Gov. Bill Lee flanked by House and Senate leaders at the State of the State earlier this week
Capitol Republicans were frustrated this week by the news that Nashville and Shelby County would sue the state over Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account plan, which passed the legislature last year amid opposition from Tennessee’s two largest counties.
As Nashville Mayor John Cooper was about to announce the long-awaited lawsuit, Senate leaders criticized the move.
“It's puzzling that they would sue when we're giving them more money to educate their kids,” says Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin.
Under the program, which Lee hopes to implement in time for the next school year, qualifying students in Nashville and Shelby County would get more than $7,000 in public school money to pay for private school tuition and related costs. During the first three years that the student was gone from their local public school, the state is supposed to reimburse the district for the lost funding. No Nashville lawmaker supported the bill.
“It's rather wasteful to use the county money or city money to continually sue the state on very minor issues and then come back and ask us for things in addition in other areas,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) says. “I don't like the adversarial position that it puts the state and the city or county in. I would — rather than the city or county suing us — that they spend money on fixing their problem of failing schools.”
In announcing the lawsuit to the Metro School Board on Thursday, Cooper called the voucher law unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, argues that the law violates the state constitution because it only affects Nashville and Shelby County, as opposed to the entire state. During the contentious process that led to the bill’s passage, some lawmakers specifically pegged their yes votes to the exclusion of their own counties from the plan.
“The bottom line is, Tennessee’s voucher law was intentionally designed to impact just two counties based on politics, not policy,” says Metro legal director Bob Cooper, a former state attorney general, in a release. “We believe a complete vetting in chancery court will demonstrate that the law violates our state constitution and undermines our local government’s ability to deliver adequately funded public education.”
Nashville is joined in the lawsuit by Shelby County Schools. Lee, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn and the Tennessee Department of Education are named as defendants. Lee's office declined to comment.
Senate Republicans argued that the program does not unfairly target the two communities because it is a pilot program that, if successful, could expand to other districts. But Lee has specifically said that he has no plans to grow the program beyond Memphis and Nashville.
Senate Democrats praised the litigation, calling a legislative effort to repeal the bill unlikely to succeed.
“The affected districts have to do what they have to do, and a lawsuit is probably the best way to do it,” says Memphis Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari.
“The constitution doesn't let us come together as a legislature just to tinker with one town or another,” adds Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro of Nashville. “We're supposed to pass laws that have general application across the state.”
