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Legislative discord found
Several reasons cited for bills passing one chamber, not other

By Tom Humphrey
Monday, June 23, 2008

NASHVILLE - A day before adjournment of the 105th General Assembly, state Rep. Henry Fincher stood on the House floor and called upon colleagues to "send a message to our friends across the hall" in the Senate.

The Cookeville Democrat urged House passage of his bill dealing with illegal immigrants, including a ban on their attendance at state colleges and universities, even though the measure was dead in a Senate committee.

The message, he said, would be that House members were serious about combating illegal immigration while senators were "all rhetoric."

After some debate - including defeat of an amendment by Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, to forbid issuing birth certificates to children of illegal immigrants - the House went along with his request in a bipartisan vote of 85-5.

Fincher had tried a similar move in the waning hours of the 2007 legislative session, winning 93-0 approval of an illegal immigration bill that was dead in the Senate.

That accounts for two of the 57 bills passed by the House during the two-year run of the 105th General Assembly that failed to pass the Senate, according to data assembled by Tennessee Legislative Service, which is operated by M. Lee Smith Publishers.

The House, however, refused to go along with almost twice as many bills approved by the Senate during the two-year period, the review shows. The 122 bills approved by the Senate but failing in the House included eight measures aimed at illegal immigration.

Those Senate-passed measures left dead in the House ranged from a proposal this year to forbid "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants in Tennessee to a measure last year that would restrict use of languages other than English in taking driver's license tests.

The total of 179 bills that passed one chamber or the other, but not both, came during a session when a record 4,280 bills were introduced. As of Friday, with a handful of bills still awaiting action by Gov. Phil Bredesen, 1,266 had become law.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, the Republican who presides over the Senate, and House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, the Democrat who presides over the House, both said they had not seen such a House-Senate comparison in failure of bills previously.

Both said partisanship enters the picture on some bills but that other factors likely are more important.

"After 40 years of no Republican leadership, there were a few pent-up issues, things we passed just because we could pass (even though likely to fail in the House)," Ramsey said.

As examples, he cited "Second Amendment rights" legislation that would allow people with handgun carry permits to take their weapons in more places and a bill requiring voters to present photo identification.

At the same time, Ramsey said, there are cases of individual legislators having a bill that amounts to a pet project and "committee members and committee chairmen have a hard time of saying no," even if the measure is less than desirable as public policy.

"I'll be honest with you. That may have happened a few times," he said. "People will think, 'We can pass that because it's not going to pass the House.'

"The House does the same thing, like with the (state-level) minimum wage," he said. "We're a bunch of nice guys, don't want to hurt someone's feelings, and will let somebody else do the dirty work."

While senators once were fond of declaring their chamber "the more deliberative body," Naifeh said he does not believe that to be the case nowadays. The failure of more Senate-passed bills in the House than vice versa may be an indicator of that, he said.

"The House has become very deliberative, from subcommittees through the committees and on to the floor," he said.

That was true, Naifeh suggested, even on bills that did pass, such as a measure pushed by AT&T to authorize statewide cable television franchises.

The AT&T bill cleared the Senate committee system last year with only minor alterations from its original version, he said, but stalled in the House.

This year, weeks of negotiations between the opposing sides were overseen by Naifeh before a compromise bill emerged and was approved by the House. The Senate then approved the House version with just one vote.

"Is that being deliberative?" said Naifeh. "I'm not being critical. I'm sure they felt the House had done such a good job they didn't need to go back through the (Senate) committee system."

The House may inherently be more prone to kill bills than the Senate simply because it has three times as many members, 99 to 33, to voice objections. Also, the House has subcommittees that can kill bills. The Senate does not.

"We cannot move as fast as the Senate," said Naifeh, adding that he appreciated Ramsey for recognizing that situation.

In recent years, the House has maintained a rule requiring that any bill that results in spending of state funds - regardless of the amount - must win approval of the Finance Committee. In the Senate, bills costing less than $100,000 can avoid that possible obstacle.

Both Naifeh and Ramsey said they see no danger of gridlock becoming a problem at the Legislature, whether for partisanship or other reasons.

"There are enough level-headed people on both sides of the aisle to keep that from happening," said Naifeh.

Ramsey said that on the matter of illegal immigration legislation, Senate leaders decided about the midpoint of the 2008 session that a moratorium might be in order.

Naifeh "agreed that was a good idea," Ramsey said.

"We didn't want to get so far down the road, especially in getting punitive on employers, that it would hurt our status of being a pro-business kind of state," Ramsey said.

"Sometimes, you get into these hot-button issues - whatever they may be, say crime or ethics - and you kind of go overboard and just wonder if you really should be doing that," he said.

Tom Humphrey may be reached at 615-242-7782.

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http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jun/2 ... ord-found/

Romans 5:8