.jpg)
Wlaf1450
By Charlotte Underwood
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives Cameron Sexton guest spoke at Rotary on Tuesday at the LaFollette Methodist Church.
He was introduced on Tuesday by State Representative Dennis Powers.
“Under his leadership Tennessee continues to lead the nation. I have seen his dedication making the government work for the people and not the other way around,” Powers said.
Sexton said it was good to be back in Campbell County.
He gave an update on the State of Tennessee, saying it was doing “very well” and that the “most recent budget projections show Tennessee is still growing in an economy where some states are not.”
“A little bit about our budget, it is roughly $54 to $55 billion dollars, somewhere in that range. When Governor Bill Haslam came in, it was $26 billion dollars and some say you all have doubled the size of the budget in 16 years and that is a factual thing, but if you look at the growth of our state, business-wise and if you look at the amount of traffic coming through our state, that is tremendous as well,” Sexton said.
He told Rotarians that over the past 16 years, Tennessee had reduced taxes “to the tune of about $3 billion dollars, eliminated the inheritance, the gift tax, the halls income tax” as well as giving sales tax reductions for food to the tune of $3 to $4 billion in tax cuts.”
“We continue to grow, which is a testament as to how we are running our state,” Sexton said.
He said when Governor Haslam came into office, the rainy-day fund was $120 million dollars, which was not a lot.
“We put funds back in the rainy-day fund that now has about $2 billion dollars in it, so when you want to talk about the budget, you have to remember the savings account, the rainy day fund is called spending, so that’s $2 billion dollars of new spending that we have had to do, we have also put $4 billion into public education, K through 12 state money, that’s not asking for local match, so we have increased that as well and then you look at TennCare and other obligations that we have to have as well as state pension plans, making sure they are at 98 to 102 percent which they are, which is much different than other states which are struggling to honor their commitments. We feel as a state we should honor our commitment to our state employees who have worked well for us all those years. So, when you put all that together and look at it and spit it back out, realistically from when Governor Haslam was in office until to Governor Lee’s last budget, we have only grown our state at the rate of inflation plus 1.3 percent each year after that, so it’s not been too bad. At the end of it doing pretty well, and as we have gotten revenue in, we have given it back and we continue to grow,” Sexton said.
He added that the state is blessed with the amount of people moving to the state that want to become Tennesseans, which allows the state to grow.
“Our economy is doing well… it is because of how we run the state, which is much how you run a business. When we have excess money coming in, we use it for non-reoccurring expenses … We use our non-reoccurring dollars in new Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, we have given other non-reoccurring funds to the transportation department and also, we have invested in higher education like UT, Roane State Community College and a new med school in Memphis,” Sexton said.
He touched on crime and things the state has “done so every Tennessean feels safe.”
“You should feel safe in your community, so we focused a lot on the crime in the state. We have 100 percent sentencing. If you commit a violent crime in the state and you are a career violent criminal, you serve the full time of the sentence. If you get 10 years, you serve 10 years,” Sexton said.
He closed by speaking about health care in the state, saying changes need to be made at the federal level.
“I compare it to car insurance, you buy car insurance and I tell you I just want the basic plan and you know what, that is based on state law, but if I walk into Blue Cross Blue Shield, they have no idea what that would mean,” Sexton said.
He said health insurance should work the same way as car insurance for basic health insurance.
“Our problem in health insurance is we don’t define anything. The insurance companies don’t allow us to know the cost,” Sexton said.
He said another problem in health insurance was that there were “more people working in billing than in helping patients.”
“Until we can define basic health insurance, we can’t define cost. It is an insurance industry problem and how it works. We need it to be changed on a federal level” Sexton said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-06/24/2026-6AM)