January 6, 2003

Bias on the Tax Study Commission

A reader wrote to say that Gary Poe, the Eastman Chemical exec just appointed to Tennessee's new "Tax Study Commission," may be bringing a pro-income tax bias to that supposedly "independent" commission that is supposed to take a clean-sheet look at Tennessee's tax structure. The reader, whose name I'm not revealing because his email address indicates he works for Poe, says Poe "wrote an op-ed in the Kingsport Times-News about one year ago advocating an income tax."

I searched the Kingsport Times-News website for that op-ed, but couldn't find it. However, it isn't clear if the paper posts all of its guest commentaries online. The paper does not post all of its content in general on the site. I emailed Times-News reporter Hank Hayes, asking if he recalled such an op-ed. Here is Hayes' emailed response:

I just did an archive search of our web site and couldn't find anything. If you know of an exact date, I'll try again. Or you can try your own archive search of our web site. It wouldn't surprise me if Eastman, Mr. Poe's employer, was pro-income tax. The Kingsport chamber endorsed the income tax last year.

Incidentally, Hayes' story about Poe's appointment quotes Poe as critical of inaction in the past on implementing the recommendations of prior tax study commissions. Those commissions all recommended an income tax.

I think you can mark Poe down as a biased pro-income tax member of the commission but it would help to find a copy of that op-ed. If you live near Kingsport and can find a copy of it in a library, please contact me. I'd like to get a copy and scan it in and post it on the web so that Tennesseans know Poe's bias and can evaluate his work and the work of the commission accordingly. My email address is listed in the "about this site" section on the right-side column.

Other income tax supporters on the commission include former state education commissioner Nelson Andrews, who will chair the commission; former state Sen. Robert Rochelle, who sponsored an income tax bill in the last General Assembly; James Neeley, chairman of the state AFL-CIO, which supports the income tax; and Julius Johnson, president of the Tennessee Farm Bureau, another organization that endorsed the income tax.

As for Andrews, this story notes he was a supporter of Gov. Ned McWherter's push for an income tax. It also notes that Gov. Sundquist's spokeswoman says the governor picked commission members based on their agreement with his general political philosophy on tax reform. That is to say, they support an income tax. Thus the deck is stacked.

There is at least one glimmer of hope: Joe Huddleston, a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Revenue, has testified in the past that Tennessee's current tax structure is not the state's primary problem when it comes to revenues. According to this 1999 report from the now-defunct Tennessee Institute for Public Policy:

Joe Huddleston, former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Revenue, stated in testimony before the legislature earlier this year that the primary tax problem in Tennessee is not its tax structure, but the myriad of sales tax exemptions granted to politically powerful companies and industries. There are currently over 200 state sales tax exemptions that resulted in $3.345 billion in reduced state and local tax revenue ($2.575 billion/state; $770 million/local) during FY 1998, according to the Department of Finance and Administration.

It's not clear whether Huddleston also supports an income tax, but at least it appears he doesn't think passing one is the first priority.