Shipley

When a Dallas man who was in town for his company’s national sales meeting had a seizure at a downtown hotel Wednesday evening, a state legislator took charge of the situation until the Nashville Fire Department arrived.

Max Carter, a vice president of Franklin-based Passport Health Communications Inc., said state Rep. Tony Shipley, a Kingsport Republican with training as a paramedic, may have saved the life of a 34-year-old Passport employee. Carter wrote in an email that he and two other employees managed to catch their co-worker before he hit the ground, but they weren’t sure what else to do besides calling 911 and turning him on his side so he wouldn’t choke.

“As a result of Representative Shipley’s quick action what could have been a truly horrible situation was averted,” Carter wrote. “Moreover, in a time when many healthcare professionals, and just people in general, are afraid to assist in similar situations due to fear of lawsuits, etc, I thought Mr. Shipley’s actions should be noted. I have no idea what his training or background is but he was relaying vitals to 911 like a pro and telling us exactly what to do.”

 
Carter, who lives in Robertson County, wrote that he didn’t know anything about Shipley, who “quickly dismissed” Carter’s thanks, said he was happy to help and offered his business card.

Shipley, who said he was drinking with friends at the hotel’s bar when he saw the man on the ground, called his assistance “no big deal.” Without his medical “tools,” he said, he went into “first aid mode.”

“It was obvious what it was,” he said. “It’s just a matter of keeping the airway open until he goes through the seizure.”

Shipley, 58, is retired from the United States Air Force and said he has been a paramedic since 1998 or 1999. He’s in his second term in the House.

Shipley

When a Dallas man who was in town for his company’s national sales meeting had a seizure at a downtown hotel Wednesday evening, a state legislator took charge of the situation until the Nashville Fire Department arrived.

Max Carter, a vice president of Franklin-based Passport Health Communications Inc., said state Rep. Tony Shipley, a Kingsport Republican with training as a paramedic, may have saved the life of a 34-year-old Passport employee. Carter wrote in an email that he and two other employees managed to catch their co-worker before he hit the ground, but they weren’t sure what else to do besides calling 911 and turning him on his side so he wouldn’t choke.

“As a result of Representative Shipley’s quick action what could have been a truly horrible situation was averted,” Carter wrote. “Moreover, in a time when many healthcare professionals, and just people in general, are afraid to assist in similar situations due to fear of lawsuits, etc, I thought Mr. Shipley’s actions should be noted. I have no idea what his training or background is but he was relaying vitals to 911 like a pro and telling us exactly what to do.”

 
Carter, who lives in Robertson County, wrote that he didn’t know anything about Shipley, who “quickly dismissed” Carter’s thanks, said he was happy to help and offered his business card.

Shipley, who said he was drinking with friends at the hotel’s bar when he saw the man on the ground, called his assistance “no big deal.” Without his medical “tools,” he said, he went into “first aid mode.”

“It was obvious what it was,” he said. “It’s just a matter of keeping the airway open until he goes through the seizure.”

Shipley, 58, is retired from the United States Air Force and said he has been a paramedic since 1998 or 1999. He’s in his second term in the House.

Most of the action at the Capitol this week has been in committees, but the state Senate took a very important action this week — it added Cocke County to the 2009 state law that allows “micro-distilleries,” the modern term for moonshine stills, in Tennessee.

Thirty-five counties were covered in the initial law, which has fostered a boom in legalized moonshining. But not Cocke County, even if it is practically synonymous in some parts with illicit alcohol. There’s even a bar (now abandoned) on the state line that did a brisk trade back in the day when Tennessee’s drinking age was three years lower than North Carolina’s, and the route between the county seat, Newport, and Asheville could have easily served as backdrop for a scene in “Thunder Road.”

Lawmakers made subtle reference to Cocke County’s heritage on the Senate floor Thursday. The measure‘s sponsor, Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, presented it as an economic development bill that would create jobs in Cocke County.

Sen. Roy Herron, D-Dresden, dryly quibbled with that characterization, forcing Ketron to acknowledge that revenuers would also see collections go up if Cocke County moonshine were legalized.

Ketron added that local officials are behind the measure, and it’s pretty easy to see why. The government’s blessing allows Cocke County micro-distillers to dust off old moonshine recipes that presumably haven’t been put to use in years and legally sell their wares in trendy bars down the mountain in Knoxville and Asheville.

Demand is sure to be as high as ever.

A subcommittee in the state House of Representatives could take up legislation Wednesday afternoon banning unauthorized camping on state property, in what could be the first step toward lawmakers’ evicting the Occupy Nashville protest above them.

House Bill 2638 would make it a misdemeanor to set  up residency on public land without permission, a change in state law that would presumably give Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration the legal authority to move in on the Occupy Nashville movement again.

The bill appears as the 26th item on a lengthy agenda for the House Judiciary subcommittee — behind other such potentially controversial items as a measure letting nuclear security officers use deadly force and a bill to make it illegal to give undocumented immigrants a ride — so it’s not clear whether it’ll actually be discussed or not. But Occupy Nashville seems to be gearing up to let their displeasure with the plan be known.

This afternoon, the organization is circulating a “secret” amendment signed by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Eric Watson, R-Cleveland. The amendment drops a provision that unauthorized campers would have to pay for any damages, but it also increases the penalty and gives police the power to seize property from campers. (The amendment looks like it’s legit, but the claim that it was drafted in “secret” is debatable. It’s safe to say that Watson didn’t write the measure the same way Occupy Nashville writes its rules — by gathering volunteers in a corner of the plaza and workshopping a proposal until everyone is satisfied.)

If the measure does get out of subcommittee today, it still has a ways to go before it makes it to floor votes. At a minimum, the full House Judiciary Committee has to approve it, and it has to come up in the Senate.

And after it makes it to law, it’s unclear what would happen next. The courts criticized the Haslam administration’s first attempt to remove Occupy Nashville as making rules up after a protest was already under way. They might view a law passed to stop an ongoing protest in much the same way.

Plus, Haslam hasn’t said much about the legislative effort. In the past, he’s said he wants to follow the executive branch’s existing rule-making procedures to deal with the issue.

Senate Bill 3600 may not even be a serious proposal. (It opens five titles of the Tennessee code, which suggests it’s just a placeholder for something else.) And even if it is serious, I understand that for the vision-impaired this is probably a good thing.

But I can’t help but find something amusing about new legislation sponsored by Nashville Sen. Joe Haynes and Rep. Mike Turner that  would require the steps in all public buildings to be edged with two-inch thick black and yellow tape.

Is this the best solution, to mark the stairs in all the state’s government buildings like a Stryper concert? (Thank you, Tennessean photo archives, for having that picture on hand.)

Let’s just hope this gets vetted in committee so lawmakers don’t follow it to its logical conclusion – like, say, painting the hallways lime green.

Reacting to a successful move by the Nashville Predators to bring in millions of state dollars – an initiative Metro officials said they weren’t aware of – Mayor Karl Dean’s administration is now pursuing legislation that would place the money under tighter city controls.

The administration’s statehouse move comes as Dean and the Predators begin to renegotiate portions of the NHL franchise’s arena lease with the city. Dean has said he plans to reduce Metro’s subsidy of the Predators, which is worth an estimated $7.8 million this fiscal year.

The new state legislation, sponsored by Sen. Thelma Harper, would take revenues from the state portion of the sales tax collected at non-hockey events at Bridgestone Arena, as well as the $2,500-per-game privilege tax paid by visiting hockey players, and put those funds in the hands of the Metro Sports Authority. But the legislation is just a placeholder “caption bill” at this point, and an equivalent bill has not been filed in the House yet.

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said the administration hasn’t discussed the details of the proposed change with the Predators yet. He said the city “needed to get a bill filed” before the General Assembly’s session got much further along.

The Predators and their sister company, Powers Management, which operates the arena under contract with Metro, would still be able to use the state money. But the arrangement being proposed – similar to one in Memphis – could offer more transparency for taxpayers. The sports authority, whose members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by Metro Council, is the Predators’ landlord at the city-owned arena.

Under the existing arrangement, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau, which has a contract with Metro to be the city’s marketing arm, distributes the state revenues to the Predators and Powers. The NHL franchise and the arena manager wrote to the CVB almost a year ago seeking payments totaling nearly $3.75 million.

The CVB has said it wasn’t aware of the state legislation that created the pass-through mechanism until after it had been approved, at which point the Predators notified the visitors bureau of its new role.

Gerry Helper, a Predators spokesman, said the proposed change would allow for “greater oversight.”

“This is designed really to make it a little more efficient in terms of the flow of the state incentives,” Helper said today. “We’ve been in conversations with Metro about the lease in general, and we’re aware of this element.”

Dean and the Predators agreed to various lease incentives after a mostly local ownership group agreed to buy the team and work to keep it in Nashville just as the mayor was taking office in 2007. Powers Management and the Predators have received a number of accolades in recent years for their work to bring more concerts and other non-hockey events to Bridgestone Arena.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign released an updated list of its top fund raisers today, and five Nashville men are still on it.

Leading the way is attorney Charles Robert Bone, who has raised between $200,000 and $500,000 – the second-highest range – for the campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

In the $100,000-200,000 bracket are Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Chip Forrester, real estate executive Bill Freeman and state party treasurer David Garrison, also an attorney.

Also on the list is venture capitalist Andrew Byrd, who has raised between $50,000 and $100,000 and hosted a fund raiser that Vice President Joe Biden attended last fall.

No one from any other part of Tennessee made the list, which does not provide specific amounts raised by each bundler. And no one from any part of Tennessee is in the most elite range of bundlers, the more than 60 men and women – including movie moguls Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein and Vogue magazine’s editor, Anna Wintour – who have raised $500,000 or more.

A representative for the American Association of People with Disabilities visited the Capitol Tuesday to complain that the state’s new voter identification law is unfair to the disabled because it raises hurdles to their casting their ballots in person.

“The state, counties and federal government have spent a lot of money making polling places accessible,” said Jim Dickson, vice president of organizing and civic engagement for the Washington-based organization. “Voting is an amazing experience and it is wrong — wrong — and it is mean-spirited to place a photo ID barrier between a citizen with a disability and a voting booth.”

Opponents of the state’s new law requiring voters to show a picture ID at the polls have named the disabled as one of the groups that could be adversely affected by it. Because many disabled people do not drive, they are less likely to have a photo ID, and they would find it especially difficult to go to a driver license center to get a state-issued government ID, foes of the law say.

Yet state lawmakers have not introduced any measures that would lighten the voter ID requirement for the disabled, said Mary Mancini, executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action, a Nashville-based group that has been campaigning for the law’s repeal.

Supporters of the law say that because many other forms of ID are acceptable at the polls, the law is no more onerous than policies requiring a photo ID to cash a check or buy alcohol. They also say voters can cast their ballots absentee if they do not have an ID and cannot get one.

Dickson, who is blind, said the latter argument is unfair to people like him.

“I have to give up a secret ballot if I’m going to vote absentee,” he said.

“Once my wife was marking my ballot … and she said to me, ‘Jim, I know you love me. Now I know you trust me because you think I’m marking this ballot for that idiot.’

“It’s funny, but it also means that for people with disabilities to vote absentee, we’re never going to be sure that our vote is marked the way we want it.”

Updated Feb. 1 at 9:15 a.m.

Update: The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Steve Southerland, took the bill off the calendar during Wednesday morning’s Senate session. Southerland made the move at the request of the TBI, which he said did not realize he planned to bring the bill to the floor at the start of the legislative year.

“They said they didn’t have time to look at it yet,” he said after Wednesday’s session. “They had a year to look at it, but I’ll give them another week or so.”

The vote has not yet been rescheduled.

Original post: The state Senate is scheduled to take up a bill Wednesday morning that would waive background checks for gun purchases by people who already have a permit to carry a handgun in public.

Senate Bill 306, a holdover from last year sponsored by Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, would exempt the more than 300,000 Tennesseans who have a current permit to carry a gun in public from the standard background check performed at the time they purchase a gun. To avoid the check, gun purchasers would need to have received or renewed their carry permit within the last five years. State law requires permits to be renewed every four.

The measure garnered little attention as it moved through the Senate last year, receiving only one vote against it in two committee hearings. The biggest question it has faced was the impact on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s budget; the TBI receives a $10 fee on all background checks on purchases.

That issue was resolved last May by amending the bill to increase the fees for getting or renewing a handgun permit by $6 and giving that portion to the TBI.

Proponents argue that a background check isn’t necessary at the time of purchase because handgun carry permit holders already have to go through a background check. Sen. Beverly Marrero, D-Memphis, who cast the lone vote against the bill, argued it could allow some felons to slip through the cracks by presenting a carry permit issued prior to their conviction.

The measure is yet to be taken up in the House. Its sponsor in that chamber is state Rep. David Hawk, R-Greeneville.

We’ll be liveblogging Gov. Bill Haslam’s second State of the State address at 6 p.m.

5:50 p.m. Starting the preliminary actions for the State of the State. Senate and House going into joint session.

6 p.m. Haslam should be in the chamber shortly. Copies of the speech distributed to the press don’t show any surprises. Message will be state is doing better, but still needs to cut costs.

6:02 p.m. Haslam now at the podium.

6:03 p.m. Haslam: “Is the current state of our state good enough? I think the answer is no. I think we can believe in better.”

6:04 p.m. First applause line. This is pretty much the theme of the speech.

6:06 p.m. Haslam: Role of government to provide services at lowest possible price. Hard to spend public money as carefully as our own.

6:07 p.m. Reviewing achievements of previous years — tort reform, new tenure laws, allowing lottery scholarships to be used for summer school.

6:08 p.m. Amazon deal is example of efforts to create jobs.

6:10 p.m. Hiring rules limit pool of talent available for state agencies. “We have to transform the way we do government. With limited state and federal dollars to work with, Tennesseans expect us to do more with less.”

6:11 p.m. Haslam: Change to hiring system not an indictment of workforce. “This is about an antiquated system that limits who we can hire and limit growth opportunities for current employees.”

6:14 p.m. In the recognizing good Tennesseans section of speech — officer shot in line of duty, corrections officer, firefighter who has served in the Air National Guard, 30-year mental health employee. Says these are examples of people state should be hiring.

6:16 p.m. Haslam to increase state salaries by 2.5 percent, plus $30 million for salary survey.

6:22 p.m. Haslam announces will fund MTSU science building, new science facility at UT-Knoxville, new patient diagnostic center at UTHSC in Memphis.

6:23 p.m. Also planning money for other college buildings, including Nashville State Community College.

6:24 p.m. Estate tax cut got a “whoop” from somewhere in the back of the room.

6:26 p.m. Cutting the tax on groceries — not quite so warm a reception. Mike Turner and two Memphis members give it a standing ovation.

6:27 p.m. Haslam: Top to bottom review promised in inauguration led to millions of dollars in savings from restructuring organizations.

6:28 p.m. Final report on top-to-bottom review will be released in February.

6:30 p.m. Haslam talking about plans to streamline THEC, parole reviews. Also crime package.

6:31 p.m. Moving non-violent offenders from prisons to drug court gets an unplanned ovation.

6:32 p.m. Pivoting from crime package to attracting jobs. (Kind of a weird transition.) Biggest problem is lack of qualified workers.

6:34 p.m. Wrapping up with list of accomplishments on education — Race to the Top, Complete College Program. Says state should get a waiver from No Child Left Behind.

6:36 p.m. Puts in a plug for the SCORE review to new tenure rules that’s now under way.

6:37 p.m. Haslam: “Americans haven’t lost faith in America. They’ve lost faith in those who lead it.”

6:38 p.m. End of speech. Closes with reference to theme of believing in Tennessee and promise to cut the cost of government and improve efficiency.