@startleseasily is a fervent observer of the Metro government's comings and goings. In this column, "On First Reading," she'll recap the bimonthly Metro Council meetings and provide her opinions and analysis. You can find her in the pew in the corner by the mic, ready to give public comment on whichever items stir her passions. Follow her on Bluesky here.
As Tuesday’s Metro Council meeting drew to a close, Vice Mayor Angie Henderson could barely contain the surprise in her voice. The council had sailed through its business in one of the shortest meetings of this term.
Henderson didn’t credit anyone in particular for the meeting’s efficiency, but I think we can all agree that my constant complaining about long meetings and unilateral cancellation of councilmembers who pull items off of the consent calendar really moved the needle. Of course, it happened to also be a meeting I chose not to live-post. Still, a win is a win.
Shoutout to all the councilmembers who made this possible. You’re the real heroes.
Rules for Thee and Me
From time to time, I’ll slip suggestions into my column to see if any councilmembers will bite. My latest foray into the world of supraliminal messaging was a proposal that would essentially put an end to the pointless practice of pulling bills off the first reading consent calendar for separate debate and consideration. There hasn’t been a successful attempt to kill a bill on first reading for years, but that hasn’t stopped councilmembers from continuing to try — and fail — to stop a bill before it passes “Go.”
This term, we’ve been subjected to some particularly tiresome and premature debates. Not a single bill this term has been rejected by the council on first reading, despite the hours the council has spent on debating these bills. To save the council from itself, Councilmember Emily Benedict is proposing a change to the council’s rules of procedure.
If Benedict’s rule is approved, only the prime sponsor could pull a bill for separate consideration on first reading. A request from any other councilmember to do the same would require a suspension of the rules. If two members objected, the rules would not be suspended. The bill would then receive the typical perfunctory approval on first reading and be routed to committee for debate in due course.
During debate in the committee, councilmembers expressed some uneasiness about the severity of the rule. Councilmembers Tom Cash and Burkley Allen were the most outspoken. “For the body to not be able to control at all … a bill makes me a little nervous,” Cash said.
Allen agreed with Cash, though she could only recall one specific instance during her 14-year tenure on the council when a bill was successfully squashed on first reading: BL2019-1474, a bill by conservative then-Councilmember Steve Glover that would have effectively outlawed the practice of unhoused people selling The Contributor — or any other such publications — in the city’s right-of-way, like on sidewalks or the side of the road. That bill failed on first reading, with only five councilmembers voting in favor and 24 voting in opposition.
The circumstances of that debate were unlike anything we’ve seen this term, though. Glover had already indefinitely deferred a similar proposal in the face of public outcry, though that proposal had itself been approved on first reading without debate. Glover was also actively working at the time to convince the state to preempt Nashville on the issue; he admitted as much to his colleagues during the first reading debate over his bill. “I’m not letting this go,” he warned. “I’m going to keep bringing it back.”
With the extraordinary circumstances surrounding that bill in mind, I’ve got a counterproposal for Allen, Cash and the other naysayers of Benedict’s rule change. To avoid performative floor speeches and ensure that a bill is only debated on first reading if there’s a legitimate chance of the council killing it, let’s set the threshold high enough to discourage political theater.
Killing a bill on first reading requires a majority of the members present and voting to vote “no.” Assuming there will always be a handful of members who choose to abstain from voting, and that full attendance at council meetings is rare, I’d propose a 15-councilmember threshold for requests to debate bills on first reading. If 15 councilmembers agree that a piece of legislation needs separate debate this early in the process, that’s as good an indication as any that the bill is not long for this world. And in those exceedingly rare circumstances, perhaps a departure from normal order is appropriate.
A Different Dead Mall Deal
As you may recall, the council last term agreed to purchase the defunct Global Mall for the low, low price of $44 million. It was a shit deal, prefaced on vague promises that Vanderbilt University Medical Center would serve as the mall’s new anchor tenant. VUMC backed out, and now we’re stuck with a depreciating asset that was never worth the money we paid for it. All told, we’ll sink tens of millions of dollars into redeveloping the Global Mall.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell was not looking to purchase another dead mall. That’s just as well, since the owners of RiverGate Mall weren’t looking to sell. Instead, they approached the administration with a proposal for a tax-increment financing deal. Tax-increment financing, or TIF, is when local governments use future property tax revenues to pay for infrastructure improvements in underdeveloped or “blighted” areas of the city. TIF essentially pre-obligates any future property tax revenues over and above what the city would be expected to take in under current development conditions in the project area — the “tax increment” — to pay back the developer for costs they incur to provide community improvements, like infrastructure and affordable housing.
The Council approved the economic impact plan for the RiverGate redevelopment Tuesday night.
I spoke with Chief Development Officer Bob Mendes, who pushed for TIF reform during his time on the council, to get a feel for why this proposal was worth pursuing. Mendes describes a fundamentally different approach to TIF for this mayor’s office, including independent financial analysis and a focus on limiting the amount of future property taxes Metro will divert to help the area address serious infrastructure challenges. Over the course of 25 years, Metro will divert up to $42 million in property tax revenue, which, according to their financial analysis, would be roughly equivalent to the cost to the taxpayer if Metro funded the infrastructure improvements itself through the capital spending process.
Mendes further differentiates this deal from others he’s opposed in that it does not obligate Metro to give back 100 percent of the tax increment to the developer. In the first five years of the 25-year TIF deal for RiverGate, Metro will retain 12 percent of the tax increment. In the remaining 20 years, Metro will retain roughly 34 percent of the increment.
All told, in 25 years, Metro will have spent less for an entire redevelopment of this dead mall than it already has just to purchase our other dead mall. Granted, it’s fairly easy to clear the “better than the Global Mall deal” bar, but hey, at least we’re clearing it.
