NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tempers flared Thursday in the Tennessee House over Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposal to boost transportation funding through the state’s first fuel tax hike in decades.
An emotional debate erupted over an unrelated bill to dedicate state sales taxes collected at a proposed Major League Soccer stadium in Nashville to city’s sports authority.
State Rep. Jerry Sexton of Bean Station accused his fellow Republicans of a double standard for supporting the stadium bill but opposing efforts to earmark a small portion of sales tax collections to the highway fund so the state can avoid raising taxes on gasoline and diesel.
“I just think it’s a hypocrisy that we can do certain things whenever we want to, whenever it’s agreed to by certain people,” Sexton said. “But if you’re not in a certain class down here, you don’t get to do that. I rest my case.”
Republican Rep. Gerald McCormick of Chattanooga took issue with Sexton’s comments.
“We need to be careful about questioning people’s motives and using words like hypocrisy and questioning peoples’ integrity,” he said.
McCormick suggested that supporters of the alternative to the gas tax hike should be more concerned with building support for the proposal among fellow lawmakers than attacking their colleagues.
“You’ve got to get 50 votes in the House and 17 in the Senate, and you can do it,” McCormick said. “This idea that we’re not allowed to is not true.”
Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. While the gas tax measure has advanced without major incident in the Senate, it has exposed fault lines among the factions in the House GOP.
Democrats, who are accustomed to seeing debate curtailed and their proposed amendments rejected, said that some Republicans are now getting a taste of their own medicine.
Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, called it “Republican on Republican crime,” and singled out Sexton as the most aggrieved GOP member.
“They’ve created a beast in Rep. Sexton,” Parkinson said. “This week they created that monster in him. We as Democrats were used to that treatment, not having our constituents’ voices heard. Now they did it to one of their own.”
Several opponents of the gas tax proposal have also taken issue with the inclusion of tax relief measures aimed at veterans, the disabled and the elderly.
House Majority Leader Glen Casada, R-Franklin, is officially the lead sponsor of Haslam’s transportation proposal, but has handed off control of the measure to others. He tried Thursday to suspend House rules so he could fast-track a separate bill addressing only the tax relief for veterans.
Casada said he made the effort “in order not to be like Washington D.C., where you take a bill and decorate it in order to try to get it through.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the House to lead,” Casada declared.
The chamber wasn’t convinced, however. Democratic Rep. Joe Pitts of Clarksville, who has his own veterans tax relief bill, said the other measure shouldn’t be given “most-favored-bill status.”
Casada ultimately withdrew his motion, which would have required a two-thirds vote by the chamber.
Floor votes on Haslam’s transportation funding bill aren’t expected for at least two weeks, should they clear their final committee stops in both chambers.
Meanwhile, the soccer stadium bill that set off the original contretemps over the gas tax bill on Thursday, was sent to the governor’s desk on an 87-2 vote.
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