When it's called something else.
A story in today's Tennessean picks up on the issue of whether the $20 increase in Davidson County's wheel tax "regulatory license" fee is legal given state law indicating that a county vehicle privilege tax requires two-thirds council approval. (Hobbs is also back on this story today.)
The official explanation comes from Metro Council staff director Don Jones, who says the council has the power to raise a licensing fee with just a majority vote. According to the Tennessean story, when this fee was last increased in 1991, the council amended the Metro Code of Laws to change the phrase "wheel tax" to "vehicle regulatory license." However, if you look at the relevant chapter of the Metro Code, you find that the articles on the vehicle fee are titled "privilege tax" - which is the identical term used to label motor vehicle taxes in section 5-8-102 of the Tennessee Code (requiring a two-thirds vote on two occasions).
Even if we accept the somewhat tortured bureaucratic logic differentiating a vehicle regulatory license from a wheel tax, there is still the matter of how the roughly $9 million raised by the fee increase will be spent. Section 5.32.170 of the Metro Code is clear that it can be used only "for the promotion of traffic safety and the installation of signs, signals, markings and other safety devices for regulating traffic on the streets, roads, alleys and thoroughfares of the metropolitan government" (plus cover costs of collecting and administering the fee).
In a comment thread here at PITW a few days ago on this issue, Councilman David Briley asserted that Metro spends "substantially more" than $9 million on these functions. But of course, $9 million is the amount of new revenue the fee increase will generate. The proper question is whether we spend more than the total (perhaps three times as much) raised through the vehicle fee on these functions. The answer is elusive because in the city's complex budget these expenses are spread across several departments, such as police, public works, etc.
All of this needs to be persuasively clarified if Nashvillians are to have confidence that the wheel tax regulatory license fee increase is legal and legitimate.
