Sometimes, the thinking behind a piece of legislation eludes me. House Bill 47, for instance, filed for consideration by the recently convened 113th General Assembly of the State of Tennessee. The bill seeks to designate an additional state motto: “Send Me.”
Send me? Send me where? Why? When? The language of the bill offers no explanation.
Other times, the rationale is abundantly clear. House Bill 48, which seeks to cut the Metro Council from its current 40 members to 20, is a dish served cold to Nashville officials.
The bill is sponsored by Rep. William Lamberth, the Republican majority leader. Its Senate counterpart is sponsored by Sen. Bo Watson, another Republican and the chairman of that body’s Finance, Ways and Means Committee and the Rules Committee. Significant political juice fuels the measure.
“Government functions best closer to the people,” Lamberth said in a statement. “This legislation will strengthen local democracy and competency by improving the ability of local elected leaders to effectively represent their communities.”
Two points. First, if government does indeed function best closer to the people, how can making it more distant – by doubling the number of people each council member represents – strengthen democracy and competency?
Second: Strengthening democracy and competency is not the aim, whatever tales legislators may spin. Putting the screws to Nashville is the point.
Retribution of some sort has been expected from the Republican-dominated legislature since the Council thumbed its nose at hosting next year’s Republican National Convention. More payback might be coming – never underestimate the spitefulness of G.O.P. legislators – but this is a pretty potent opener.
And it does raise a question worthy of discussion: Is a 40-member governing body too unwieldy for a city the size of Nashville?
In a 2016 study, Columbus, Ohio, compiled a list of council sizes for the top 25 U.S. cities in terms of population. Nashville, 25th in population, had more council members than all but New York City (51 members, first in population) and Chicago (50, third). Memphis, just ahead of Nashville in population, had a 13-member council. Los Angeles, second in population, had 15.
At least one member of the Metro Council, Robert Swope, favors the legislation.
“Right now, 40 people can’t get anything done,” The Tennessee Conservative quotes Swope as saying. “We live in a city that is growing at an exponential growth rate and as a consequence, we need to become much more efficient and effective in government, and large does not always mean good.”
Swope is a noted Trumper in blue Nashville, so I’d be pretty happy if he can’t get anything done. He also disputes the RNC decision as being the only motivating factor behind the bill, accusing Metro over the years of “poking the bear.”
It’s a colorful phrase, and perhaps accurate. But if ever a bear needed poking…
And the fact is, the issue of the Metro Council size has been addressed “closer to the people,” as Lamberth might put it. In 1958, Davidson County voters rejected consolidation under a charter that provided for 21 council members. In a second vote in 1962, the proposed council had been expanded to 40 members, and the charter passed.
More recently, in 2015, a ballot initiative seeking to reduce the council to 27 members went before voters. It failed by 25 percentage points.
So if the question comes down to whether the legislature should be meddling in local Nashville affairs, the answer is pretty clearly no.
Especially by legislators who resist and resent pretty much every federal “intrusion” into their own realm.
What the legislature should be doing, however, seldom bears much resemblance to what it is doing. The issue is power, who has it and how effectively – punitively – it can be used.
I wondered whether Metro has any recourse, other than seething and Mayor John Cooper’s factual but toothless statement that the legislation “undermines the will of Nashville voters and effective local governance.” So I asked Wallace Dietz, director of Metro’s legal department, if more might be coming.
“I have significant concerns about the legality of this legislation and have asked my team to take a serious look at it,” he said.
Sounds like reason for hope.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.