Tales of Treachery

The week’s ugliest tussle involved those tax breaks, whose beneficiaries state law innocuously categorizes as “family-owned non-corporate entities.” Translation? Really, really rich families who own lots of land. One example is Nashville’s May family, who started May Hosiery Mill in 1895 and now own Belle Meade Plaza and Belle Meade Office Park. The Mays are the ones, by the way, who want to pave thousands of acres of tranquil green land in Bells Bend to build a Cool Springs-like shopping paradise.

With Gov. Phil Bredesen cutting nearly $500 million from the budget because of falling revenues, the administration proposed ending a state business tax exemption to make these well-heeled families pay a mere $15 million collectively. Sounds like a reasonable idea—except in the legislature. Predictably, a half-dozen high-powered lobbyists went slithering into action, and after a few days’ work, the fat cats’ loophole remains open.

The fight knew no boundaries, with liberals ditching their principles to help save rich people’s money. House Majority Leader Gary Odom, a Nashville Democrat, fought tirelessly on the side of the incredibly wealthy, along with the lobbying law firm Waller Lansden and its emissary Tom Lee, a supposedly progressive member of the state’s political community who has advised the likes of Mayor Karl Dean and Harold Ford Jr.

On the day the administration proposed closing the loophole, Odom approached Will Pinkston, a top aide to the governor, to complain that the idea amounted to a tax increase that Democrats were afraid to support in an election year. Here’s how Pinkston recalls the conversation:

“I kinda shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘OK, you don’t like it. Big deal. That’s $15 million. Find the money somewhere else.’ To which Odom responded, ‘Yeah, we ought to take it out of Wal-Mart or some other big out-of-state corporation.’ And I said, ‘OK, whatever you can make happen, Gary. Good luck.”

Pinkston, probably chortling to himself, then promptly pulled out his cell phone and left a voice mail for a friend who also happens to be the Tennessee flack for Wal-Mart. As Pinkston knew, Waller Lansden represents Wal-Mart as well as the May family.

“ ‘Hey,’ ” Pinkston recalls saying in the voice mail message, “I just wanted you to know that Tom Lee and your good friends over at Waller are trying to blow a hole in a tax bill that closes some loopholes for the very wealthy. That money is going to obviously have to come from somewhere else. And for the first time, I heard a legislative leader say that we ought to look to Wal-Mart to get it. Talk to you later.’ ”

Pinkston’s Wal-Mart friend then forwarded the voice mail to Waller Lansden, setting off alarm bells inside the law firm—which was suddenly faced with an obvious conflicting interest between deep-pocketed clients. That led to the next event in this little tale of treachery, when Pinkston says Waller Lansden started spreading the word through Legislative Plaza that Pinkston had been caught on tape doing something nefarious.

“At first I thought, ‘Was it a videotape? What was I doing?’ And then I found out it was that voice mail, and I said, ‘OK, whatever.’ I don’t say anything in voice mail or email that I would be afraid to see on the front page of the newspaper. Tom Lee comes up to me and starts wearing us out about this tax loophole that he’s trying to keep open. And he says, ‘We’ve got you on tape.’ And he says he’s going to make it public. And I said, ‘I heard. I know all about it. Go ahead and release that. Can I get a transcript, just as a courtesy?’

“I was shaking in my boots,” Pinkston snorts. “What is this, the Nixon White House? It was menacing in a somewhat clown-like, bubbling way.”

The 56-year-old Odom is honeymooning with his new twentysomething bride and couldn’t be reached, but before he left town, he denied that he ever suggested a new tax on Wal-Mart. And for his part, Lee falls all over himself denying Pinkston’s story.

“That’s preposterous,” he says outside of the House chamber. “Words fail. That never happened. I do not have a tape of anybody leaving a voice message with anybody. I have never said to anybody that I have a voice message from anyone, and I certainly would never because I have too much respect for the office of the governor and for this governor and would never use any kind of threat because I know it wouldn’t work. It would be unethical. It would be illegal. That would be about the dumbest thing someone could do. I can’t think of a single good reason why anyone would do it.”