Gov. Bill Lee granted clemency to 16 people Dec. 22, including two inmates who will be eligible for parole.

In the Republican’s second round of clemency actions since taking office in 2019, Lee approved 13 pardons and three commutations, including the elimination of parole restrictions for one 78-year-old man who has been out of prison for 18 years. Fourteen of the 16 are no longer in prison, according to Lee’s office.

Lee also issued expedited parole eligibility to 30 people in prison related to changes to a drug-free school zones law. The adjustments came amid concerns that the old law had spurred some overly harsh sentences for infractions that didn’t actually put children at risk.

A pardon serves as a statement of forgiveness to someone who has completed their prison sentence, while commutation shortens a sentence but lets the conviction stand. This time, Lee didn’t issue any exonerations, in which the governor declares that the applicant didn’t commit the crime. Lee noted that the 16 new actions aligned with nonbinding recommendations from the state Board of Parole, with no victims speaking in opposition.

Lee told reporters he sees clemency decisions and criminal justice reform as unrelated.

“My views and my approach to criminal justice, my belief in the way that we should appropriately administer that justice, is really a separate issue entirely from decisions on unique, individual cases that have made a request for clemency through the Board of Parole,” Lee says.

TSU nabs $5M grant for hemp research

Tennessee State University has received nearly $5 million in a hemp research grant, an investment that could make the state of Tennessee the No. 1 grower in the Southeast region.

The Department of Agriculture announced the investment last week, awarding the grant to the College of Agriculture toward a new partnership for a Climate-Smart Fiber Hemp Project.

This investment for sustainable hemp fiber research will promote market development of industrial hemp supply as a climate-smart commodity through incentives to underserved Tennessee growers enrolled into the program.

Dean and director of research/administrator of Extension Chandra Reddy says the department is excited to support hemp producers in the state, particularly with climate smart production practices.

The hemp project is a collaborative initiative to expand the production of industrial hemp as a climate-smart commodity, evaluate its greenhouse gas benefits, and promote the value of market development to a cross section of production agriculture, including historically underserved producers across the state of Tennessee.

The project is led by Dr. Emmanuel Omondi, assistant professor of agronomy and industrial hemp extension specialist.

Omondi says the greatest percentage of funds will be used to provide support and incentives to historically underserved farmers owning up to 500 acres to grow fiber hemp.

The fiber hemp will then be processed and supplied to the motor vehicle industry as raw materials for manufacturing critical motor vehicle parts such as fabrics and bioplastics, he says.

Harper post office naming heads to Biden

A bill that would name a Nashville post office after a late former state senator is headed to President Joe Biden’s desk.

In a news release Thursday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper says the proposal dedicated to former Sen. Thelma Harper passed the House earlier this year and cleared the Senate this week.

Cooper says he expects Biden to sign the bill soon.

Cooper, a Nashville Democrat, says the entire Tennessee delegation joined him in introducing the bill in the fall of 2021.

Harper was a Nashville Democrat who became the first African American woman elected to the state Senate.

Harper became a senator in 1989 and was first elected to her seat in 1991. She became the longest-serving female senator in Tennessee before she decided not to seek reelection in 2018. Harper died in April 2021 at the age of 80.

Flu season came early, hit hard in TN

Flu season came a month early this year in Tennessee and hit hard, disproportionately affecting children, according to Epidemic Intelligence Service data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tennessee Department of Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Nearly 30% of 4,633 people tested for influenza at participating clinics (including 12 VUMC walk-in clinics) from Nov. 4-18 were positive for the virus, and the virus was readily transmitted to others in the household, especially children.

In all, 37% of children between ages 5-17 who were tested for the flu were confirmed to have the virus. Investigators also found the rate of hospitalization in children was higher than prior influenza seasons.

“We wanted to get an idea of what flu activity was like in Tennessee, and we found that it was spreading very early,” says CDC EIS officer Christine Thomas, who works with the Tennessee Department of Health.

“A lot of people were getting sick from influenza and were being seen at clinics. A good number of them, around 40%, were also getting treated for influenza with antiviral medications like oseltamivir. Unfortunately, when we asked them about people at home, about one in three people were also ill around the same time,” she says.

Thomas says the group of people most susceptible to get the flu early in the season were children, especially children between ages 5 and 18.

EIS officers are the CDC’s “boots-on-the ground” disease detectives who protect the public from health threats. The CDC sent two EIS officers to Nashville in November to work with the state and VUMC to take an early look at influenza.

Holiday sales up 7.6% despite inflation squeeze

Holiday sales rose this season as American spending remained resilient during the critical shopping season despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, according to one measure.

Holiday sales rose 7.6%, a slower pace than the 8.5% increase from a year earlier when shoppers began spending the money they had saved during the early part of the pandemic, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards.

Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected a 7.1% increase. The data released Monday excludes the automotive industry and is not adjusted for inflation, which has eased somewhat but remains painfully high.

U.S. sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, a period that is critical for retailers, were fueled by spending at restaurants and on clothing.

By category, clothing rose 4.4%, while jewelry and electronics dipped roughly 5%. Online sales jumped 10.6% from a year ago and in-person spending rose 6.8%. Department stores registered a modest 1% increase over 2021.

“This holiday retail season looked different than years past,” Steve Sadove, the former CEO and chairman at Saks and a senior adviser for Mastercard, said in a prepared statement. “Retailers discounted heavily, but consumers diversified their holiday spending to accommodate rising prices and an appetite for experiences and festive gatherings post-pandemic.”

Spending bill aids retirees, financial industry

A section of the $1.7 trillion spending bill passed last week has been billed as a dramatic step toward shoring up retirement accounts of millions of U.S. workers. But the real windfall may go to a far more secure group: the financial services industry.

The retirement savings measure labeled Secure 2.0 would reset how people enroll in retirement plans – from requiring them to opt into plans, to requiring them to opt out. The provision is designed to ensure greater participation.

It also allows workers to use their student loan payments as a substitute for their contributions to their retirement plans – meaning they can get matching retirement contributions from their employers by paying off that debt – increases the age for required distributions from plans and expands a tax-deductible saver’s credit.

But as with so many far-reaching spending bills that get little public consideration, provisions of the legislation also benefit corporate interests with a strong financial interest in the outcome.

“Some of these provisions are good and we want to help people who want to save — but this is a huge boon to the financial services industry,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Some parts of the bill, she says, are “disguised as savings incentives.”

Daniel Halperin, a Harvard law professor who specializes in tax policy and retirement savings, says one of the clearest benefits to industry is the provision that gradually increases the age for mandatory distributions from 72 to 75. “The goal is to leave that money there for as long as possible,” in order to collect administrative fees, he says. “For people who have $5 to $7 to $10 million saved, firms keep collecting fees. It’s crazy to allow them to leave it there.”

Companies like BlackRock Funds Services Group, Prudential Financial, Pacific Life Insurance and business lobbying groups such as the Business Roundtable and American Council of Life Insurers are only some of the entities that lobbied lawmakers on Secure 2.0, Senate lobbying disclosures show.

Katherine DeBerry, a representative from Prudential, says the firm applauds the passage of Secure 2.0, stating that it “will help ensure employees’ retirement savings last a lifetime.”

Viking acquires Bytes of Knowledge

Viking Mergers & Acquisitions has announced the recent business acquisition of (b:ok) Network Infrastructure Services LLC (aka. Bytes of Knowledge) by IT Voice.

(b:ok) is a Managed Service Provider founded in 1995 by Charles and Julie May, providing managed services, network security, cloud solutions, compliance solutions, backup and disaster recovery services.

Dan Wilson, Viking Managing Partner, comments, “Tech companies, particularly MSPs, are showing very strong on the market. As a result, this transaction had an enormous amount of buyer activity, allowing us to filter out the best possible outcome for our clients.”

Viking Nashville’s managing partner, Kyle Kerrigan, adds, “Charles and Julie grew (b:ok) through continuous innovation and became an industry leader in the Nashville market. Their imprint and legacy will carry on through the growth of IT Voice.”

IT Voice is a multi-location MSP with a national footprint and is a portfolio company of Baymark Partners. Based in Dallas, Texas, Baymark Partners is a growth-oriented private equity firm acquiring growing middle market service (health care and IT), distribution, manufacturing and tech-enabled (SAAS and e-commerce) companies.