Post by pavel on Mar 17, 2016 18:16:16 GMT -6
NASHVILLE — A state bill introduced with great fanfare in January to freeze tuition at Tennessee's public colleges and universities has suffered an obscure death in a House subcommittee.
The bill had the powerful backing of Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and had advanced through a unanimous vote of the Senate Education Committee, chaired by the bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville.
During her committee's hearing last month, Gresham presented an unusual slideshow of charts and graphics that sought to shift blame for large tuition increases over the last two decades away from state lawmakers — whose appropriations of taxpayer dollars have been cut in half as a share of the costs of educating a state college student— and toward what she called inflated salaries and staffing levels on the state's campuses.
The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, made a similar case — enhanced with slides showing large payouts by the University of Tennessee to settle various lawsuits against it — in the House education subcommittee on Wednesday. But his presentation failed to sway its members, who killed the bill on an unrecorded voice vote after an hour-long discussion.
Read more: www.commercialappeal.com/news/government/state/bills-to-freeze-tuition-at-colleges-universities-defeated-2e40a37b-dba6-326b-e053-0100007f0e35-372409861.html
The bill had the powerful backing of Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and had advanced through a unanimous vote of the Senate Education Committee, chaired by the bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville.
During her committee's hearing last month, Gresham presented an unusual slideshow of charts and graphics that sought to shift blame for large tuition increases over the last two decades away from state lawmakers — whose appropriations of taxpayer dollars have been cut in half as a share of the costs of educating a state college student— and toward what she called inflated salaries and staffing levels on the state's campuses.
The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, made a similar case — enhanced with slides showing large payouts by the University of Tennessee to settle various lawsuits against it — in the House education subcommittee on Wednesday. But his presentation failed to sway its members, who killed the bill on an unrecorded voice vote after an hour-long discussion.
Read more: www.commercialappeal.com/news/government/state/bills-to-freeze-tuition-at-colleges-universities-defeated-2e40a37b-dba6-326b-e053-0100007f0e35-372409861.html