Holiday Newsletter
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
COMMUNICATIONS
By mail, you have received a postcard listing important phone numbers for our State and County and secondly, you will receive my annual legislative survey will be in the mail after December 17th. I hope the first mail piece was informative and the second you will find useful in submitting your thoughts and feed back on issues relating to Tennessee Government. I have also just updated my web page. It was redesigned to help you stay in contact with me and locate information that is important to you. The address is still www.glencasada.com. I look forward to your thoughts on my communications with you.
106TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
The 106th legislature will convene on January 13th at 11 a.m.. With the Republicans gaining the majority in the House, I expect that the 50 Republicans in the House will elect Jason Mumpower as the first Republican Speaker of the House since 1968. If this happens, I will run for Majority Leader. This new position will allow me to serve Williamson County in a broader and more effective role. It will go without saying that Ron Ramsey will be re elected as Lt. Governor in the Senate.
LEGISLATIVE AGENDA
Some have joked that this is not the best time for Republicans to take charge of the Legislature since Tennessee is facing maybe its worst financial crisis since the great depression. I say there is no better time. My fellow Republican legislators and I intend to demonstrate that you CUT spending, NOT raise taxes in down economic times. There are few if any topics that will generate more interest or concern as the budget shortfall will in this next term.
There will be a few other topics that will generate interest in the General Assembly this year. One we will address early in the session will be the question of electing our supreme court judges via contested races, versus re-electing them by a “retention” vote.
Other issues that will be discussed are tort reform, education reform and illegal immigration. One of these is a general Tort reform bill. I think you will see a business friendly bill pass that will help attract business to our state and help us out of our current economic downturn. Another issue that will be addressed is Education reform.
I think we will see a bill that will try to increase access to charter schools for those students who attend failing schools. The intent is to give those students who only have access to failing schools an option. Illegal immigration will also be addressed in a limited form. Because of our budget shortfall and the limits that the federal government has put on states to address this issue, it will not be as comprehensive as I would like.
Finally, I hope to address the spending problems that we have in this state by making it harder to overspend. I will be pushing legislation which will require a 2/3 vote of the General Assembly instead of the current majority vote for the state budget to grow at a greater rate than the state’s economy. Our State spending has grown by nearly 13 billion dollars in the past 7 years. This is a 43% rate of growth while at the same time our state’s economy has grown at less than 30%.
I look forward to your feedback on my survey. If I can be of service, please contact my office. I still reserve Friday afternoons for one on one meetings with you in the district. Enjoy your holidays, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Glen Casada
