TN House, Senate remain deadlocked despite Gov. Bill Lee’s push to break the stalemate

Gridlock between House and Senate leadership continued as the Tennessee legislature began the second week of the special session.

The week started much like the last one ended: the House continued passing bills into Monday evening, while the Senate once again adjourned without taking up legislation.

Before they left town at an impasse last week, Senators passed just three bills, and a fourth to fund the session, tabling dozens of others and closing committees in an effort to end the session and go home. Several senators communicated last week that they felt showing up for the session at all was a compromise – saying that House members are “lucky to get the three bills we gave them.”

Only one bill has been passed by both chambers after more than a week of work: a measure that would require the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations to create a new, updated report on the state of human trafficking in Tennessee. Representatives from the TBI told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that the agency already reports the data to be contained in the new report. The bill is now headed to Gov. Bill Lee's desk.

Monday evening, after the Senate again adjourned business without considering any legislation, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, declared the Senate effectively closed.

“The Senate has completed its business for the extraordinary session,” Johnson said.

Meanwhile, despite the Senate's ongoing refusal to consider more legislation, the House passed a full calendar of bills on Monday. Moving forward, leadership does not seem willing to consider adjournment without the Senate taking up quite a bit more legislation.

“I'd like to send a clear message to the Senate that we're going to pass legislation over here,” Rep. Lowell Russell, R-Vonore, said when presenting a bill to centralize Tennessee's court document systems. “If they'd like to keep up, that's fine.”

The standoff could last a while. Johnson said that he hopes the session does not stretch far into September.

“I hope that the House will realize that we’re serious about having conversations about their legislation between now and January,” Johnson said. “There’s some really good bills that the House has brought forward. We just don’t think there is time during a special session which lasts a few days to properly vet those bills.”

Gov. Lee steps in, with no effect — so far

Lee on Monday stepped into negotiations for the first time during the special session he called, asking the Senate to take up 12 bills that committees tabled last week, in an effort to broker a compromise with House leadership.

Included in the package of 12 are a proposal from House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, to authorize blended sentencing for juvenile offenders that could send 16-year-old defendants to adult prison, a bill to create a centralized court records system to ensure the state’s background check database remains consistently updated, and a controversial measure to make autopsies of child victims of violent crimes exempt from state public records law.

Many of the bills have already passed the House, while others are on the calendar this week.

But for the Senate to take up the bills, as Lee is asking, Senate committee chairmen would have to re-open committees. Last week, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, indicated committee chairs are not inclined to do so.

After both chambers adjourned for the day, Lee spokesperson Elizabeth Lane Johnson said the governor has been “in constant communication with members of the General Assembly,” and “continues to offer his full support” as the session continues.

“Most recently, our office provided a list of bills to the speakers of both chambers to help facilitate conversations in the days ahead,” Johnson said.

Senate leaders deny receiving governor’s list

But the governor's message may not have been received.

McNally and Leader Johnson both denied having received any communication from the governor regarding the list of 12 bills that Lee backs.

“We actually found out about the [governor’s] list on Twitter,” McNally said. “That was news to us.”

Johnson acknowledged that conversations with the House and governor’s office had occurred over the weekend

“I think there were some calls from House members to encourage us to take up additional bills, but the Senate has completed its business,” he said.

Lee's spokesperson said the governor “has worked with legislators for months” on bills for the session. Lee met with more than 100 lawmakers for coffee at the executive residence, and organized more meetings behind closed doors.

“We’re encouraged that several of the Governor’s proposals are moving in both chambers,” Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the spokesperson, said, without noting three of the governor's bills that senators have scuttled.

Throughout the special session that he called, Lee has primarily been in his office at the state Capitol, but has not made his presence publicly felt, communicating in official statements through spokespeople.

Lee traveled to Jackson and Dyersburg on Monday, as House and Senate leaders remained at an impasse, and did not mention his efforts when asked about the special session by reporters during an event in Jackson.

“We see that with both houses, both chambers, there’s differences to work through, as there generally are with every session,” Lee told reporters Monday. “I am very hopeful for what this conversation means to the people of Tennessee because overall it elevates the conversation of public safety.”

Democrats say they want to work

House Minority Leader Karen Camper, D-Memphis, said she anticipates continued conversation between legislative leaders – particularly on the spending bill to fund the special session, which each chamber has passed separate versions of.

“The people still want us to be here, so that we could speak on their behalf,” Camper told reporters. “I’m sure there’ll be some back and forth on the legislation.”

As the Senate began its short session on Monday, Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, recognized spectators in the gallery, who held signs calling for better gun safety laws. Those in attendance stood as Campbell read the names of the six people who died in the Covenant shooting.

“We are on track to break a mass shooting record in Tennessee this year. The previous record was 19 – we’ve already had 16 this year,” Campbell said. “We have a gun problem in this state. It is an emergency. It is a public health emergency.”

Legislation Gov. Bill Lee is now pushing

• House Bill 7002 — Sponsored by Lamberth and Senate Speaker Pro Tem Ferrell Haile, R-Gallatin, the bill would require public, private, charter, and church-related schools to develop safety response procedures for how students, teachers, and staff should respond when a fire alarm is activated outside of a scheduled fire drill, distinguishing whether the emergency is a fire, inclement weather, or an active shooter situation.

• House Bill 7003 — This bill, sponsored by Lamberth, would expand a 2021 law to allow victims of aggravated stalking and especially aggravated stalking to seek a lifetime order of protection.

• House Bill 7007 — This proposal, by Lamberth and Bulso, would specify that autopsy reports for minor victims of violent crime are not public documents, but that a parent or legal guardian of the minor victim may consent to their release, as long as the parent is not a suspect in investigations of the minor's death.

• House Bill 7072 — This bill, by Rep. Mark White, R-Germantown, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, directs the Administrative Office of the Courts to develop a centralized system of case document management, filing, and electronic payment methods, for state and local court public case data.

• House Bill 7073 — This bill, by Sexton, would require juvenile courts to impose a blended sentence for a juvenile adjudicated delinquent for certain offenses.

• House Bill 7063 — This bill, by Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, would allow public and charter schools to hire law enforcement officers retired from federal, state, or local agencies to serve as school resource officers, and requires school districts to adopt policies to govern such hires.

• House Bill 7023 — This proposal, by Cepicky, would authorize law enforcement agencies to assign police officers to serve as school resource officers at schools during regular school hours and special events, even when the school district does not have a memorandum of understanding with the law enforcement agency.

• House Bill 7034 — This bill, by Sexton, would heighten penalties for stalking, aggravated stalking, and violating restraining orders for domestic abuse based on stalking, and require mental health assessments for defendants convicted of stalking offenses.

• House Bill 7008 — This proposal, by Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville, would require mental health professionals and behavioral analysts to warn identified victims or groups if they determine that a patient has made an actual threat of bodily harm or intends to commit harm.

• House Bill 7016— This proposal, by Haile and Rep. Mark Cochran, R-Englewood, would make it a felony offense to recklessly threaten an act of mass violence, and require defendants charged with threatening an act of mass violence to undergo a mental health evaluation before being released on bail.

• House Bill 7071 — This bill, by Sexton, requires the TBI to submit a report on the number of mass shootings that occur in Tennessee to state leaders by Jan. 1.

• House Bill 7027 — This bill, by Lamberth, would require the state to pay for costs of court-ordered mental health evaluation and treatment for criminal defendants charged with a misdemeanor who are believed to be incompetent to stand trial, or who may have lacked mental capacity at the time of the offense.

Melissa Brown in Nashville and Sarah Best in Jackson contributed to this report.

Reach reporter Vivian Jones at vjones@tennessean.com or on X or Threads at @Vivian_E_Jones. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TN special session: House, Senate deadlocked as Lee tries to intervene