Updates
My latest Nashville City Paper column is online here. Also, the Tennessean story referenced in the post below indicates just how little that paper's reporters truly understand about state government.

The Tennessean says the State Funding Board "consists of economists and others." In fact, there are no economists on the State Funding Board. None whatsoever. By law, the Funding Board has the following members: the governor, secretary of state, comptroller of the treasury, state treasurer, and commissioner of the Department of Finance and Administration. The Funding Board is an arm of the executive branch.

The Board does call economists to testify. In the last four years, as the Sundquist administration has pursued an income tax, the Board has heard routinely from a small group of economists hand-picked by the administration who tend to support the administration's views on revenue and taxes. It has NOT felt the need to call the highly distinguished economist William Ford, even though Dr. Ford teaches at Middle Tennessee State Unviversity less than an hour's drive from Legislative Plaze. Perhaps that's because Ford publicly doubts the wisdom of an income tax.

Nor does the Funding Board call on economist J.R. Clark, holder of the Probasco Chair of Free Enterprise at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, or Coldwell Daniel III, Professor of Economics at the University of Memphis, to testify. Both, incidentally, are among 53 economists across the nation who have endorsed a South Carolina gubernatorial candidate's proposal to eliminate that state's income tax. You can see why the administration wouldn't invite them to testify on taxes.

For more on that click here and here.