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JOIN INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS MAGAZINE AS WE CELEBRATE THE ANNUAL
AWARD WINNERS!
We’re hosting a breakfast and announcing the winners of CEO of the Year 2017. December 22, 2016-January 4, 2017
Doors will open at 7:15am and our program will begin at 8am.
FRIDAY,
JANUARY 27 AT
7:15AM
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN HARDIN HALL
Tickets available for purchase at www.InsideMemphisBusiness.com SPONSORED BY:
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vulnerable of these being overdue infrastructure work on increasingly inadequate and dilapidated state roadways. Governor Bill Haslam, who, with state transportation director John Schroer, went on a fruitless statewide tour in 2015 trying to drum up support for a state gasoline-tax increase, is almost certain to raise the idea of upping the gas tax when the General Assembly reconvenes in January. But the projected revenue windfall may actually undercut his hopes. Not only does all the windfall talk create a difficult atmosphere to talk about new taxes. There are also indications that the governor’s Republican party-mates in the GOP legislative super-majority see the dawning surplus as an excuse to dream up new tax cuts and eliminate existing ones — a double whammy that would sop up such financial gain as it actually materializes. Democratic legislators (five in the 33-member state Senate and 25 in the 99-strong state House of Representatives) are too few in number to do much about the matter, and even some members of the Republican majority are troubled. State Representative Ron Lollar (R-Bartlett) touched on the problem at a recent forum of the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) in Memphis, when he lamented that the ongoing elimination of the state’s Hall tax on interest and dividends — slated for staged reductions and final abolition over a five-year period — will mean the ultimate loss to financially struggling local governments of the fairly significant portion of the Hall tax proceeds that they are accustomed to getting annually. At that same NFIB meeting, state Senator Lee Harris of Memphis, leader of the Democratic minority in his chamber, pointed out another fiscally related conundrum that he thinks has escaped the consciousness of the GOP super-majority. In their categorical rejection of Haslam’s “Insure Tennessee” proposal to permit state acceptance of federal funding of as much as $1.5 billion annually for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Republican leaders like retiring state Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey always said their attitudes would likely be different under a Republican president, who would surely reapportion such funds as block grants for the states to dispose as they saw fit. Harris maintains that the new block grants would be converted from the previous A.C.A. outlays and could be extended only to those states that had already opted for the federal funding. The truth could be even harsher; with congressional Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump both having sworn to “repeal and replace Obamacare” as a first order of business in 2017, it is uncertain just how much federal bounty — if any at all — would actually be available for the states, in whatever form. Money is at the root of another pressing issue sure to be vented in the General Assembly. At the very moment that the state’s short-changed urban school districts, including the Shelby County Schools system, are entertaining a variety of legal actions to force the state to honor full-funding commitments to them under the Basic Education Program (BEP), word is that enough steam may have finally gathered among legislators to allow passage of long-deferred school voucher legislation that would re-route a significant proportion of the state education budget toward private institutions and out of public schools altogether. Under the circumstances, even a rumored bipartisan willingness among legislators to at least begin the consideration of medical-marijuana legislation may not be enough to ease such doldrums as continue to afflict the state’s population. — Jackson Baker
Food and Dining ...
Old Dominick For those keeping your eye on the Old Dominick Distillery, Alex Canale tells us, “We’re 100 percent, well, 99 percent, sure we’ll be open by late spring. We’ll definitely be open in 2017.” Old Dominick will sell bourbon, a nod to forebear Dominico Canale. There will be a continued on page 18 Old Dominick