their own kind get more than a slap on the wrist if they’re caught breaking the law and abusing the public trust.

The legislation comes almost a year after Richard Baumgartner, a former criminal court judge in Knoxville, pleaded guilty to official misconduct for illegally using prescription painkillers he acquired from drug offenders who’d appeared in his court. Baumgartner was granted diversion, which allowed him to avoid serving jail time.

“I think that people who hold public office ought to be held to a higher standard,” said Sen. Ken Yager, R-Harriman, who is sponsoring the bill.

Yager told TNReport the Baumgartner scandal “was certainly one of several” involving East Tennessee public officials that prompted him to sponsor the legislation — although he declined to get specific.

“That’s not to say that 99 percent of the state and local officials in this state aren’t hardworking, conscientious and honest, but it’s that less than one percent who commit malfeasance in their office give everybody else a bad name,” Yager said.

The measure would add to the list of crimes not eligible for diversion “any offense committed by any elected or appointed person in the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the state or any political division of the state, which offense was committed in the person’s official capacity or involved the duties of the person’s office.”

Even though nobody voted against the bill, not everybody was for it. Three senators abstained from voting on SB2566: Douglas Henry, D-Nashville, Beverly Marrero, D-Memphis, and Joe Haynes, D-Nashville.

“If you’re going to take off diversion for that crime, we need to consider a lot of other crimes,” Haynes told reporters after speaking out against the bill on the Senate floor. “Not that people who do that shouldn’t be punished. Sure they should. But diversion shouldn’t be removed for that crime any more than it should be removed… for embezzlers or any other serious crime.”

Baumgartner pleaded guilty to one felony count of official misconduct and was granted two years of parole instead of a prison sentence for the conviction. Defense lawyers in numerous cases over which Baumgartner presided either have or are considering asking for retrials because Judge Baumgartner was likely impaired on the bench during court proceedings.

If he avoids further brushes with the law, Baumgartner’s record will be wiped clean after two years due to the current diversion law.

In Tennessee, diversion is applicable in certain cases involving a first-time offender. The second chance is granted in cases where the defendant has never been granted pretrial or judicial diversion, has not been convicted for a felony, or a Class A or B misdemeanor. Diversion is available if the crime at hand is not a Class A or B felony, DUI,  misdemeanor sex offense or conspiracy, attempt, or solicitation of certain sex offenses.

The companion House measure, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Haynes, R-Knoxville, has yet to move in a House Judiciary subcommittee this year, but is scheduled for a hearing Thursday.

Mark Engler contributed to this report.

Tents and other “living quarters” would not be allowed on public spaces, under a bill advancing at the Capitol aimed at the Occupy Nashville protest – whose members have been camped on War Memorial Plaza for four months.

Members of that group say the bill would limit free speech and criminalize homelessness. On Wednesday it moved out of a subcommittee to the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill, HB2638, aims to prevent “people from living on publicly-owned property not designated for residential use and prohibits people using publicly-owned property from posing a health hazard or threat to the safety and welfare of others.”

“It is not a bill that will make the protest on the plaza end. It is not a bill that denies First Amendment rights to any individual,” said Rep. Eric Watson, R-Cleveland, the sponsor of the bill. “What this bill does, though, it restores the entire public’s right to utilize all the public property around the state, not just a single group.”

Occupy Nashville released an open letter to Gov. Bill Haslam, the General Assembly and the Highway Patrol in response to this bill’s filing.

The bill was amended Wednesday morning to provide the state with the right to prevent people from camping on public grounds where camping is not permitted.

The new amendment, which is named the “Equal Access to Public Property Act of 2012,” is based on a 1984 federal law, supported by a U.S. Supreme Court decision, that gives the states the right to do this, Watson said.

Additionally, the amendment would change a violation of the no-camping law from a Class C to a Class B misdemeanor, raising the fine from $50 to $500. However, the amendment doesn’t allow for incarceration as a form of punishment.

“This seems to me to be sweeping legislation that could be used to silence dissent and punish our unhoused brothers and sisters for their poverty,” said Bill Howell, a member of Occupy Nashville and the progressive group Tennesseans for Fair Taxation at the subcommittee meeting. “What we see on the plaza every day is the direct result of bad public policy, both state and federal, that has served to further enrich the rich and impoverish the poor.”

Howell said people participating in the round-the-clock protest could catch cold if tents were banned.

The Occupy movement claims the bill is unconstitutional.

“The $500 fine is an infringement of free speech because it would have a negative effect on 24-hour vigils,” said Jane Steinfels Hussain, a group spokeswoman.

Last fall, when the Occupy movement was evicted from Legislative Plaza, Gov. Bill Haslam said that the reasoning behind the new policy was public safety, not to prevent free speech.

A few weeks later Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey said that although he believes in freedom of speech, the Occupy movement had overstepped its bounds.

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

Gov. Bill Haslam told reporters Wednesday that he doesn’t think bills dealing with sexual orientation are the best use of lawmakers’ time this session.

Haslam was asked specifically about whether he sees a connection between bills such as one to ban teaching about homosexuality in lower grades and two teen suicides in as many months by Middle Tennessee students who were reportedly bullied for being gay.

“Obviously, that’s not the environment we want to set in Tennessee,” he said. “In terms of legislation, I think there’s better things for us to focus on this year.”

The governor’s comments came hours before Dennis Shepard - the father of Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student who was beaten to death in 1998 because of his sexual orientation - held a press conference, in conjunction with the Tennessee Equality Project, to express concerns about a number of bills, which critics have called “anti-gay.” He also called for the state to enact a hate-crimes law similar to existing federal legislation.

Shepard is in town for a Metro Human Relations Commission forum on hate-crime prevention to be held beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday, at Tennessee State University’s Avon Campus Auditorium.

Since the legislative session began two weeks ago, a number of controversial bills pertaining to homosexuality have cropped up.

The so-called “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” bill returned again and currently rests in the House Education Subcommittee, after passing in the Senate last year.

Last week, Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, withdrew a bill to regulate which public restrooms and changing rooms a transgender person could use. The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Richard Floyd, told his hometown paper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, he’d likely react violently “if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there.”

“I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there,” Floyd told the newspaper. “I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.”

Last year, the governor signed legislation that overturned anti-discrimination ordinances in Nashville and elsewhere.

While Haslam said the bill was aimed at protecting business from government intrusion, it had the effect of undoing protections for gays, lesbians and transgendered people, like the ones passed by the Metro Council.

The topic of much conversation Wednesday was the bill known to critics as the “Right-to-Bully.”

The original version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah, and Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, was filed last year but never came to a vote in either chamber. Talking to reporters Wednesday, Family Action Council of Tennessee president David Fowler said the bill’s language had been reworked and that a new version would be filed Thursday. Fowler is a former GOP state senator from Signal Mountain.

Fowler acknowledged the bill’s original language was “apparently not sufficient to communicate what we were trying to do.” The initial bill had drawn national criticism for language that critics said would protect bullying, as long as it was done on religious or political grounds.

Fowler said the bill’s aim is actually to reduce bullying in public schools — but without infringing on the rights of students to engage in free speech and religious expression.

“We have to appreciate that the same First Amendment that is disregarded today to suppress speech you don’t like, is the principle that tomorrow may be used to suppress your speech,” he said. “So, we have to appreciate the First Amendment cuts both ways.”

As for the new version of the bill, Fowler said it would try to define situations that called for action by school administrators.

“Specifically, if a student reports harm to themselves or their property, or the threat of harm to themselves or their property, that in itself should be enough to demand that the administrator investigate that situation, take action, and in our bill what is done would need to be reported to others who can monitor the situation,” he said.

Haslam spokesman Dave Smith said the governor’s office hadn’t reviewed the bill in detail, but that Haslam has expressed concerns about the legislation.

If the state were to implement mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients — an idea Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey is pushing — it would be a higher standard than the state demands for most of its own workers.

“I still want to make sure we’re drug testing practically everyone getting any kind of government benefits,” Ramsey told reporters last week.

Meanwhile, no state agencies participate in a program promoted to businesses by the Tennessee Department of Labor as effective in keeping workplaces safe and productivity up.

The “Drug Free Workplace Program,” in which businesses get a 5 percent break on worker’s compensation premiums in exchange for testing workers, enlists businesses and local governments to test all workers prior to employment, as well as employees involved in workplace accidents.

In general, though, most of the state’s 46,000 employees don’t have to provide urine samples as a condition of accepting a job, according to state labor department spokesman Jeff Hentschel.

Normally, only those state employees with safety-sensitive jobs are required to submit to drug tests. In the agency that runs the prison system, all employees are tested, but in a handful of other departments — such as Commerce and Insurance, Agriculture, and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities — only workers who handle heavy machinery or perform potentially dangerous work tasks are tested, according to several agency spokespeople contacted by TNReport.

Ramsey could support requiring state employees to undergo testing, a spokesman said. Based on legislative research from last year that estimated the tests cost at least $8 a pop, a bill for such a measure could easily top $360,000 to test each of the state’s 46,000 employees, although that doesn’t account for costs like supplies, training, retesting and staffing. A proposal last year to drug test welfare recipients yielded a $2.3 million price tag the first year.

When asked by reporters, Ramsey said he’d also be in support of drug testing lawmakers and would probably back requiring business executives whose companies are receiving government handouts to submit to a test.

“Fine with me. I’ll have to check into that,” Ramsey said. “I’m fine with that. I’m fine with legislators being drug tested because I know that we’ll get criticised if we target one segment of society like that.

“But you’re right. If they’re getting state money, federal money, why shouldn’t they be? I don’t know how you define who the executives are.”

A plan by Knoxville Republicans Sen. Stacey Campfield and Rep. Bill Dunn requiring welfare recipients to submit to drug tests stalled last year, but Ramsey is breathing new life into the concept, although he hasn’t backed specific legislation, yet. Similar programs around the country have faced legal challenges.

Gov. Bill Haslam and House Speaker Beth Harwell say they want to see the bottom line before they weigh in.

“What’s the cost, and who’s going to pay for it? So until you answer those, I think it’d be too early for me to say that,” Haslam told TNReport Monday when asked whether he supports drug testing any level of government beneficiaries. “It’s awful early. Let’s ask some of those questions. If it’s fair for folks receiving benefits, is it also fair for state employees, and what kind of cost you’re talking about?”

Alex Harris contributed to this report. 

State Rep. Tony Shipley said he plans to push for a House committee to subpoena the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s files in the recently concluded inquiry into legislative actions by Shipley and Rep. Dale Ford.

Shipley and Ford were subjects of a TBI probe into whether they had exerted improper influence over a state nursing board that had disciplined three nurses from their East Tennessee area. This week Davidson County District Attorney General Torry Johnson announced that he had found no evidence of any crime and would not pursue charges against the two lawmakers.

Shipley, R-Kingsport, said he would use the House Government Operations Committee, on which he serves as secretary, to seek the files. He would need the support of a majority of the members, and Shipley said he would try to enlist one of them to introduce the matter.

But lawyers for the committee cast doubt on the likelihood of getting the records. Legislative subpoenas are rare, they said, and with TBI pushback the matter could end up in court before any documents were released.

TBI files are among the most secretive documents in Tennessee.

They are exempt from the state’s Open Records Act, a fact which has drawn renewed attention of late, especially with regards to the TBI’s investigation of Richard Baumgartner, a disgraced and disbarred Knox County Criminal Court judge who was abusing drugs and engaging in other illegal activity while presiding over cases.

In the wake of TBI revelations that Knox County court employees and other judges, as well as prosecutors in the Knox County District Attorney General’s Office, may have witnessed Judge Baumgartner engaging in ethically suspect or illegal behavior and did nothing about it, the Knoxville News Sentinel editorialized in favor of the public gaining access to TBI files once an investigation is wrapped up.

“Lawmakers should show courage…and side with the public and its right to know about closed police investigations by eliminating TBI’s exemption from the Public Records Act,” the News Sentinel editors wrote last month.

However,  state law already gives committees from either chamber of the General Assembly the power to subpoena all government records. According to state law, “investigative records of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation shall be open to inspection by elected members of the general assembly if such inspection is directed by a duly adopted resolution of either house or of a standing or joint committee of either house.”

Once a committee obtained the files, Shipley said it would be his intention to make them open to the public.

“There’s nothing I do here that’s not completely aboveboard or open to the public,” Shipley said. “If I bring it to committee, at that point, I don’t have to call for anything. (It’s) wide open.”

Ford, R-Jonesborough, said he doesn’t care who sees the file, either.

“If you didn’t do anything wrong, why should you care if everything’s made public,” he said. “I couldn’t care less. But it better be the truth, I can tell you that.”

Shipley has turned his ire on Johnson, who said the lawmakers used “particularly heavy-handed” political pressure.

“I’m a huge supporter of the TBI. I’m a huge supporter of district attorneys. I’m a complete law and order kind of guy,” Shipley said. “But even in those organizations you can have jerks that get in there and mess with the constitution because they think they can. And they can’t.”

The TBI launched the investigation last June to determine if the two legislators and employees of the state’s Health Department had committed any crimes, including official misconduct and false reporting, and whether the lawmakers had improperly pressured the Nursing Board to reconsider its decision to discipline three nurse practitioners.

The nurses had been accused of over-prescribing medication at the Appalachian Medical Center in Johnson City, which has since been closed. Shipley and Ford through legislation attempted to shake up the nursing board and its oversight, and raised the specter of doing away with the board altogether. Ford had family ties to an employee and patient at the center.

The board eventually reversed its action against the nurses, though a TBI investigation into their actions remains open.

On Monday, Johnson announced that the state would not prosecute the two legislators. In a statement, he called the case one of “political hardball, but not political corruption.”

Shipley characterized the district attorney’s actions and criticism as a breach of the separation of powers, and the handling of the nurses’ case an “abortion of justice.”

“It is completely inappropriate for them to have stuck their hands into the legislative box,” Shipley said. “The DA made a statement: No criminality found. He should have stopped right there.

“His next comment was totally inappropriate: ‘Heavy-handed politics.’ Well, what was heavy-handed was the TBI’s DA-directed investigation that was blown from Mountain City to Memphis. That was heavy-handed.”

Shipley said he may initiate a legislative probe into where the allegations came from and whether charges could be filed against the individuals responsible for them.

He said the charges of official misconduct should have been seen as baseless from the beginning, because the three criteria for such a charge were impossible in his case. He said there couldn’t have been money or sex exchanged for a vote, because no vote was taken, and that no one’s employment could have been threatened, because he doesn’t have the power to fire anyone on the Nursing Board.

Gov. Bill Haslam recently announced he wants a review of Tennessee’s 22 state boards and commissions. In a statement outlining his 2012 legislative agenda released this week, Haslam expressed his desire to “eliminate duplicative functions and provide more accountability and oversight of these agencies.”

The Haslam administration wants to take a stab at cracking down on violent crimes and shrinking the recidivism rate by beefing up prison sentences, a task officials expect will cost taxpayers $6 million annually.

Gov. Bill Haslam is also asking lawmakers to adopt a comprehensive approach to tackling the state’s prescription drug problem by making it easier for law enforcement to track addicts and keep a better eye on ex-convicts by requiring the Department of Correction to take over supervision of parolees.

“While we see an improvement, Tennessee continues to have a violent crime rate that’s above the national average that none of us find acceptable,” the governor said on Capitol Hill Thursday.

The total price tag for the entire package of reforms could be higher, according to Safety Commissioner Bill Gibbons, who couldn’t provide specific cost tallies, but said expenses for the prescription drug and parolee reforms would be minimal. Attempts to reach agency officials for details were unsuccessful as of this posting.

The program would provide a “road map” which would take several years to fully implement. Going into 2012, officials want the Legislature to begin by beefing up punishment for repeat domestic violence offenders, gun-wielding ex-convicts and people involved in gang-related crimes.

“All three deal with areas that (district attorneys), police chiefs and sheriffs have been pushing for years,” said Gibbons. “We didn’t reinvent the wheel here. We listened to law enforcement and tried to act upon their recommendations.”

The administrative initiative would also relax punishment for non-violent drug offenders and send them to drug courts, which Gibbons said would eventually save the state $4 million annually.

The plan would also give law enforcement more tools for identifying and disciplining people who abuse prescription drugs, officials said.

The safety reforms are the product of the Governor’s Public Safety Subcabinet Working Group, a band of commissioners and administrators from 11 state agencies. The plan includes 11 objectives and 40 action steps.

Some of the ideas can be implemented by the administration while others will take legislative approval.

Republicans cleaned a lot of bills off their plate in their first year controlling the General Assembly and the governor’s office, but they built up a pile of bills they were saving for later.

Lawmakers say they plan to get down to business right away after returning to Nashville Jan. 10 in hopes of adjourning in late April to begin campaign season. But until then, they’ll have a roughly $30 billion budget to haggle over, new bills to debate and old ones to decide whether they’re worth passing before the election.

Guns on Campus, In Employee Parking Lots

Lawmakers talked about but never passed a number of gun bills proposed last year, including letting handgun carry permit holders lock their weapons inside their car while at work, HB2021, which made it to the House floor but never came up for a vote. Another bill, HB2016, would let college faculty and staff carry guns on campus, although that measure never made it out of committee. Legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle say they expect to see those issues introduced but probably sidelined this year. “Being an election year, I don’t see leadership letting that come to the surface,” said Sen. Bill Ketron, the Senate Republican Caucus Chairman from Murfreesboro.

Drug-Testing Unemployed, Welfare Recipients 

There’s a movement afoot to drug-test Tennesseans collecting public assistance. Two versions of the proposal were introduced early last year, SB48 and SB652, that would have focused on people collecting welfare. Both bills were immediately shelved in 2011, but Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey is breathing new life into the idea with an eye on people collecting unemployment benefits and worker’s compensation. “I don’t think, again, that we need to be supporting that lifestyle with government money. I’m very much for that and I think you’ll see that passed this session.”

Income Tax Ban

This bill may have been left behind last Spring, but it’s expected to pass come 2012. The Senate OK’d a resolution, SJR221, asking voters to clearly ban an income tax by rewriting a portion of the Constitution. The legislation was held back in the House on the last few days of session. Lawmakers expect it will be one of the first they take up come January, but tax reform advocates plan to continue fighting for an income tax in exchange for lower food taxes. Debate over this bill is far from over — it would need a two-thirds vote in the 2013-14 General Assembly to get on the ballot.

Illegal Immigration

Republican lawmakers rallied to copycat Arizona’s illegal immigration bill and require drivers license exams be taken in English, but those bills never moved. In the midst of debate, another immigration bill filed that session fell just under the radar. HB1379 would require that governments check for proof of citizenship before issuing entitlements like TennCare, food stamps or unemployment benefits. GOP leaders say they’ll pick up this one and run with it and probably leave the others behind. “We’ve always wanted to ensure Tennessee wasn’t a magnet for illegal aliens,” said Rep. Debra Maggart, House Republican Caucus Chairwoman.

Picking Judges

Lawmakers kicked around the idea of changing how judges are selected, contending the current practice of the governor selecting judges who are later subject to retention elections is not in line with the state Constitution. “I think almost everyone agrees that’s a bad idea. I just don’t think everyone’s agreed on what is a good idea, yet,” said House GOP Leader Gerald McCormick. Democrats generally side with the Supreme Court, which has upheld the current system. One bill that remains from last year, SJR183, would ask voters to constitutionalize merit-based appointments. Other proposals have since popped up, like SJR475 which would require changing the Constitution to require the Senate OK the governor’s appointees.

Democrat’s Job Bills

Although they’re outnumbered, Democrats plan to take another stab at passing a stack of jobs bills that never got out of committee last year, such as calling for a small business tax holiday and giving tax credits to new entreprenuers. “We’re going to try again,” said House Democrat Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley. “None of the jobs bills passed and none of them got out of committee but we’re going to have another go at it.” The same goes for Senate Democrats, said the chamber’s Democratic vice chairman, Andy Berke. “That’s really where we should begin 2012 in the legislature rather than most of the issues that have been named as priorities so far”

Wine in Supermarkets

This perennial bill doesn’t fall into any of the caucus’ priority lists but has become a staple piece of legislation to expect every year. SB316 seeks to allow certain retail food stores to sell wine instead of just beer. It would also let liquor stores sell items like cork screws and mixers. Last session, the bill never got out of committee. Advocates for wine in grocery stores say their new strategy is to convince the Legislature to let locals decide if they want wine in grocery stores through voter referendums, although legislative leaders say they haven’t heard any serious talk that the bill has momentum to pass this time around.