We've won. Now what?
The income tax is dead. Three years of efforts by the governor and some legislative leaders to impose an unconstitutional income tax on the people of Tennessee have failed. Here's an interesting question: What do we do next?

A one-year increase in a variety of existing taxes balances the state budget and pays for a laundry list of unnecessary spending for this fiscal year and leaves the next governor and legislature to solve for the long-term the conjoined issues of how much the people of Tennessee will be taxed, and how much the government will spend. It also leaves a question for the anti-income tax forces: What do we do now?

For three years, we have been on defense. The Sundquist administration and its pro-big government pro-income tax allies have been on offense, driving down the field in a series of grinding short-yardage plays. They fell perhaps a yard short of the end zone. The good news is the coach – Sundquist - is retiring, while the quarterback, House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, has endangered the loyalty of his troops with his arrogance and his deceptive tactics. Some are suggesting the back-up get the starting role. Meanwhile, key running back Sen. Bob Rochelle may well be taken down for a loss in his re-election bid.

Soon we'll have a new coach – most likely one who campaigned against the income tax and for living within our means.

It's time our side stop playing defense and devise a plan for an all-out offensive against government waste and high taxes. While we are no longer threatened by an income tax, we remain subject to nearly two dozen various taxes and fees, none of which are capped and all of which combine in most years to produce more revenue than the state has budgeted to spend. And that surplus money – funds the Sundquist administration calls "unbudgeted dollars" – does get spent. The administration spends it without going through the constitutionally mandated process of the legislature passing a law appropriating it. Not only does that violate the state constitution, which says in Article 2, Section 24, "No public money shall be expended except pursuant to appropriations made by law," it sets a higher baseline on which the next fiscal year's budget is built.

Such spending is not the only way government spending is out of control in Tennessee. In the past two decades, the legislature itself has used a legal loophole to pass several budgets exceeding the constitutional limit on spending growth by a combined $2.2 billion in the first year of those budgets. Because each subsequent fiscal year budget is based on a higher baseline, the cumulative affect of all that overspending is billions of dollars in higher spending – and higher taxes for Tennesseans, whose taxes have skyrocketed since 1978, when the spending cap was first put into the constitution.

Unless we go on offense and reverse the trend, Tennessee inexorably will become another high-tax state.


The Fowler plan offered the opportunity for a constitutional convention on taxes. It would have made it much easier to go on offense against the income tax and high taxes in general. Unfortunately it did not pass. That makes it tougher to go on offense. Tennessee also lacks the initiative-and-referendum process, a powerful tool citizens in many mostly western states have to fight back against arrogant, over-reaching government.

But go on offense we must.

Rather than sit back and enjoy the death of the income tax, we must realize that – unless we take control of the game – taxes will rise as legislators and governors of the future decide, like Sundquist did, that it's easier to break a promise than restrain spending.

So … what do we aim for?

Colorado serves as an excellent model. There, a decade ago, voters approved an amendment to their constitution that forbids the government raising taxes, or increasing spending beyond the rate of inflation plus population growth without getting the people's approval via a referendum. It's called the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, it applies to the state as well as counties and local municipalities, and Tennessee's taxpayers desperately need the same protection.

For Colorado taxpayers, it has meant billion-dollar surpluses have been returned via tax rebates rather than used to fund pork projects and fuel faster spending growth. It also gives them a say in whether tax rates rise or new taxes are imposed. It has also lessened the power of special interests - because proposals to spend excess funds must be crafted to appeal to a majority of the electorate, rather than used to curry favor with special interests and lobbyists. The result is a government that is truly of, by and for the people of Colorado, and a government that must justify its requests to spend more and to reach deeper into people's pockets.

Amazingly, over half the time voters in Colorado have approved the higher spending or taxes the politicians have sought – but always after a spirited public debate in which those who favor the spending or the taxes must explain and defend their plans. It has created a more accountable and more efficient government – and a more engaged people. Tennesseans on the right and the left side of the political spectrum agree those are good goals, and a Colorado-style Taxpayers' Bill of Rights should gain wide acceptance among the people of Tennessee once it is explained to them.

But Tennessee will not have a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights in its constitution unless we first formulate a concrete plan for just such an amendment, explain it to legislators, legislative candidates, gubernatorial candidates and, most importantly, voters, who must be convinced that it is a key issue on which they should support or vote against a given candidate. Such will take a coordinated long-term political effort – a political action committee, well-funded by donations from Tennesseans who believe taxpayers should be protected from the endless upward spiral of spending and taxing.

Had Tennessee already had a strong Taxpayers Bill of Rights, the last three years of anguish over the income tax would never have happened. Don Sundquist, Jimmy Naifeh, Bob Rochelle and the rest of Team Income Tax would have had to ask the people to support their plan, rather than merely try to ram it through the legislature by deliberately spending Tennessee into a fiscal crisis.

It's time for a well-coordinated, well-funded effort to build support and establish a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights in the Tennessee constitution. It's time for Permanent Offense. If you'd like to be a part of a group working to establish just such an organization, or would like to help fund the effort, please contact me at the email address in the "about this site" box in the right side column.

Thank you.

Postscript: For more on the Colorado Taxpayers' Bill of Rights please read two columns of mine published last year and one published last March in the Nashville City Paper.

Finding Common Ground on Taxes - August 23, 2001
Tennessee Should Consider Taxpayers' Bill of Rights - August 30, 2001
Spending Cuts Now May Lessen Future Deficits - March 21, 2002