Lawyer Retires To Change Nashville’s Tax-Related Law

an image of downtown Nashville.

A local lawyer is pursuing one more change to Nashville’s legislation, which would limit the city’s leaders’ authority to increase taxes.

Lawyer Jim Roberts’ team has delivered over 200,000 petitions as emails to Nashville’s voters, in the hope to get 6 proposed changes to the city Metro Charter. They expect that the proposals would be on the coming May/June ballot. In 2020, the attorney and his group got the required signatures for another iteration of the ballot proposal. However, a Nashville-based judge regarded the proposal as against the law and said that it should not go in front of Davidson County’s voters.

On this occasion, Roberts said that there are changes he feels would aid his proposal in passing legal review. One of those is the new iteration that would cap tax raises to 3%, whereas the old one would have withdrawn the raise for the present city budget. Moreover, Roberts included specific citations in the Nashville Metro Charter. Experts and attorneys said that it is not possible to include Roberts’ earlier version in the charter by obscuring where every single thing should go, plus what it has to substitute in the present charter.

Roberts also included severability clauses in a few of the legal provisions. At the time of the earlier version being in court, that judge stated that it is impossible for her to unilaterally eliminate a few parts of that proposed charter iteration with no severability language.

The proposed revisions from Roberts are as follows.

  • Limit increases in property tax rates to up to 3% per annum, plus establish the same rates before 2020’s increase for 2021 to 2022 and 2022 to 2023 periods
  • Simplify recalling elected Nashville officials by shrinking the signature count needed on the petition to recall them, plus adding a rule that would keep the recalled people from running in the US recall election
  • Protect the charter amendments that voters initiate, from revisions
  • Eliminate health insurance and other lifetime benefits for the elected people
  • Require a Nashville Metro Council majority that is greater than the simple one to transfer the city’s property, plus a Nashville tax referendum for real estate property transfers worth above $5,000,000
  • Clawback Nashville land in the event of a sports franchise not competing for over 24 months

As for Roberts, people are unhappy regarding this. The lawyer said that he is not attempting to sell people something they would not like to have. Almost everyone in Nashville feels this is irresponsible and outrageous, and they would like the changes. A vote would happen on this. The Metro could not stop the six proposals.

In spite of the attorney’s changes, there are political and law-related challenges. Those who oppose the changes cite Tennessee law that authorizes Nashville Metro Council to set tax rates. Moreover, critics wonder whether changing the law associated with sports stadium contracts and applying those amendments to finalized deals, such as Nashville SC’s, would be lawful. Further, the Nashville officials’ benefits-related line item seems to be excessively vague to some people. The attorney expects that the matter would reappear in court.

That is needless to say the fiscal issues that Nashville’s leaders say the attorney’s proposals would bring about. The lawyer refused to reveal the names of those offering monetary support.

Opinions of Nashville Metro Council

Nashville Metro Council member Tanaka Vercher said that the strain on departments already struggling to offer services to a quickly growing city would make things worse. The same would happen in the case of neighbors viewing service response times as unreasonably long. That situation would damage the act of delivering the services and would set Nashville back.

As for Vercher, Nashville officials have fared terribly at communicating with voters regarding the city services’ cost. Anyhow, she added that individuals should notice the effect of the Mayor of Nashville John Cooper’s suggested capital spending scheme. This plan has a lot of money in maintenance and new projects, including a police precinct in the Southeast that Vercher’s constituents strongly want to have.

Metro worker representatives, too, warned against this proposal.

SEIU Local 205’s president Brad Rayson said that signing the petition means agreeing to close your libraries, fire stations, community centers, and community parks. It would not only bring about drastic reductions in Nashville services but also ruin the city’s school system. Rayson made an appeal to any person who cares about Nashville not to sign the petition.

Metro Council members and the city mayor’s team are working on the coming year’s budget. In the event Roberts’ proposal passes in May/June 2021, then it could upend the budget procedure, with city leaders scrambling to adhere to its restrictions before the next fiscal year starts.

Another Metro Council member, Kyonztè Toombs, said that her constituents may be unhappy about paying more taxes, but they know the reasons for the higher rates. Anyhow, they are looking forward to knowing which services would accompany the higher rate of tax.