Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Gary Humble of Tennessee Stands to the newsmaker line who revealed breaking news regarding the Tennessee General Assemblies change of plans for the emergency powers and mandate session.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by our very good friend, Gary Humble with Tennessee Stands. Good morning, Gary.
Humble: Good morning to you. Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: We wanted to see if you can give an interim report card to the Tennessee General Assembly.
Humble: Oh, boy.
Leahy: (Chuckles) Meeting for its third special session on COVID. What’s your take on what’s happening there?
Humble: It’s hard to say, man. I want to give him a C, but I’m kind of feeling like a D at the moment.
Leahy: You want to give them a C, but you’re feeling like a D. You are a hard taskmaster, Gary. Tell us what your criteria is here. (Laughs)
Humble: You have to be. My criteria really is that they were going to go in there and do what they said they were going to do. And probably the most egregious thing I think is this emergency.
The petition filed by the House to call for a special session and also was said by Speaker Sexton several times is that we were going to address these emergency powers. There was one bill, one representative, Deborah Moody’s House Bill 9029 that would have limited the governor’s authority in an emergency. What the bill said is that after 21 days the legislature would be required to renew the emergency.
Leahy: I like that idea. By the way, if you look into the dictionary, right for the word emergency, they almost always have a short time span attached to them. We’ve been in this emergency now for almost 20 months.
Humble: Yes. It’s hard to find a definition of an emergency that lasts that long. You are absolutely right. And also the bill said that his executive orders in an emergency could not restrict travel, could not shut down a business, and could not expand state funds without legislative approval. And that was it. Real simple. That should have passed with flying colors yet that bill got killed in the Senate.
Leahy: When you say, has that happened in the past couple of days?
Humble: That happened yesterday. It’s already done.
Leahy: Whoa. How did it get killed?
Humble: Well, wait till you hear this. The special session will be done today.
Leahy: It’s going to be done today.
Humble: Done today. Finished.
Leahy: What secret source do you have for this?
Humble: (Chuckles) Because I was there, brother. It will be done today. All of the bills that we really were hoping for and that we sort of put out on the website and asked people to support, most of those have already died in committee and have been sucked into this large omnibus bill.
What they’ve done is they’ve taken all the little things we’re trying to address, and they’ve created a new title and code. Title 14. And Title 14 and Tennessee code annotated will now take care of all these little code-related issues.
Leahy: That provision you talked about, the bill that died that would limit emergency powers of the governor, is that included in this omnibus?
Humble: It is not.
Leahy: That’s not good news.
Humble: Horrible news. No, they are not dealing with the emergency powers. There’s one other bill that I saw that right now, the governor can renew the emergency every 60 days. There’s a bill that changes it to 45 days. That just means he has to write more executive orders.
Leahy: There are no teeth to that is there?
Humble: No teeth. No, there’s nothing. There are no teeth to it. Now, we are not limiting emergency powers as of right now. The other big thing that I think you’ll want to know is in the omnibus bill we did pass that deals with masks and vaccines and employers.
They did deal with those issues, there is a section in the House bill. The interesting thing is, we’re about to read to you, this is in the House version of the omnibus bill.
Leahy: The omnibus bill has passed or is still under consideration?
Humble: The omnibus bill in the House has passed out of committee.
Leahy: Out of committee. It’s not gone to the floor vote yet.
Humble: That’s correct. But their version of the omnibus bill is heading to the floor. The Senate’s version should be coming out of committee this morning. And so in their floor session today, they will be determining which bill they’re going to conform to.
The version of the House bill that came out of the committee after they make all of these code regulations, Section 14-6-102 says exemptions due to potential loss of federal funding. Bear with me.
I’m going to read a short paragraph. In order to ensure the continuation of business, governmental, and school operations, so this covers businesses, schools, everybody in the midst of a rapidly changing federal regulation of these operations, a class of entities may be temporarily exempt from complying with any provision of this title when such an exemption is necessary to conform to federal law, rules or regulations. Here you go, as a condition to receipt of federal funds.
Leahy: Oh, dear.
Humble: Let me set this up for you. Joe Biden makes an executive order and says all schools in America must require masks. And if you don’t, you lose your federal dollars. This bill allows all of our schools now in Tennessee to apply for an exemption.
The Commissioner of Finance Administration may issue schools an exemption from this entire title of law so that they can obey the federal government in order to receive federal dollars. That’s what came out of the House committee. It’s incredible.
Leahy: Who favored that idea?
Humble: All I can tell you is Representative Andrew Former chaired that committee, and that’s what the committee passed out. Who favored it? Who wrote it? I don’t know. After it passed, we noted we had a meeting and notified several House members that really were not aware that was in there and they were appalled.
As I said, though, with not to set out massive alarm bells that is currently not in the Senate version of the bill. So it remains to be seen what the Senate is going to pass and then it remains to be seen what they will concur with on the floor. Which version.
Leahy: In the steps of the process now, the House version that came out of committee, does that go to the floor of the House now, or does it go to the Rules and Counter committee first?
Humble: I think first it goes to finance, which I think happened end of the day yesterday. And then it went to rules. And then I believe this morning, check the calendar, but the House floor sessions are this morning. You’ve got a House floor session this morning at 9:00 a.m. That is going to go on the floor this morning at 9:00 a.m.
Leahy: And do state representatives understand the very negative elements in that bill?
Humble: We were able to reach many of them and many of them do. So we’ll see what happens.
Leahy: What do you think is going to happen?
Humble: My gut tells me that the House bill is probably going to pass, as is the Senate has a floor session today at 12:30. And it’s not on the schedule yet.
But I’m guessing this afternoon, once those two floor sessions have happened, they’ll have to determine which bills they’re going to conform to. And they may form what’s called a conference committee. Yes.
Leahy: And so they’ll hash it out there. And whatever they hash out is probably going to be passed, I would guess.
Humble: Yeah. If there is a conference committee, whatever comes out of that committee is what’s going to be.
Leahy: Is this being rushed through?
Humble: Oh, 100 percent. The speculation was this was going to be two weeks and we were actually going to debate all of these issues. Look, we had Doctor Peter McCullough ready to come to testify if needed.
We had stories from all across the state. We had people that wanted to come share their stories before these committees. It looks like none of that is going to happen. They’re not debating any of these bills.
They had this omnibus bill ready to go. They killed all the little small bills we’ve been talking about and they’re going to do their thing. Boom! Done. Two days.
Leahy: If you were to sit down with speaker of the House, Cam Sexton right now, what would you tell him?
Humble: Sir, Tennessees are hurting. They wanted their voice heard. This is not the way to do it. This was an incredible opportunity for members of the General Assembly to take just a few days and listen to Tennesseeans and listen to their stories, listen to our experts and really just talk about and debate the issues and try to get some meaningful things done and do what you committed to doing in the call of the session (i.e. fixing these emergency powers). I think this was an incredible missed opportunity.
Leahy: Gary Humble with Tennessee Stands, thank you for that very insightful report and breaking news about what’s going on in the General Assembly. Thanks. And come back next week and give us the post mortem if you will.
Humble: You bet.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Tennessee Senate Chamber” by Terrance CC 3.0.
Just sent an email to my Representative and Senator calling them out on being a part of this sham. The citizens have been betrayed – again – by this bunch posing as conservatives. May God help us all.