Nashville Voted To Give Poor People, Locals New Construction Jobs. But the State GOP Blocked It.

[eridani]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19009/republican_prohibition_on_nashville_municipal_local_hires

Last summer, with the backing of regional labor leaders and community groups, the city of Nashville approved an ordinance requiring large, municipally funded construction projects to devote 10 percent of their hiring to low-income residents. The ballot initiative, which also stipulated that 40 percent of such hires should reside in Nashville’s Davidson County, came amid an historic surge in building projects in the city’s downtown area.

Last year, the New York Times reported that more than $2 billion worth of construction projects that developers have initiated in the city are poised to reshape Nashville’s skyline. The local hire ordinance, known as Amendment 3, sought to make sure that the city’s poorest residents saw some benefit portions of the city’s building boom by leveraging the Nashville’s government’s contracts with private businesses in an attempt to reduce local poverty, which stands at nearly 20 percent for adults and at roughly 30 percent for children in the Nashville area.

Yet within weeks of the ordinance passing into law, Republicans in the state legislature introduced a bill to roll back Nashville’s new law and prevent other cities in the state from implementing anything like it.

In September, a Republican representative also requested that the state’s Republican attorney general issue an opinion on whether the city law was legal in the first place. After the attorney general’s office asserted that the local-hire rule indeed violated a state law that governs licensing, the bill to invalidate Nashville’s new law moved steadily through the legislature.

[Scuba]

1. "No helping the poor" is a major plank in the Republican Party's platform.

[hobbit709]

2. I'd settle for just "no helping the poor" compared to actively hindering the poor

Funny how the Repukes never worry about "too much government" when it is used to screw the people.

[cheapdate]

3. Yes. That's not all.

Nashville passed a rule requiring companies doing business with the city to have a diversity policy. The State General Assembly then passed a law to nullify Nashville's rule.

Vanderbilt University (in Nashville) had a non-exclusion rule for all of it's campus clubs and groups, that is, no club or group could exclude students -- groups had to open. The State General Assembly then spent months trying to figure out how they could force the private university to abandon it's non-discrimination policy.

[spanone]

4. my state is being held hostage by right wing assholes

[Tsiyu]

5. Yet they want the Bible to be the state book?

And they believe in a savior--the star of their favorite book-- who mentioned helping the poor 500 times?

HA!

They prove their own faith is BS through and through.

It seems every state in the Southeast is trying really hard to drive away business and growth. The region is already far below every other part of the country in every economic category.

Our legislature in TN is a big fat joke, and no more than Party Central for the Plantation Masters. It's so disheartening to watch your state just fall farther and farther behind....and hear them blame Obama....

Can't wait to get out of the South! There are wonderful, beautiful people here, but the political and religious leadership are nothing but pure hot evil.

[Odin2005]

6. GOP: "authoritarian big government is fine as long as it is state government".

When Wing-Nuts whine about "big government" they really only mean the FEDERAL government, they are perfectly OK with oppressive government at the state level and only oppose federal power because it would help protect the people from overbearing state governments.

[rockfordfile]

7. Get rid of the Republican fascist in Tennessee