Tax Defeat a Tennessee Tradition

September 16, 2005

 

I was pleasantly shocked after the recent vote in Nashville to kill the proposed sales tax increase. I must admit, I truly thought the tax increase would be embraced by the voters. After all, it was “for the children,” right? But the voters responded with a resounding NO!, defeating the tax increase by a better than two-to-one margin. This is a county that went 55 percent to 45 percent for John Kerry in the last presidential election. My faith in the people of Nashville was restored. They haven't, as I had feared, been taken over by the Peace & Justice crowd. At least, not yet.

 

The citizens of Nashville had just been victimized by a 25 percent increase in their property taxes along with a $20 increase in their wheel tax. Apparently, they were fed up with being bled dry by their elected officials. The schools insisted they had to have a huge infusion of cash to continue yet their most dramatic jump in test scores came last year when schools merely got a cost-of-living increase. They cried wolf once too often.

 

The bigger picture for the state of Tennessee is even more encouraging. The wolf cry has been sounded all across the state and people just aren't falling for it. Last year, several counties resoundingly rejected an increase in their wheel tax after citizens collected enough signatures to put the issue in front of the voters. Seventy-two percent of Williamson County voters rejected the wheel tax increase. 74 percent of Cheatham County voters did the same.

 

Citizens from all across the state congregated in front of the State Capitol on numerous occasions between 2000 and 2002 to show their disdain for a state income tax. State lawmakers, who had been eye-balling that new vault of money, had their noses slapped back from the trough by thousands of angry, horn-honking, over-taxed citizens.

 

Are we starting to see a trend here?

 

It seems our elected officials routinely raise our taxes when the opportunity arises while we – the citizens who pay them – routinely reject higher taxes. Is that because we're too stupid to realize we need to spend more money? No. It's because we expect government to do exactly what we do when money is in short supply: cut back.

 

When confronted with the prospect of belt-tightening, the Nashville schools director claimed there was no place to cut. As those words fell from his lips, he was employing not one but three secretaries with a cumulative salary of $127,000. If budget-trimming opportunities like this are right under our bureaucrats' noses and they can't see them then it's doubtful they'll be able to make the difficult cost-cutting decisions. That's why it's important that the citizens force them to make the tough choices by denying them more money.

 

‘Oh, but we have to raise taxes to keep the services coming,' they claim. Tennessee relies primarily on sales tax revenue. A sales tax is a percentage of the cost of goods and services. As those costs increase, the sales tax increases proportionately. We should never have to raise the sales tax rate. Never. It is designed to keep up with our needs but it will never keep up with their greed. We were told by the Sundquist administration that the sales tax was antiquated and would never keep up with inflation. So far this year, inflation is running at around 3 percent. For the same period our sales tax revenue is up 6 percent, about twice the rate of inflation.