| The Caucus’ Women’s Day on the Hill and Legislative Breakfast will take place Tuesday, March 4. We are very fortunate to have BONE MCALLESTER NORTON PLLC as the breakfast sponsor. Their beautiful office is located on the 16th floor of the Nashville City Center, 511 Union Street and overlooks the Legislative Plaza. I hope you will make plans to join us for breakfast (7-8AM), as well as spend some time afterwards visiting members of our General Assembly.
Legislative energy thus far has been dedicated to drafting and filing legislation and starting to study the budget presented January 28th by Governor Bredesen. Now that the filing deadline for legislation is past, we anticipate that bills of interest to the Caucus will begin to appear more frequently on Senate and House committee and subcommittee calendars. A weekly calendar of every meeting set for the following week is released every Thursday.
In the House, all bills must go through a subcommittee prior to consideration by a full committee. Some bills, if they create or change an agency or department of state government or if they would use state or local funding, must go through multiple committees (in the House and the Senate) and subcommittees (mostly in the House).
Although the schedule for committees and subcommittees is fairly predictable for most of the session (same days and times each week), toward the end of the session some rules are suspended in order to begin to wrap up activity as efficiently as possible. That’s often when sponsors more urgently press controversial, expensive, or bogged down legislation.
Joint Custody/Equal Parenting
Although a similar bill was not approved in subcommittee in the House last year, two new joint custody bills have been filed this year. SB3717 (Tate)/HB2964 (Hardaway) and SB3859 (Ketron)/HB3655 (Fraley) would both establish a presumption that “equal parenting” is in the best interest of a child of divorcing or unmarried parents. In addition to the NWPC, the Tennessee Bar Association opposed the bills, and the Tennessee Judicial Council has expressed serious reservations about the concept.
Mandatory Paternity Tests
In another interesting development, two bills requiring paternity testing have been filed. SB3146 (Black)/HB2969 (Hardaway) requires paternity tests prior to a court’s custody decisions, and SB3717 (Tate)/HB2964 (Hardaway) requires paternity testing prior to listing a father on a birth certificate. Please note that neither of these bills have been analyzed by the Caucus at this point, so we do not have a position on either as of yet. I would welcome your opinion on these proposed paternity tests. Please email me at hollyspann@hotmail.com.
To see the complete list of bills tracked by the NWPC, including some that remain pending from 2007, you may go to the Caucus’ lobbying firm’s web site and link on “client reports.” www.smithharriscarr.com The caucus username is NWP (all CAPS); the password is 1004. Click on NWP when the list of available client reports comes up. (You may have to re-enter username and password a second time due to the security on the site.) You may also look up the complete text and current activity on any bill on the General Assembly website at www.legislature.state.tn.us.
Holly Spann - Vice President, Legistlation, TWPC
Debra Fish - Co-Chair, Legislation, NWPC
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