Committee advances bills on DEI and election rules, rejects Shelby County sales-tax jail referendum

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee State and Local Government Committee met April 8 and advanced several bills with wide-ranging impact on public hiring, local election procedures and local revenue measures, while voting down a Shelby County sales-tax referendum to finance a proposed new jail.

The most contested items were two bills that would limit or ban government and public-education uses of “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs and offices, a bill that would require partisan nominations for many local offices to be conducted by primary rather than party caucus or convention, and a state preemption bill that gives the attorney general a formalized path to challenge local policies alleged to conflict with state law. Committee members also heard extended public testimony on a Shelby County proposal to put a temporary sales-tax increase to a local referendum to fund a jail. The committee reported several other noncontroversial measures to later committees.

Why it matters: the DEI measures and the election-format bill would reshape how local governments, school systems and higher-education institutions hire staff and how political parties nominate candidates for county-level partisan offices; the preemption bill would give state officials an explicit enforcement path against local policy actions; the Shelby County vote would have set a model for using local referenda to finance major capital projects.

DEI measures: sponsor frames bill as anti-discrimination; opponents call it ‘‘dismantling’’ efforts

Representative Mayberry sponsored House Bill 6 22, which he described as prohibiting state, county, municipal and public higher-education institutions from making hiring decisions “based on diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Mayberry told the committee, "My goal here is to stop discrimination. Again, discrimination in the past is wrong. Discrimination today is wrong despite the the rights of the characteristics." (Representative Mayberry)

Opponents said the bills would roll back existing recruiting and retention practices and risk harming efforts to broaden the candidate pool for public jobs. Representative K. Chisholm argued the effect would be to “go back to only including those people that we already know,” saying the practical consequence could be a narrower recruiting pool. Representative Miller and others also pressed the sponsor for definitions…