Read Their Lips

In the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the politician Pappy O’Daniel and his son Junior are talking about how to counter Homer Stokes’ campaign for governor. “We could hire our own midget, even shorter than his,” Junior says. But Pappy fires back, “Wouldn’t we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys, bragging on our own midget, doesn’t matter how stumpy?”

Clement unveiled his no-tax pledge during the first televised debate of the runoff. Since then, he has smacked Karl Dean with it in TV and radio ads and in a mailer that blares, “Bob Clement said ‘NO’ to higher property taxes....” Feel free to roll your eyes now. It’s not just that no mayor in the history of Metro government has ever gone a full term without raising the property tax. (For the better part of 40 years now, tax hikes have come about every four years.)

But while pledging to become the first not to raise taxes, Clement also has been wildly exuberant in promising to spend money, his most lavish proposal being to host the 2020 Olympics. As part of its 2016 bid, it cost Chicago $500 million just to cover possible cost overruns. That amount would run Nashville’s schools for almost a year. In a press release at the time he floated his Olympics idea back in the spring, Clement said, “Now is the time to dream big.” As recently as last week, Clement was still promising the moon. He went to Antioch and vowed more police protection for the Hickory Hollow business district. He said he’d consider opening a police substation there. No word yet on how he might pay for any of that, although Clement did say in his mailer that he “will manage our budget more efficiently and make cuts where needed to avoid property tax increases.”

Metro Council members and Purcell administration officials don’t mince words when asked about Clement’s tax pledge. “It’s complete bullshit,” says one high-ranking official who asked that his name not be used. “Clement thinks he can manage things more efficiently and avoid a tax increase? Jesus did that once with loaves and fishes, but I don’t think that feat has been repeated since.”

As these officials point out, about 85 percent of the Metro budget is tied up in schools, public safety or payments such as pension contributions that are mandated by state or federal law or by the Metro charter. That leaves very little of the budget left for cutting. Without drastic reductions in services, the only way to give pay raises for Metro employees, including schoolteachers, is to raise property taxes. The three-year pay plan for city workers runs out this year, so they’ll be asking for a new plan in 2008.

“It would be very, very difficult to offer the employees a pay raise without a tax increase unless you just drastically cut services,” says Metro Council member Rip Ryman, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. “These departments are strapped now. Instead of garbage pickup twice a week, maybe we’d only have it once a week. We could cut back the hours of community centers or libraries. Or we could just have layoffs.”

Which begs the question: why did the employee unions endorse Clement? Maybe they recognize the no-tax pledge for what it is: a campaign stunt that Clement will quickly forget if elected. Fraternal Order of Police President Danny Hale says he can’t explain why his membership voted to endorse Clement or how cops could expect any pay raises if he’s elected mayor. “How would he give us a pay raise? I don’t know. I guess he’d have to pull a frickin’ Houdini,” Hale says. “I’m the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, and I do what my membership tells me to do. If you think I’m going to sit here and sell out my membership, I’m not going to do it.”

Both candidates are promising to improve public safety by filling the 70 open positions in the Metro Police Department. Those jobs are supposedly already paid for in the budget, but “it’s hogwash to say these are funded positions,” says council member Mike Jameson, the budget committee’s vice chair. “To fill those jobs, you have to have the officers to recruit them and to train them. And are you telling me that these are guys who are going to come on board from other cities to a city that pays less salary and fewer benefits?