November 8, 2006

Nashvillians Gain Right to Vote on Property Tax Increases; Amendment Changes City Charter and Political Playing Field

Ben Cunningham and his merry band of tax-fighters scored a landslide victory with their proposed amendment to the Nashville city charter requiring property tax rate increases be submitted to voters in a referendum.

There is conflicting legal opinion as to whether the state constitution permits such referenda, and the city's political establishment will no doubt take the amendment to court to try to overturn it - but that can only happen after the Metro Council passes a property tax hike and sends it to a referendum. But in trying to overturn the charter amendment, the city's political establishment will also be seeking to overturn the expressed will of the people of Nashville, the will of the people they are supposed to serve - and they'll be doing it for the express purpose of ramming through a tax increase after voters have rejected it in a referendum.

Legally, they may have a leg to stand on. Politically I'd hate to have to play that hand, for by doing so they will forever mark themselves as favoring higher taxes over the objections of the people they are supposed to serve.

Ben Cunningham hasn't just changed the Metro charter - he's changed the political playing field in Nashville.

Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell seems to get the new political reality posed by the charter change and the large margin by which voters approved it. Note that Purcell carefully doesn't criticize the charter amendment in the Nashville City Paper's story about its approval by voters:

Mayor Bill Purcell said he had anticipated each of the half-dozen changes to the charter to pass. ... Purcell said the biggest victory came with Amendment No. 1, the passage of which handed the power to raise property taxes directly to citizens in the form of referendum elections. "The property tax one is the one that will make the biggest difference for people in the city." Purcell said.

The City Paper notes that the property tax referendum amendment did not "meet resistance from within the Mayor's administration before the election."

Clearly, though, Nashville's dominant liberal political establishment opposed Cunningham's charter change amendment. Why is Purcell being friendly to it now? Simple. Purcell leaves office next year and has ambitions of higher office. He very likely won't propose another property tax rate increase before he leaves the Mayor's office, so he won't have to face the referendum requirement. And, clearly, Purcell - a liberal policy-wonk populist - doesn't want to be seen as opposing something that the overwhelming majority of Nashvillians clearly support.

Incidentally, now that Nashvillians have the right to vote on property tax increases, people in the rest of the state are more likely to want that right for themselves. And now that such a conservative - indeed, Republican - proposal has passed so overwhelmingly in a Democratic stronghold like Davidson County, imagine how powerful an issue it would be for Republican state legislators, and candidates, across Tennessee.

If the state-level Republicans are smart enough to grab the ball and run with it, Ben Cunningham's amendment to the Nashville city charter amendment may well have changed the political playing field statewide...

Update: A commenter passes on a tidbit that Karl Dean, the head of Nashville's Metro Legal Department and a possible candidate for mayor next year, has already put together a legal attack on the constitutionality of this referendum. I wonder if the fact that three fourths of the Nashville voters who voted yesterday voted for the amendment - and turnout was heavy - will give him pause. Trying to overturn something so popular with voters seems to be a bad way to convince those folks to back your mayoral bid.

If I was running for Mayor of Nashville I'd call a press conference today and announce that I voted for the charter change and, if elected mayor, would stop Metro Legal from challenging it in court.