The state legislature has its share of declining old men, well-intentioned rednecks and righing zealots. It also has some well-educated, hard-working members who are a little more difficult to pigeonhole, but it just lost one of those with Rep. Matt Kisber's announcement that he's not seeking reelection this fall.
Kisber has represented Jackson in the House since 1983. Five years ago, when John Bragg of Murfreesboro retired, Kisber, then 37, replaced him as chairman of the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee. Since then, Kisber has been the state representative who more often than not took the time to work through, write and sponsor difficult and complicated bills pertaining to businesses in Tennessee.
There was the landmark Columbia/HCA tax break, sponsored by Kisber and Sen. Jerry Cooper of McMinnville, which resulted in the return to Tennessee of the most important for-profit health care company on the planet. There was the massive rewrite of the state's workers' compensation program, which Kisber coordinated in 1996 and 1997 with then Sen. Bud Gilbert, a Knoxville Republican.
"It was a lot of hard work," says Gilbert, a Harvard Law School graduate and a likely Knoxville mayoral candidate next year. "But I'm pretty proud of what we did, because we were able to reduce the workers' compensation taxes that businesses paid while still increasing benefits for workers."
Kisber was also one of the forces behind the Jobs Tax Credit, under which companies get their franchise and excise taxes reduced if they move to Tennessee or expand existing Tennessee operations. There was also the Jobs Skills Fund, a program under which Tennessee companies upgrading or changing to more skilled operations are allowed to use unemployment trust money to teach job skills to workers. Many of Kisber's bills were mind-numbingly boring and tedious, but nonetheless necessary.
Kisber is one of at least 11 House members not running for reelection next year, but of all the departures, none are considered as important as his. "I'm sorry to see Matt leave," says Fred Harris, the interim head of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and a former neighbor of Kisber's in Jackson. "First of all, he's been there for so long that he has a cumulative amount of knowledge that few people have. But he has also been a real friend to economic development, and has helped the state remain competitive over the years."
Dave Goetz, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Business, says Kisber "has done more for economic development for this state than anyone I know and possibly more than many commissioners."
Despite the relative obscurity of many Kisber bills, he's scored a few points for Tennessee consumers. Three years ago, at the request of his wife Paige, Kisber wrote and sponsored a bill that created the Tennessee Regulatory Authority's "Do Not Call" list. To his surprise, the bill became the most popular legislation he ever sponsored. Today, 700,000 Tennessee households—about 35 percent of the state's population—have joined the list to avoid telemarketers.
But there has also been the occasional dog of a bill. Five years ago, Kisber was the House sponsor of the extremely controversial prison privatization initiative, which would have allowed the governor to farm out part or all of the state's prison system. Among the bill's supporters were Gov. Don Sundquist and Lt. Gov. John Wilder. Among the bill's lobbyists was Betty Anderson, wife of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. The bill never escaped committee, mainly because, since TennCare, state legislators have been hostile to the idea of privatizing anything else. (They still are, which is why the charter school bill fails every year.)
"I don't regret carrying the prison privatization bill, because I thought then and I still think now that the very idea of competition forced the Department of Correction to think about doing things better and more efficiently," Kisber says now. "But I admit that the bill could have been handled better."
The headaches that Kisber got from the prison privatization bill were nothing compared to the budget problems of the last few years. Kisber knows as much as anyone in Tennessee about the shortcomings of Tennessee's sales-tax-dependent structure. (In fact, he's the chairman of a special committee set up by the National Conference of State Legislatures to find a way to derive sales tax from Internet sales.)
But during his last campaign two years ago, Kisber signed a pledge saying he wouldn't vote for an income tax. Today, Kisber gives a spiritless defense of that tactic. "It was the summer of 2000, and things were different than they are today," he says. "The country was economically strong, and it didn't look like sales taxes would go down as much as they have. And the political reality is that in my district, there was overwhelming opposition to an income tax, and if I was going to be able to come back and do all that I could do on behalf of my community, I thought I had to do it."
To put Kisber's pledge in context, it should be pointed out that as a result of a court ruling that ordered a majority black district to be carved out in West Tennessee, Kisber's district became predominantly suburban and Republican. Kisber narrowly won reelection, with 52 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Tennessee Democrat Al Gore only got about 36 percent of the vote in that same district. "A lot of people in my district voted for a Republican president and a Democratic House member, and if they hadn't done that I wouldn't be here," he says.
Today, Kisber won't go so far as to say he regrets signing the pledge. But he admits it's made it difficult for him in his position as chairman of the House Finance Committee. "It had an effect that I didn't fully comprehend at the time," he says. "It minimized my ability to be a broker and arbiter of different ideas and tax plans."
Kisber says family concerns had a lot to do with his decision not to run. He and his wife Paige have a 23-month-old son and they hope to have another child. "I've been gone a lot the last two years, and having two kids is a lot harder than having one," he says.
Nevertheless, the state legislature may not have seen the last of Kisber, who is tight with former Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen. Although Kisber says he hasn't discussed the subject with the gubernatorial candidate, the outgoing lawmaker is a possible candidate for finance or economic development commissioner if Bredesen is elected. (Under the state constitution, lawmakers can't resign from the General Assembly to take an executive branch position. If there's some plan for a place in the Bredesen administration, that could also explain Kisber's not running for reelection.)
