by Joe Sullivan
With the deadline for balancing the state's budget little more than two weeks away, most Knox Republicans in the House of Representatives have failed to support any measure to get the state out of a $945 million hole.
That hole represents the shortfall between projected revenues and the funding needed just to sustain existing programs at present levels. The shortfall doesn't include $453 million in additional outlays that Gov. Don Sundquist has recommended primarily for educational improvements, TennCare and a 3 percent pay raise for state employees.
Only one of the five Knox Republicans in the House, Rep. Jim Boyer, has supported either of the two revenue raising proposals to come to a vote in the House. One is Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's plan for a 4 1/2 percent state income tax coupled with selective sales tax cuts that drew the backing of the two Knox Democrats, Reps. Joe Armstrong and Harry Tindell. The other would extend the sales tax to most presently exempt goods and services, raising $950 million according to its co-sponsors, Republican Reps. Bob McKee of Athens and Chris Newton of Cleveland.
Despite Boyer's ardent appeal for support of the McKee-Newton plan, Knox Republican Reps. H.E. Bittle, Steve Buttry, Bill Dunn and Jamie Hagood all opposed it. They also ignored an appeal by conservative Democrat Rep. Frank Buck of Doweltown to abstain from voting rather than rejecting the plan outright.
Outright rejection by a 50-vote majority in the 99 member House could have invalidated inclusion of any of the provisions of McKee-Newton in any subsequent revenue-raising measure that might yet surface this year. To keep this option alive, 32 members did abstain, and Buck is now in the forefront of trying to build a coalition for what he terms a "tread water" budget that would include $700 million to $800 million in new revenue. Though he won't be specific about the inclusions, his approach is believed to be based on sales tax extensions, an increase in vehicle and sin taxes and possibly the diversion to the state's general fund of existing vehicle tax revenues that are now dedicated to the Department of Transportation's heretofore sacrosanct road-building program.
In the weeks leading up to the May 29 House vote on McKee-Newton, Hagood, in particular, had sounded supportive of it both in an appearance on WATE-TV's Tennessee This Week program and in a conversation with this columnist. She says she ended up opposing it primarily because it failed to protect Tennessee-based providers of professional services against "unfair competition" from out-of-state providers on whom the services tax lacked enforcement provisions. As to why she didn't abstain, Hagood says she believes in voting bills up or down.
Buttry has also professed support for broadening the base of the sales tax but says he opposed McKee-Newton because it didn't produce an accompanying reduction in the sales tax rate that he'd anticipated. Their bill would, in fact, have reduced the statewide rate to 5 1/2 percent from the present 6 percent effective July 1, 2003, but Buttry says that wasn't enough. An earlier version would have cut the rate to 3.7 percent and still raised revenues but only by subjecting health care services to the tax. These had to be excluded in order for the bill to have any chance of passage.
Dunn, for his part, is opposed to any new taxes except for the 30-cents-a-pack increase (to 43 cents) in cigarette taxes for which he is the Legislature's foremost champion. Even at that level, the cigarette tax would only yield an additional $217 million—far short of what's needed to forestall deep cuts in public school spending under what's known as the DOGS budget (for Downsizing Ongoing Government Services). But Dunn is unperturbed by such a prospect because he's disdainful of the state's public school system to begin with. "We've doubled public school spending over the past decade, and student test scores have gone down," says this ardent proponent of home schooling and student vouchers.
Bittle did not return phone calls seeking an explanation of his position.
While Hagood and Buttry profess aversion to the DOGS budget, all four of these Knox naysayers belong for now in the ranks of what's come to be known in Nashville as the legislature's "Do Nothing Caucus." (Note: Too late for Metro Pulse's deadline on Wednesday, Buck was due to be unveiling his "tread water" budget, and Hagood was due to be a co-sponsor. So perhaps she is starting to paddle.)
Still, as Election Day approaches, it would be awfully nice if each of them had "Do Something" challengers so voters could have a choice. Unfortunately, only Hagood faces such a challenge.
It comes from Craig Kisabeth, a math teacher and former football coach at Jefferson County High School. In an oddly shaped new district that combines Jefferson County with portions of South Knox and the Sequoyah Hills and Rocky Hill precincts in West Knoxville, Kisabeth may be perceived as the Jefferson County candidate. But Knox voters should listen closely to what Kisabeth has to say.
"When you've got a state with a fiscal problem as serious as we have and your legislator makes no proposal to remedy it, that's very unprofessional," Kisabeth asserts. "The present situation is totally ridiculous, and we need to elect people who aren't afraid to make a decision." As for what course he would favor, Kisabeth says, "I am in favor of looking at an expansive services tax, an additional car tax, higher sin taxes...I want to look at all of them. Education is the key to this state's future, and I won't sit back and let it suffer." Like Hagood, Kisabeth is opposed to an income tax.
Buttry's Republican primary opponent, Stacey Campfield, is even further to the right and believes the budget can be balanced through spending cuts—though he's not clear how. Bittle and Dunn are unopposed.
Sophomoric Sen. Tim Burchett is also up for reelection. His principal opponent, former Democrat Sen. Bill Owen, is an articulate advocate of tax reform based on an income tax—to which Burchett is opposed. But the Republican incumbent has at least supported boosting revenues somehow, albeit in the form of raising the state's regressive sales tax. So he can't be placed in the "Do Nothing" caucus.
Come June 30, woe unto those who remain there.
June 13, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 24
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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