Tennessee State Senator Mike Faulk is taking some serious heat for his decision to pass on a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 682, a proposed amendment to the Tennessee Constitution by outgoing Senator Mae Beavers to require a 2/3rds vote of both the House and the Senate to break what in Tennessee is commonly called the Copeland cap-the restraint on spending in Tennessee law which is meant to say that State spending cannot exceed the estimated growth in Tennessee's State economy. The three passes, or abstentions, in the Senate Judiciary Committee guaranteed that Beavers' proposal would be defeated. Some conservatives are saying that Mike Faulk doesn't seem too interested in putting serious restraints on State spending.
For Mike Faulk's part, he says that isn't true and that his concern about the Beavers amendment is rooted in a deeper constitutional principle-the dangers of extreme super-majorities undermining the budget process for partisan reasons. "If this amendment passes, 12 Senators could conceivably hold up the passage of a State budget for partisan reasons while the other 120 members of the General Assembly favor the budget," Faulk told The Examiner over the weekend, "I'm not prepared to openly support an approach that could allow that to happen." Faulk said he believes his position on the Beavers amendment is being misinterpreted by some of his fellow conservatives. "I am not opposed to a super-majority being needed to pass the budget when it is clear that spending is going to exceed economic growth, but the idea of any budget being held up by 12 people just doesn't work." Senator Faulk says that he supports the principle behind the Copeland cap-that spending should not exceed the growth of Tennessee's economy, and might be willing to support an amendment that is worded more clearly and has a smaller super-majority requirement.
The Tennessee Constitution requires that all proposed constitutional amendments be voted on in two separate sittings of the General Assembly. The first time an amendment may pass with simple majority votes in both Houses. The second vote a proposed amendment must pass with a 2/3rds vote of both Houses of the General Assembly, and then placed before the voters for ratification in the same year that a Governor is elected.
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