Regress for Success

So what are the referendum's prospects? The early going has been something less than a festival of optimism. Metro Council approved the sales tax plan on final reading last month by a comfortable 30-6 margin, but a motion to reconsider last week that might have derailed it failed by just two votes (16-18). Questions are being raised about whether the elderly tax relief part of the plan is even legal under state law. (One Metro attorney says yes; another is not so sure.)

Critics have also noticed that the planned use for new sales tax money is more an intention than a binding commitment. A bill working its way through council would codify the 80-20 split, but that could easily be altered by a subsequent ordinance. A future budget could even decrease the property tax contribution to schools by the amount of added sales tax money, yielding no net increase for education from sales taxes. David Manning insists that "politically, it is not something the mayor would consider," and it's hard to imagine Purcell would stoop to this kind of bait and switch. But the point to keep in mind is that the sales tax increase represents a promise, not a guarantee, of increases in education spending.

For all these reasons, the referendum's prospects have to be seen as dodgy at best out of the gate. Manning, brimming with underwhelming confidence, says, "it has a good chance" to pass. At-large council member David Briley adds that education advocates "have to get organized and motivated" to see it through. For progressive Nashville, the question is whether elderly tax relief and the revenue grab argument outweigh the troubling regressivity of even higher sales taxes. Plenty of tax-and-spend, pro-education liberals remain to be convinced, and may well think that abetting the "bury Garcia" theory isn't such a bad thing.