WPLN News Archive; State of the State (Anita) 2 1 00; News Archive 1/6/00-2/8/00

last year demel undone sunk with surprise legislate to us with a proposal to revise business taxes during his state of the state address it was an effort which quickly died this year governor simplest did not hide any of his guards his staff briefed lawmakers and reporters about his budget prior to his state of the state address in that address he maintained the need for tax reform and stuck to his corporate three point seven five percent flat income tax some places the state needs to invest not divest itself for the future and that's why he's asking for five hundred million dollars of new money for such things as education healthcare courts and more the budget this both physically and morally responsible one that meets the baseline is if they come and invest in the kind of forward looking and this is that i believe are necessary to keep our state competitive his proposed budget calls for more money in early childhood development more for k through twelve education a calls for a three percent pay raise for state employees and a three percent raise for teachers plus one hundred forty million dollars more for higher education just to reinvest in education

it's at its lowest point in twenty five years when adjusted for inflation are forced into expenditures decreased there were fifteen hundred hours from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety eight the greatest the corner of any state and our region and while undergraduate tuition fees at public colleges universities continue to increased from a price of citizens out of a college education we can afford to state forty eight the nation in the number of adults with high school education the governor even use the success of the tennessee titans as an example of why the legislature should invest more money in the states just emerged we will have missed the opportunity to invest in the types of people criticized it in the end though we did what we knew was good for tennessee and we made a wise investor imagine if you will all the opportunities were a mess if we fail to make equally

wise choices this year when it comes to education teachers healthcare our state employee public safety and ask you again walk us debut at usa today the governor maintains that the best way to invest in the future and fairly distribute the tax burden is what the flat tax on income native about my vision for the future of their arrival the oil i refuse to accept that pronounced i think it's time for testing of the speaker and the help me fight for arguing if the future of tennessee is not worth fighting for what is that lawmakers seem to be a skeptical bun shop perino prolong of patience for any of the governor's initiatives after all many of them say the budget shortfall the governor has been talking about for months is really his investment shortfall center joined

graves of gallatin yeah i think that he wants to plan and that is creating a deficit that we're hearing now the legislature to look at their budget and it's a realistically and we won't be able to hear them at the next year ago an amazing racist and chris is going to have trouble with this funding mechanism she says there is no support in context i think anything legislators were more opposed to it than they've been in the past and i think legislators want to see another alternative bid forward and so far that has wide like the scenes look at some of the sales tax exemptions i'm very much like to see is that we give away two point seven billion dollars so they may generate revenue that we would make investments certainly they will make a house or car grazing they're going to spend the next several days dissecting the budget to decide what if anything the state will invest in and

how it will pay for for national public radio i'm anita bog road