State Senator Mark Pody (R-Lebanon) told listeners on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy that legislative timelines could be impacted after lawmakers were sent home for the week due to severe winter weather. Pody added that the new bill filing deadline could be extended, but it currently stands on February 1.
The Wilson County-area state senator also offered an update on his newly introduced school safety measure and noted that its funding would be included in the current budget.
Pody also confirmed that the possible constitutional issue concerning out-of-state companies threatening legal action over the franchise excise tax is being studied and added that the fiscal fallout may cause some programs to be delayed by a year.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: 12:05 p.m., we are broadcasting live from our studios in downtown Nashville. We are delighted to welcome to our newsmaker line, right now, our very good friend, State Senator Mark Pody from Wilson County and parts of Davidson County.
Good morning, Senator Pody.
Mark Pody: Good afternoon, buddy. It’s a great day. The snow is out there, and people are enjoying a day off!
Michael Patrick Leahy: So you’ve got a snow week for the Tennessee General Assembly. Has that ever happened before that you can recall?
Mark Pody: No, I think this is the first time since I’ve been there. You know, we’ve closed a day or two before, but this is the first time it’s gone the whole week.
However, it’s not stopped me from continuing to meeting with constituents and doing things on the phone and trying to get legislation lined up for introduction yet this month.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Do you think this one-week delay will have any impact on some of the major bills that are, you know, important bills that are under consideration in this Tennessee General Assembly?
Is this a lost week or not so much?
Mark Pody: Not so much because there’s no deadline that we have to be out, so we could extend being in there a little bit longer, which is fine. The only question we have is right now we have until the end of the month or actually February 1st to introduce any new legislation.
And if that’s not extended, then we’ve only got just a couple of weeks to file any bills that we want to have heard this year.
Michael Patrick Leahy: That’s an interesting point. Do you think you might get a one-week extension because of this snow week when you’re not in session?
Mark Pody: There’s some that have asked for that.
However, I’ve got everything I need done on my end, and if it stopped it for the current deadline, I would be okay. But I don’t know if all my colleagues are in that same position. The other thing they could do, Michael, is file what they call a “caption bill,” and I’m not sure if everybody in the audience is aware of exactly what that means.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Why don’t you tell us?
Mark Pody: All right. So a “caption bill” would mean that if I wanted to file a piece of legislation – for example, for TDOT for our roads – there’s a portion in the code, that caption, that’s portioned in, it’s called the TCA – Tennessee Code Annotated.
We would open up that caption of the law and say, ‘I’m going to be putting a bill in underneath that portion of the law.’ And that’s a very broad thing. The reason I don’t like doing a lot of captions is sometimes people use them as, I don’t want to say a sneaky way or an underhanded way, but people don’t really know what the real bill is going to be sometimes until committee, when they file an amendment.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, when you were here in-studio – you were here last month – you talked about a bill you were just about to propose – a school safety bill, which is kind of interesting, would give every teacher kind of like a lanyard with three different buttons that they could press depending upon the level of emergency.
Have you introduced that bill, and what do you think its prospects are?
Mark Pody: Yes, we have introduced it, and I think the prospects are exceedingly great that it’s going to pass. And one of the things that we’re doing is, it is strictly voluntary. There’s no mandate that anybody has to wear that lanyard.
Nowhere am I trying to say that a teacher, for example, if a teacher says, ‘I really don’t feel comfortable with that.’ We’re not trying to say that they have to wear it. So for those teachers that aren’t comfortable wearing it, they don’t have to, but for those teachers that want it, we want to make it available for them.
Michael, if I were to look at it in kind of like a cafeteria-style for the funding, you know, right now, we passed a major bill for school safety, and we put like $40 million in, and we said to the school systems, you can pick and choose some of the different options that you want and just use part of that $40 million.
Some schools have said, ‘We want to make better door locks;’ or ‘We want to make better alarm systems;’ or ‘We want to maybe even have bulletproof glass.’
This is just one of the options I want to put in there on that menu of cafeteria. So, it’s not even if no school even says I want it, there’s no cost to the state.
But it’s just an option if school systems want it; they can have it.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Yeah, and the idea is, it would be a lanyard that has three buttons on it. And the buttons escalate the level of problem.
Mark Pody: That’s exactly right.
So Michael, you’ve got a great memory because the first button is going to be if there’s a disciplinary action going on with an individual student and it would just go – it’s not going to 911 or anything like that – it would just stay within the school system and go to the SRO officer as well as the principal. And they would say, ‘Hey, we’re having an issue with a student in this class. I might need somebody to come and substitute temporarily,’ so they can continue teaching that class while they deal with that student.
Or they might need a little more help from somebody to take that student out and let that teacher go on teaching the rest of the class. But it would then make it where it would be recorded to the principal’s office and they would be able to actually see that video of what’s going on. So if they wanted to go to the parents and say to the parents, you know, ‘Hey, here’s what your child is doing and we need some help with preventing this behavior from happening again.’
It is all closed because they’re minor. So it’s not open to the public, you know, somebody in the – and there’s federal laws that deal with this – so nobody can come and say, ‘I want to see that video of that one child.’ They’re underage, so we protected that.
But the second button would be, you know what if there’s a medical emergency going on or there’s a fire. When they hit the button, it still is going to go to the principal and the SRO, but it’ll also go to 911.
So immediately, the 911 response can come back in and deal with that situation, whether it be medical. They can get the ambulance or fire or whatever; it’s going to be instantly going to 911.
But the third button is a button we would hope we would never have to use, and that would be if there was, for example, an active shooter.
And if that teacher hit that button because of an active shooter, that technology, it’s going to be the same as like the ring door technology where law enforcement would instantly see what is going on, what is the picture of that shooter, what kind of weapons they have, who’s in that classroom and its GPS tracked.
So they would know right where that teacher is, whether they’re in their homeroom, classroom, in the cafeteria, art room, outside, wherever – law enforcement would know exactly what’s going on and what they’re dealing with, and how they can come in and address that situation instantly.
Michael Patrick Leahy: In the month since you were here last time and talked about that, there has been, in the state of Iowa a shooting incident where a 17 year old kid killed an 11 year old kid, and now we saw the principal who tried to stop it has died of his injuries.
You know, I thought of you and your bill. I wonder what would have happened had that school in Iowa had your system at that time.
Mark Pody: I don’t know the exact details, but it would have instantly helped law enforcement know that it was that person, that 17-year-old, what was going on.
And the faster we can get the right people to help react to that situation the better. So whether it’s going to be – if it has to be a fire truck, if it has to be law enforcement, whatever the situation is – this system’s going to help get the right people to address the situation faster.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, you’re a fiscally prudent guy.
There is a story out there and I think it’s got a lot of legs. I’ve talked to State Senator Joey Hensley about this.
In a nutshell, there is an expectation among many of the members of the Tennessee General Assembly and the governor that an obscure 1932 law on the franchise excise tax may have an unconstitutional component to it.
Out-of-state companies who have offices here are threatening to sue the state – they haven’t sued them yet. I’m told that many people in Tennessee believe that there’s a $400 million a year shortfall. And a refund back for three years up to $1.2 billion that maybe do these companies. The governor apparently is considering a bill to address this franchise excise tax problem going forward.
Have you heard about this and what are your thoughts?
Mark Pody: Well, if it is going to be ruled that our current tax system is unconstitutional, we definitely want to address it and make it right as quick as we can. You know, right now our budget doesn’t have a lot of extra surplus or revenues coming in.
We’re meeting everything that’s an expectation, but our growth isn’t what we’re used to. So that would mean that we have to really tighten our belts to make sure that whatever we’re doing to address that we don’t have to raise taxes, we don’t have to cut services, another area.
So that would mean that any kind of new programs or systems might have to be delayed for a year. And the last thing that we just talked about – the lanyard – that’s already pretty much in the budget, that’s already been allocated, so I would hope that that would stay.
Michael Patrick Leahy: But you can confirm then, though, that this potential $400 million a year shortfall over a constitutional issue surrounding the franchise excise tax, you’ve heard the talk about that, and we are on point when we discuss it, is that right?
Mark Pody: That’s correct. I know that – and I don’t know the exact number, so I can’t confirm the exact, what, the $400 billion. I knew it was a large number, I didn’t know how much, but I have heard and been informed about the fact that our franchise excise taxes need to be addressed.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, when you come back, Mark Pody, State Senator from Wilson County, and Davidson County – you guys have a lot to do.
Mark Pody: Yeah, we absolutely do. Now, I’m going to tell you that there was one other thing that’s happening to Davidson County and that was Tennessee State University, there was a number out there that’s saying that we hadn’t paid them. That number isn’t correct either.
For example, that was $1.2 billion. So I just want to say that just because there’s a big number out there doesn’t necessarily make it totally correct.
Michael Patrick Leahy: State Senator Mark Pody, come on in next time you’re downtown. Thanks for joining us today.
Mark Pody: Thank you, Michael.
Michael Patrick Leahy: All right. When we come back, Stewart Parks, J6 defendant will be our guest back after this.
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