When last we left the Davidson County Election Commission on June 25, they voted 3-2 to hold a Sept. 21 date for county residents to vote on 4 Good Government’s slate of anti-property tax charter amendments. No matter that Chancellor Russell Perkins had just gutted the proposal and canceled the July dates, the election commission pressed on.
After hearing from their hired counsel who had just lost in Perkins’ court — Vanderbilt’s Jim Blumstein and Bradley Arant’s Austin McMullen — the Republicans on the committee were assured that the state Supreme Court would take up their case and overturn the Chancery Court decision, hence the vote for a new election date.
Now we know that’s not going to happen.
In response to a lawsuit filed by Save Nashville Now this week, Blumstein and McMullen admitted that there is no way the appeals process will be completed in time. An agreed order by both Save Nashville and the DCEC concludes that “based on the current schedule in [Metro v. DCEC], it is impossible for the respondent to hold an election on September 21, 2021.”
The state Supreme Court earlier this month denied the DCEC’s so-called “reach down” motion to skip the Court of Appeals, which then denied the DCEC lawyers’ request to act in an expedited fashion to hear the case. It will be months before we know the results of this phase of the litigation.
The election commission has not set a date for their next meeting, but high on the agenda will likely be a vote to cancel the Sept. 21 election. Chairman Jim Delanis had hoped to hold a vote on 4 Good Government’s proposed changes before the next round of property tax bills goes out in October.
As for the Save Nashville Now suit, Perkins set dates in August for briefings by both parties.
