Sometime during the muggy days leading up to last summer’s mayoral election, then-Mayor Phil Bredesen called in his potential replacements—one by one—to tell them what they could expect about the city’s finances.

There was, after all, a great deal of interest in the subject. Sales tax revenues were below expectations, which had driven a tight budget. Moreover, crusty bureaucrats left over from days of mayors gone by—and who should have taken their pensions long ago—had been running around in their poly-blend slacks and pullover tunics predicting financial ruin for Metro.

Bredesen was up-front and realistic. He dismissed the chants of the doomsayers, but told the candidates of two specific “overhangs” the new mayor would have to deal with after taking office—the increased cost of operating a new, larger main library and expanded branches, and the cost of paying new police officers put on the street under a federal program initiated by the White House. And Bredesen told them that Nashville’s ongoing tourism slump would continue to drive a bare-bones operational budget in the coming year.

He offered the same explanation to the Scene, conceding immediate strains on the city’s finances but insisting the city’s overall health was strong and that there would be no major surprises for the new mayor: “No future mayor is going to have any overhang where suddenly the bill becomes due on the arena, or the bill becomes due on the stadium or something like that,” Bredesen said in March. “It’s in the bank.”

But to hear this week’s briefing to the Metro Council offered by new Metro Finance Director David Manning, there are more than two overhangs. Manning cited a laundry list of potential expenses for the next budget year which, offset by revenue growth, account for a $12 million deficit within a $1 billion budget. So, who’s telling the truth about the state of Metro? Bredesen or Mayor Bill Purcell?

Unfortunately for the cynics anxious for more Bredesen-bashing, both are. What Purcell’s administration did this week was to lay out everything, to be more than thorough about the city’s budgetary needs, which included items Bredesen—having been mayor for eight years—didn’t feel the need to be so explicit about.

What seems like an inconsistency, in other words, really isn’t. In fact, Purcell and Bredesen talked later about the financial briefing, and for his part, the former mayor seems pleased by the new administration’s “snapshot” of where the city stands.

“I thought the presentation was fair and accurate,” Bredesen says. “I left Bill a trimmed budget, and he’s going to have to maintain it during at least the next fiscal year.”

Senior Metro Council members more familiar with the city’s budget than the fresh administration say the presentation was what they expected—and nothing to get too uptight about. They note, too, that the Purcell administration’s figures for costs are conservative, that there could be positive movement in the numbers between now and the time Purcell presents his budget in late May. In other words, there’s a little fudge in the figures, just in case costs come in higher than expected.

“I think what he did was very cleverly crafted,” says Vice Mayor Ronnie Steine. “He factored in some things that may appear to be more bleak now than they will later on.” The end result is a lowering of expectations, which buys the new mayor more time to present his initiatives. “I think that this mayor is asking for people to be patient with the things he’s promised that he’s going to do,” Steine says.

No new taxes

For those who were asleep for the Manning briefing, both the new mayor and the finance director made one thing clear: There will be no tax increase in the upcoming fiscal year—at least not one proposed by the mayor’s office.

Purcell insisted he would live within the city’s means and Manning—Purcell’s own personal Dr. No—said he had been directed to balance the budget with existing revenues. Dr. No also said there would be very little chance that city employees would get a pay raise in the coming fiscal year as they have during the last seven budget cycles. The cost for an across-the-board 3-percent raise would total nearly $30 million. “A pay plan of the size I outlined here would be very difficult to do,” he said. “We’ll bring a balanced budget.”

On the bench

This week’s budget briefing also laid bare the tenuous status of the city’s solid waste plan, and there was the almost unbelievable disclosure that the Metro Action Commission can’t account for $700,000.

Aside from the substance of the briefing, though, the new Council and other onlookers were witnessing a major transformation in the executive branch of Metro. Manning, a former state finance commissioner, was the man with the microphone, not Purcell. The mayor sat off to the side while his chief pitch man briefed the legislative body and shaped the message for the public.

It was a dramatic departure from the days of Bredesen, who, given his propensity for financial analysis and spreadsheet application, always offered his own budget briefings. He took the stump, and he took the questions.

And he’s still more familiar with the city’s spending than the new administration. During his briefing, Manning seemed to offer a correction to Bredesen’s claim to have cut departmental budgets by 5 percent during the last budget cycle. Referring to the “previous administration,” Manning said the figure is “not actually 5 percent,” that it was closer to 3.5 percent.

Asked later to clarify the point, Bredesen didn’t miss a beat. He said it only became 3.5 percent after he added employee pay raises back into the budget. “We asked them to cut 5 percent, then we gave them back the pay raises.”

Action out west

To the apolitical, it seems hardly imaginable that the two speakers—and therefore, leaders—of Tennesee’s House and Senate could have managed two special legislative sessions on tax reform without publicly offering a single opinion about a proposed income tax—or about any other piece of tax reform.

But House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh and Senate Speaker John Wilder, both Democrats hailing from West Tennessee, managed the cowardly feat during the past year. Next year they may suffer the consequences.

“I just happen to live right smack in the middle of both of their districts,” says Covington attorney Mike Whitaker, who has emerged as a refreshing, if naive, political figure.

Whitaker, who has the dubious distinction of having lost the gubernatorial Democratic primary last year to the activist John Jay Hooker, says he may just run against Naifeh or Wilder, in part because of their astonishing timidity on the tax issue. “Either one’s a possibility,” Whitaker says.

To reach Liz, call her at 244-7989, ext. 406, or e-mail her at liz@nashvillescene.com.