He Speaks To

Exchange Club,

Fields Questions

By TOM YANCEY

Staff Writer

Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress, repeated his pledge here Tuesday not to take PAC money or vote for unfunded mandates.

Roe faces is running against U.S. Rep. David Davis, R-1st, of Johnson City, and engineer Mahmood "Michael" Sabri, also of Johnson City, for the GOP nomination. All three ran in 2006 when Davis won his congressional seat.

Dr. Roe, who retired from a 30-year obstetrics practice in January, limited most of his remarks to the noon Exchange Club to what Johnson City has accomplished while he has been mayor.

Questions And Answers

However, he left time for questions, and all of them dealt with congressional issues.

A club member asked Roe to "differentiate your views from those of Mr. Davis," the Republican incumbent.

Roe said he has always taken leadership roles in whatever organizations he has been involved with, whether the PTA, the ETSU Foundation, medical societies or local governent.

Roe said he feels he has "a good broad background" he can draw on, and has experienced a variety of "different lifestyles (farm life, city life) and income levels."

Roe went on to say that the federal budget is "$500 billion out of balance" and the U.S. government has been "borrowing from overseas" to cover it.

He said that when Davis was in the state legislature, and was faced with the choice of an income tax, raising the sales tax, or cutting state services, Davis voted for raising the sales tax.

Roe was also asked about a recent bill, which Davis supported, that gave municipal workers, including police and firefighters, specified collective bargaining rights.

Roe said he went to the White House with several other East Tennessee mayors to lobby against the bill, which was also opposed by Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a Republican from Blountville, and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Davis' decision not to vote to block interstate trafficking of cock-fighting roosters was another point on which Roe said they differ.

Criticizes Davis On PACs

As mayor, Roe said he has not taken any pay, instead diverting his salary into a fund that provides scholarships for the children of city workers. He pointed out that Davis has accepted contributions from between 200 and 300 political action committees (PACs), something Roe said he believes is "just not right."

The Johnson City mayor said that, without taking PAC money, he has still been able to raise more money overall than Davis.

"I want to go up there (to Congress) with no strings attached," Roe said.

He said Tennessee Eastman Co., with 7,000 employees in Kingsport, "shouldn't have to pay an entry fee" in the form of a PAC contribution to be able to talk to the congressman who represents the district where Eastman is located, "and neither should Plus Mark."

Asked about term limits, Roe said that if term limits had become law after the "Republican Revolution" in 1994, along with a balanced budget amendment, then "we wouldn't have these problems" with government, and Congress would not have a 9 percent approval rating.

Roe said he plans, if elected, to self-limit himself to five two-year terms.

Energy-Price Challenge

He said the biggest challenge that Johnson City faces right now is rising energy prices. Cities depend primarily on sales tax revenue, he noted, but they cannot force people to spend more so that more revenue is available.

He said Johnson City uses about a million gallons of gasoline annually. As prices rose, the town downsized its fleet of police cruisers, and bought some hybrid vehicles.

Until a few years ago, he said, Johnson City kept a flame burning at the large Iris Glen landfill to get rid of potentially explosive methane gas.

But as energy prices rose, the town hired a private company to capture and clean that methane, which now is used as fuel by the Veterans Administration complex four miles away.

Johnson City won a national energy conservation award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year, he noted, but the measures that earned the award were instituted to save money, not out of any desire to "hug trees," he told the Exchangites.

One club member asked "why government officials have not emphasized more conservation?"
Roe said Johnson City turned to energy conservation measures several years ago because that was "the only option available to us," and it has paid off.

One member asked about "troubling" news about how state revenues are dropping.

Roe said Tennessee's gasoline tax revenues failed to rise above the year before for the first time ever in 2007. That is expected to be the case this year as well, he indicated.

Gasoline sales are down about 5 percent this year, he said. Tennessee has already lost $67 million in federal road revenue and more cuts are expected, he noted.

After his talk, Roe was asked to amplify or clarify answers he gave to a questionnaire published in The Greeneville Sun on Saturday.

In response to a question about whether English should be the official language of the U.S., Roe said that it should. His questionnaire answer had said, "English is the language of this country. Language commonality is one of the elements that binds a society together and unites it."

Roe was also asked to clarify whether he would support adoption of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit marriage "to one man and one woman."

In his questionnaire answer, Roe had said, "I am philosophically and morally opposed to gay marriage. As much as I would like to see this remain a state issue, I am concerned that we have activist judges that are legislating from the bench. If this continues, which I fear it will, it may force the people to settle the issue with a constitutional ban."
Asked to clarify this last sentence on Tuesday, Roe said he does not support amending the Constitution at this time. "I am not for fooling around with the Constitution," adding, "It's a state issue."

Roe was also asked to clarify his answer to a question about whether sexual orientation should be a "protected status" in federal law, much like gender, race, age, religion and national origin.

Roe's answer to that question, as published Saturday, was, "Again, I am philosophically and morally opposed to gay marriage."

Roe said Tuesday that he apparently misread the question. On Tuesday, he said he does not favor protected status for sexual orientation.

He added that he believes existing law already provides adequate protection. "You can't discriminate on race or sexual orientation now," he said.