Legislative bill report as of February 7, 2020

The TFA has been reviewing some of the 1500 or so bills that have been filed for the 2020 legislative session. It appears about 60 new bills have been filed since last year’s legislative efforts ended. At the bottom of this page are the bill reports as of February 7, 2020 and the calendar report for the week of February 10.

There are clear patterns occurring and recurring with respect to the kinds of bills that have been filed. TFA has identified many that it supports, many that it opposes and some that it believes might be ok if amended.

At this time there are bills pending which could be used to enact constitutional carry in Tennessee and/or permitless concealed carry. But there are many bills that TFA opposes such as the two-three bills which appears to propose extreme risk protection order / “red flag” laws.

One word of caution in reading the bill list at this point. Many times bills are filed with broad “captions” or what appears to be harmless or useless purposes. These bills frequently are not and never were intended to be the “real” legislation. Instead these “caption” bills are just misdirection placeholders. These caption bills are also instrumental in keeping the true legislative objective from being known by the voters.

The problem is that typically, these “caption” bills are amended almost immediately in the committee or subcommittee system. But the problem is that these amendments are not posted on the state’s website. See, for example, HB0134. That bill was heard this week in the House “Constitutional Protections” subcommittee. If you check the bill’s page on the state website you will not see anything under the amendments tab. In fact, the amendments tab has this phrase “No amendments for HB0134.” But if you read the “code” on the bill’s history, you will see this notation: ” Rec for pass if am by s/c ref. to Judiciary ” which means “recommended for passage if amended by subcommittee referred to Judiciary committee”. You see, there was an amendment on the bill in the subcommittee and the subcommittee approved the bill as amended. You, the citizen, however, cannot find that amendment anywhere on the state’s website!

One of the recurring and biggest games that the legislature plays with the citizens is “hiding the ball” on the true objective of pending legislation. This is advanced by the intentional and perhaps fraudulent use of fiscal notes. It appears that the shenanigans is in full operation already this year!

The point of this discussion on caption bills is that you cannot and should not assume that any of the 60 bills on today’s report are what they appear to be. Some might look harmless and then turn into a nightmare. Some might look great and then, as happened with a bill in 2017, turn into a nightmare. The problem is with the lack of transparency and honesty in the amendment and bill filing systems and those problems lie at the feet not only of the sponsors but also with the committees, subcommittees and leadership.