More effective and efficient government is a laudable goal, but many of the TEAM Act’s proposals would work against that.

By Jeanne Richardson
Special to Viewpoint

The treatment of government employees has generated controversy over the past year in many statehouses across the nation. Now, with Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposal to overhaul Tennessee’s civil service system by passage of the Tennessee Excellence, Accountability and Management (TEAM) Act of 2012, the issue has entered the forefront of politics in our state.

I applaud the governor and his staff for wanting government to be more effective and efficient. That is a laudable goal that all citizens should hope for. However, some of the proposals in the TEAM Act legislation (HB2384 and SB2246) are ill conceived.

I am particularly interested in this topic because of both my education and work experience. I began my professional career in 1971 with a job as a Child Protective Services worker for state government. I was required to investigate reports of child abuse and neglect, make recommendations about the children and their families, and sometimes in the worst circumstances, remove children from their families. There is no other position in my professional career that has been more important than providing for the safety of our children.

My knowledge of the public sector and how it works was vastly enhanced in 1980, when I added a master’s degree in public administration to my degree in social work. The curriculum included personnel administration, public finance, government bureaucracy, comparative political systems, and the role government plays in our society. Most importantly, I learned that the services performed by public employees are the backbone of our country. People who are lucky enough to be public servants should be proud, and never let politicians, the public or anyone else convince them that what they do is not essential for a free and prosperous society.

If the goal is really both the effectiveness and efficiency of government work, the focus should be on maintaining a properly trained workforce that serves the public needs in an efficacious and customer-friendly manner. Further, we should make wise use of the investment the state has made in its employees by keeping the best and the brightest of them.

The TEAM Act does not achieve these goals. Instead, it would virtually eliminate all incentives for people to become state employees, dedicated to the needs of all.

The civil service system was created decades ago to prevent any elected official from detrimentally influencing the work that state employees do for the citizens of this state. The services that these employees provide should be available without ties to any political party or elected leader. But if the TEAM Act becomes law, the administration will be allowed to hire and fire who they wish with very little oversight by the people of Tennessee. State employment will become about who you know instead of what you know.

The governor’s proposal establishes performance as the key criteria in setting salaries. However, it does not define performance or merit criteria.

Government needs to set a good example for private-sector companies in rewarding employees for good work and for their years of dedication to serving the public. We must offer good benefits to stay comparable to the private sector and enable the state to recruit the best and the brightest.

The governor’s legislative proposals include a raise for state employees of 2.5 percent, while the cost of living index has risen 3 percent this year. (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics) For four of the last five years there have been no raises for state employees.

I think we should focus on a decent wage for governmental employees. Balancing the public budget by cutting public employee wages is never a good idea. It results in double taxation for the employees. The state should not pretend to our citizens that we can give services that we cannot afford and expect those performing these services to pay for them. If the state continues to balance the budget by suppressing wages, we will end up with poorly paid and poorly equipped state employees and more importantly, a public that is unhappy with inadequate services.

Another issue the state contends with on an ongoing basis is privatization as a means to increasing effectiveness and efficiency. Research does not, in fact, indicate that privatization does either of these things. However, when state officials can show that privatization is a better approach in a particular circumstance, we should offer some safeguards for the public employees who are affected and who have performed meritoriously over the years. These safeguards could include, but not limited to, contract language that employees be given special hiring consideration and that they not be adversely affected by decreases in wages so that the private entity can make more profit.

We would probably all agree that we have been fortunate in our country in having some great public servants who had led us to a great quality of life in Tennessee. Let’s make sure that we keep such employees in the future.

Rep. Jeanne Richardson of Memphis is a Democrat who represents District 89 in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

Please join me and my family for a fundraiser/get together at my home, 797 N. Evergreen, this Sunday, January 9th starting at 3pm.

As you may know, State Representatives and Senators are prohibited from fundraising during session, so this is my last opportunity to do so until session ends.

There is no minimum suggested donation, so please don’t let any post-holiday budget crunch stop you from coming. I want to see my friends and supporters before I head off to Nashville for the beginning of session.

Thank you for your love, kindness, and support. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.

Sincerely,

Representative Jeanne Richardson
House District 89

Mayor A C Wharton says Memphis’ high poverty rate and low level of financial literacy make the city a target for scams aimed at homeowners faced with foreclosure.

Perhaps he was too polite to mention the Tennessee General Assembly, which has resisted efforts to curb predatory lending practices at almost every opportunity.

Just last April, for example, the House subcommittee on utilities and banking buried a package of bills sponsored by Memphis Democrats Johnnie Turner and Jeanne Richardson aimed at abuses by the title pledge, payday and mortgage loan industries.

With little help coming from the legislature, Memphis has had to take action on its own to protect vulnerable consumers from underhanded tactics.

A federal lawsuit filed by the city alleges that Wells Fargo Bank has targeted debt-ridden African-Americans with refinancing deals that too often trigger foreclosures.

Last week Wharton announced a new program in which citizens will become better informed about risky loan modification and foreclosure-prevention offers.

The effort is being spearheaded by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Neighborworks America and Fannie Mae. Its website, preventloanscams.org, has tips on how to avoid being scammed and other information on the topic.

And the Memphis Housing Counseling Network is taking calls about scam operators at 725-8361.

As encouraging as these developments are, it is still disappointing to see so little action being taken on the state and federal level.

That’s where real teeth could be put into anti-predatory lending schemes if industry lobbyists didn’t have pit-bull grips on so many legislators.

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Last spring, state Sen. Beverly Marrero and state Rep. Jeanne Richardson, both Democrats from Midtown Memphis, introduced a bill in the General Assembly, HB2563/SB2415, that, with the help of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, would establish the Old Forest State Natural Area.

In response, city officials began drafting a proposal for presentation to the City Council that, with the help of the Land Trust for Tennessee, would establish a conservation easement covering the forest and perhaps more of Overton Park.

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Since 1996, 14 states — most of them in the West — have legalized marijuana for medical use. In California and Colorado, where medical pot was approved by ballot initiatives rather than legislation, laws are fairly lax. Patients are prescribed medical marijuana for anything from cancer and HIV to anxiety or a bum knee.

Tennessee’s model is strict by comparison. If passed, qualifying patients would need to be diagnosed with specific serious illnesses, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV or AIDS, and Hepatitis C. Consideration also would be given to people with severe nausea, seizures, wasting syndrome, and other chronic conditions. Those approved for the program would be issued an identification card.

“It’s very tightly controlled in terms of the growing, the production, the processing, and the distribution,” Richardson said. “In crafting the bill, we tried to avoid all of the obvious abuses of California and Colorado. Those places are now passing bills to regulate after the fact. It really was sort of the wild, wild West.”

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A bill to ban the sale of sham documents known as “international driver’s licenses” awaits the signature of Gov. Phil Bredesen to become law.

The state Senate approved the bill 31-0 on March 15 and the House approved it 97-0 on May 5. Passage was final Monday when the Senate concurred with slight wording changes the House made.

“I think everyone on both sides of the aisle realized that this is the right thing to do to protect people from being taken advantage of,” said State Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, who sponsored the bill after reading news coverage of the issue last year in The Commercial Appeal.

Republicans, Democrats and advocacy groups for immigrants all supported the ban of the cards and booklets, which storefront operations sell to Hispanic newcomers.

The documents are worthless, but some advertisements in Spanish-language media throughout the region have claimed that they give immigrants the right to drive.

Other ads stop short of making that claim, and state that the documents are translations of driver’s licenses from the person’s home country.

But the bill’s House sponsor, Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis, said only two agencies in the United States are authorized to issue international driving permits: AAA and the American Automobile Touring Alliance.

Richardson said she’s happy to see the bill pass.

“It’s good for people who are being preyed upon by people who don’t have their best interest at heart,” she said.

The sham documents are especially appealing to illegal immigrants, who can’t obtain legal driver’s licenses in Tennessee.

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Over the past century, the greatest threat to the forest and open space of Overton Park has been the expansion of the Memphis Zoo. We have lost 50 of the park’s original 200 acres of forest. As recently as two years ago, the Memphis Zoo chose to clear-cut four acres of Overton Park’s old-growth forest, without public notice, to build the Teton Trek exhibit.

Citizens to Preserve Overton Park does not fault the Memphis Zoo for wanting to grow and improve. But its growth should not come at the expense of an irreplaceable 10,000-year-old forest ecosystem. We think our city deserves to have a healthy zoo and a healthy forest.

That is why we are asking the Memphis Zoo to join us in supporting the Old Forest State Natural Area bill (SB 2415 and HB 2563) that was recently introduced in the Tennessee legislature by two of Memphis’ Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Beverly Marrero and Rep. Jeanne Richardson.

If passed, the bill would legally protect the 150-acre old-growth forest of Overton Park from inappropriate development under the provisions of the Natural Areas Preservation Act of 1971.

This bill does not limit any of the public uses — such as walking, running, biking and bird-watching — that are currently allowed at Overton Park.

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Update: See Also Memphis Flyer – Forest for the Trees

The Tennessee state Senate voted 31-0 this week to ban the sale of “international driver’s licenses,” which are sham documents sold to immigrants in storefront operations around the region.

“I am very happy that the Senate has taken this step toward helping out the immigrant population in Tennessee,” said the bill’s sponsor, State Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown. He said he learned about the licenses from articles in The Commercial Appeal last year.

The bill passed Monday as part of the Senate’s consent calendar, which is for non-controversial items.

To become law, the measure must also pass the state House of Representatives and receive Gov. Phil Bredesen’s signature.

In the House, the bill hasn’t advanced beyond the subcommittee level. Sponsor Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis, says she plans to speak with a representative of a Hispanic community group before taking it further.

“I want to make sure that it doesn’t have some secondary effect that hurts the immigrant population,” she said.

Advertisements for the international driver’s license, or licencia internacional, appear in Hispanic newspapers around the region. The authentic-looking cards and booklets are issued by groups with names like “The International Automobile Driver’s Clan.”

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For years, Sharon Harper went to a well-known tax preparer, with storefronts all around town, to have her taxes prepared.

Last year, she spent $389 to have her taxes done, and that wasn’t even to get a rapid refund anticipation loan, the worst practice of the predatory lending industry that focuses on the poor and uninformed. Her refund didn’t come for two weeks.

The preparer told Harper she had 15 years of experience, but couldn’t seem to answer Harper’s questions. As for planning for next year, the preparer had no advice at all.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program again this year is offering free tax return preparation help to low- and moderate-income Memphians. In this 2007 photo, Sheneda Porter (left) got assistance with her tax return from volunteer Karen Smith at the VITA office in Macy’s in Southland Mall.
“I felt like I was just someone in there they didn’t care about and they just wanted my money,” said Harper, who is married and works at a uniform company.

Not so this year, when Harper followed the advice of a friend and got her taxes done for free, through the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, or VITA.

Harper spent less than two hours at the VITA site in Southland Mall — a fraction of the six or so hours she used to spend at her commercial preparer.

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It will be even less of an excuse if legislation proposed by Richardson and a cadre of other Tennessee lawmakers is passed.

Richardson, a Memphis Democrat, is introducing a package of five related bills to address usurious practices, although none deals with refund anticipation loans directly. The one she has the most hope for is HB 3113, which would charge payday lenders a $2,500 fee.

The money would go toward “a special financial literacy trust fund earmarked for the sole purpose of generating revenue to provide funds for the promotion of teaching all citizens within this state the basics about financial education.”

Already, Tennessee is one of a few states that mandate financial education in high school, and if passed, HB 3113 could spread the knowledge to adults.

“I came up here wanting to do something about it and when I started getting into it, it started getting more and more complicated,” Richardson said.

For example, she learned that payday loans aren’t loans at all, under Tennessee law, but “early presentments,” and thus not regulated by legislation directed at lenders.

And she learned that low-dollar loans are hard to get, especially by the low-income households that need them most. Payday lenders fill a niche that traditional banking institutions don’t — you can get a quick $500 to get the car fixed, or deal with some emergency.

HB 3512 would encourage credit unions whose customers are mostly state employees to make low-fee, low-dollar ($500 and under) loans available to their customers.

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See also:
Editorial: Rough road for loan limits – Commercial Appeal

Though “sexual orientation” was added to the state hate crimes law in 2001, Richardson introduced a bill last February to enhance the law with protections for transgender people.

“One of my colleagues actually said to me, ‘I don’t like [expletive] queers,’” Richardson told the panel. “I’ve been a lifelong Midtowner and downtowner and I haven’t heard those kinds of comments about gay people in years. But they’re alive and well.”

If the bill makes it out of the House, Marrero will have to convince her colleagues in the Senate to pass it as well.

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Richardson encouraged those who support adding transgender protections to state law to contact their representatives.

“Don’t make it easy for people to do the wrong thing,” Richardson said. “The more people who contact them about this issue, the more likely it is to pass.”

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