July 1, 2004

We Were Right, They Were Wrong

Earlier today I posted my response to Grover L. Porter, a member of the Tennessee Tax Structure Study Commission, who wrote an op-ed in a recent edition of The Tennessean favoring creation of a state income tax. I noted he spent part of the op-ed making personal attacks against a Nashville talk radio host, ignored state revenue data that contradicted, and based his whole column not on facts about the state's tax structure and revenue growth and spending trends but on a rhetorical appeal for more money to "fix' our education system.

Well, I needn't have bothered. The talk radio host, Steve Gill, wrote a stellar response, published today in The Tennessean.

Unlike Porter, Gill doesn't wander off into some anecdotal argument about education funding. Unlike Porter, Gill doesn't base his op-ed around personal attacks. Unlike Porter, Gill sticks to the real issue, and provides actual data - lots of data - proving he (and the anti-income tax side) were right - Tennessee's budget "crisis" in the late 1990s was caused by overspending, not by the tax structure - and Porter and the rest of the pro-income taxers in Tennessee were wrong.

Gill's op-ed is almost too good to excerpt, and you really ought to read the whole thing if you're interested in Tennessee tax and budget policy. Here's the intro paragraph:

During the income tax battles, the pro-tax crowd regularly pointed to Tennessee's revenue figures as evidence of the need for an income tax. Yet the same advocates who so often pointed to the revenue figures to justify an income tax have suddenly gone silent as new numbers are released month after month that show their arguments to have been nothing but hot air.