Sexton: Senate Limiting Ability To Get Work Done During Special Session

Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton says after a week of special session it seems as if the Senate wants to do nothing.

Sexton said the House voted to kill the Red Flag Law bill and the Senate did not. He said while the House would like to move forward with bills regarding mental health and juvenile crime, it cannot get the Senate to move.

“You have a few chairmen who walk to the Lieutenant Governor’s office and said we’re not passing anything our of our committee we’re doing nothing we want to do absolutely nothing and they just want to go home,” Sexton said. “And in the House, we have a totally different view. We think that mental health access and the mental health crisis is real.”

Sexton said he believes that there are things in the state statute that they can fix that probably would have limited access to the Covenant School shooter without pending on the right to bear arms. He said he hopes the Senate will come back next week and want to do something instead of doing nothing.

Sexton said the Senate recently codified an Executive Order that the Governor could extend they did not need to. He said if that order rises to a level of immediate urgency, then all of these other bills about mental health and juvenile crime should rise to that level as well.

“Funding for Tennesse Tech for safety on campus should rise to that level,” Sexton said. “So we’ll see. Hopefully they;ll come back and decide if they want to do something I think some of them don’t want to do anything at all. We’ll see what happens. It’s their choice.”