June 17, 2008

It Can't Happen in Nashville

A few years ago, the city council in Spring Hill, Tennessee, a fast-growing suburb of Nashville, voted to enact a local "Taxpayers Bill of Rights," which prevented property tax increases without a referendum. Last night, wanting to raise property taxes in order to patch a budget hole and give city employees a pay raise, the city council voted 7-0 to rescind that law.

I'm betting some folks in Spring Hill are looking up the process of amending the city charter right about now, in order to regain control over tax increases.

In Nashville, the Metro Council has also faced a tough budget, but there has been zero talk of a property tax increase. Why? One reason, perhaps, is that Nashville's also got a law on the books requiring a referendum for most property tax increases. And the Metro Council can't rescind it because voters put it into the city charter via a charter amendment (which passed with 70 percent of the vote, winning in virtually every precinct in the entire city).

Whether on the local level or the state level, statutory tax limitation laws don't work well because they can be repealed or overridden by the same legislators who want to increase taxes.