On April 25th, the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned sine die, concluding the 2nd year of the 113th General Assembly. Read this to see how the Tennessee disability community fared this year!

We made it! The General Assembly members have concluded their work for the year (as have we) and they are blessedly headed home for the year (to campaign). All in all, dear reader, we had another pretty darn good year. We, of course, did not win every battle, but we won a lot of them and flexed some disability community muscle.

We still have some good things on the table to get some signatures on. We’ve gone into “flow-motion” at the legislature, which is a fancier (and more fun) way to say that all rules are out, all schedules are changeable and all predictions are rendered useless by the chaos. I’m hearing next Thursday might be it, but like I previously noted about predictions, who knows?

Well, the end is in sight. I hear the Senate will submit their budget amendment next Wednesday and then, per usual, wait on the House for theirs. There are a couple big things on the table (including some of our things) that will likely see some resolution by the end of the week (maybe beginning of the following week). It’s not over yet, dear reader, so stay tuned and stay engaged.

Tough week, friends. In fact, tough last couple of weeks. Big hugs and best wishes your way. But we’re getting close to the end (2 weeks?) and we’ve got (very good) things to look forward to passing, which will be our saving grace for this session.

TDC family, I am raging mad, hot under the collar and ready for a fight (and whatever other metaphors refer to white hot fury). And that’s because we indeed have a real fight on our hands, one I thought we had put to rest decades ago. This isn’t going to look like any of my regular weekly policy updates, and I apologize if I miss some things, but we need to pull out all the stops on this one. Gear up, TDC family, the fight is here and it’s knocking on the door.