Editorial Roundup: Tennessee

Kingsport Instances Information. April 15, 2022.

Editorial: Legislators ought to get their info straight

U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Kingsport, together with six different members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation, has despatched a letter to the Veterans Administration complaining that the state’s nationwide cemeteries for veterans are shortly operating out of area.

If a lot of the state’s congressional delegation is worried, one thing have to be finished. Definitely, our federal lawmakers know what they’re speaking about particularly in going public with this allegation. Or do they?

Our veterans deserve and have earned the precise to be buried in Tennessee’s nationwide cemeteries. How might this be allowed to occur?

Factor is, it hasn’t, says a spokesman for the Veterans Administration.

Please relaxation assured that our veterans cemeteries aren’t operating out of burial area,” says Gary Kunich of the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs.

Harshbarger, together with the opposite U.S. representatives from Tennessee, forwarded their letter to the VA on March 31 and requested that the VA reply by April 30. Kunich mentioned the VA can be “responding to the seven members of Congress shortly.”

Apart from Harshbarger, the opposite members of Congress who signed the letter are U.S. Rep. Mark Inexperienced, U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleicschmann, U.S. Rep. David Kustoff and U.S. Rep. John Rose.

Of their letter, the congressional members say that Tennessee is “dangerously shut” to not having funeral area for veterans. “Of the 5 nationwide cemeteries positioned in Tennessee serving our veteran constituents and their households, solely two at present have burial area accessible and even these restricted areas are quickly operating out,” the letter states.

However Kunich mentioned there are extra than simply 5 cemeteries throughout the state accessible to veterans and one other two which can be accessible simply throughout state strains. Two of 5 nationwide cemeteries in Tennessee are at present open for burials: Chattanooga and the Mountain Residence Nationwide Cemetery in Johnson Metropolis. The opposite three are cremation solely.

There are additionally 4 grant-funded state veterans cemeteries with two positioned in Knoxville. “Each certainly one of Tennessee’s 440,000 veterans dwell inside 75 miles of an open veterans cemetery,” Kunic mentioned.

He mentioned all three of the nationwide cemeteries which can be at present not accessible for burials and are cremation solely even have close by state veterans cemeteries.

It could seem that somebody’s confused, and we don’t consider it’s the VA, which “actively screens the capability of each VA nationwide cemeteries and VA grant-funded state cemeteries,” Kunich mentioned, “and can proceed to fund expansions of those cemeteries.”

We count on our congressional representatives to know what they’re speaking about earlier than they act. However that is one other in a rising variety of examples of that not being the case, and never for simply Tennessee’s representatives.

Johnson Metropolis Press. April 17, 2022.

Editorial: Don’t be distracted by the noise, Tennessee’s felony sleeping legislation is inhumane

The Common Meeting handed a invoice additional criminalizing homelessness this week, however we’ve let one senator’s confounding and abhorrent feedback distract us from the inhumane contents of the invoice.

Whereas lawmakers debated Senate invoice 1610 on Wednesday, Strawberry Plains Republican Sen. Frank Niceley stood earlier than the complete chamber and splattered out a complicated story about Adolf Hitler that gave the impression to be both an expression of admiration for the Nazi dictator or an try to pressure a correlation between him and folks with out properties.

A soundbite of Niceley’s baffling assertion was shortly seized upon by nationwide media shops, and Tennessee’s popularity within the outdoors world as soon as once more acquired one of many beatings our lawmakers and officers appear to attract with nice relish.

No matter his intention, the senator was flawed, however his feedback, regardless of how loathsome, shouldn’t be the primary focus of the dialogue on this invoice.

Now authorised by each the Home and Senate and headed to the governor for his signature, this legislation elevates the crime of sleeping — “tenting” within the authorized language — on native public land to a felony crime and makes sleeping or panhandling at freeway offramps and underpasses a misdemeanor. The legislation expands the scope of a statute enacted two years in the past that made it a felony to sleep with out authorization on state-owned land.

The brand new legislation will make it unlawful for people to be homeless almost in every single place within the state, however it would do nothing to deal with the causes of homelessness.

As an alternative, the brand new onslaught of felony fees and convictions for the crime of illegally sleeping will take away hundreds of individuals’s civil rights and make it much more troublesome for them to safe employment and housing.

In Johnson Metropolis, we’ve already been down this highway.

4 years in the past, underneath the guise of it being just one a part of a complete plan to deal with the complicated social drawback of homelessness, metropolis leaders made “tenting” on public property a neighborhood offense.

To date, all we’ve seen from this complete plan are lots of of tickets written to individuals who can’t afford them, a worsened relationship between indigent people and the police sworn to guard and serve and homeless individuals in our group pushed additional into the shadows and away from the outreach applications that will assist them.

The required act of sleeping ought to by no means be thought-about against the law, however classifying it as a felony is plainly inhumane.

As an alternative of pouring assets into the felony justice system to seek out, cost and incarcerate individuals for sleeping in public, primarily punishing them for current, we needs to be dedicating our efforts to outreach and assist to assist individuals discover and preserve dependable housing and employment.

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