Political patronage is not the threat to state employees that it once was because state government is bigger and has a broader scope of services, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says.

Haslam has been making the point as he tours the state to push priorities launched last month in his State of the State address.

“We’ve put this incredible system in place that really isn’t effective – all to solve a problem that I don’t think is nearly as big as the structure we put in place to solve the problem,” Haslam told a Greater Memphis Chamber luncheon Friday, Feb. 3.

He is proposing a drop in the number of state government jobs and he wants to end the process of “bumping” – a seniority-based system that allows an employee in one division whose position is eliminated to move to another unrelated department and “bump” another employee with less seniority in that department.

The switch away from that system would give the state director of human resources more discretion to hire based on factors other than seniority.

The bumping process, Haslam argues, makes it more difficult to recruit those with talent who might be new to state government.

“It might take them three or four months to even get on that list and even then work their way up the list,” he said. “And then the main criteria is going to be years of service.”

Haslam likened it to a college basketball team that decides to stop recruiting and to rely instead on players who have been with the team the longest amount of time.

The debate to come is just 40 years after Tennessee had a governor who included in his formal inner circle an appointed patronage chief who oversaw political patronage committees in counties across the state.

Ray Blanton’s brief four years in office was rife with corruption that included the selling of liquor licenses, for which Blanton went to prison, as well as the selling of pardons and paroles. The pardons and paroles investigation uncovered specific ties to patronage chiefs at the county level.

The scandals specifically led to civil service reforms that followed at the state level.

“Here’s the reality. The world doesn’t work that way anymore,” Haslam told the crowd of 350 at the chamber luncheon. “State government is too big. … We are too specialized.”

He also touted new capital spending by the state on higher education facilities including new buildings at the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Southwest Tennessee Community College.

Haslam made the case that higher education in Tennessee had gotten to the point that colleges and universities were going to keep raising tuition to make up for state funding that had been cut on an annual basis for years.

“This is also the first year in several years that the operating budget hasn’t been cut,” Haslam said later of his higher education spending plan. “We have to keep tuition increases to a minimum.”

The rise in tuition during a recession was a contradiction to efforts by state leaders to see more Tennesseans enroll in and complete college.

Against that backdrop, Haslam broke the drought on state funding for higher education construction projects with his new budget proposal.

“It is in Tennessee about increasing access to higher education,” Haslam said. “Affordability and geographic access and having the lab space that we need to prepare the students for what businesses are really wanting today.”