Compelling case for a freeze

Commercial Appeal
April 11, 2006

Shelby County has at least 84,000 residents who have passed the 65-year mark, including more than 14,000 who are living on incomes below the poverty level. It's not clear how many more are trying to stretch fixed incomes to cover expenses that climb year after year.

After coping with rising utility bills, property reassessments and tax increases on food, medicine and the like, many could enjoy their senior years a lot better -- and be able to stay put in Shelby County -- if they could assume that their property taxes wouldn't keep going up year after year.

The Tennessee General Assembly has set the wheels in motion on a local-option property tax freeze for the over-65 crowd by placing the measure on the November ballot.

A constitutional amendment is necessary because earlier attempts by the General Assembly to deal with the issue legislatively ran into constitutional problems.

The current bill, a longtime legislative goal of state Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, that was sponsored in the House by Reps. Tre Hargett, R-Bartlett, and Kim McMillan, D-Clarksville, deserves the support of every Tennessee voter with sympathy for the plight of the fixed-income senior. If the amendment is passed in the fall, there will be a domino effect on local governments, whose across-the-board property tax increases would no longer apply to qualifying seniors.

Lawmakers can provide something of a cushion by supporting local-option measures such as an adequate facilities tax to help offset some of the money being shelled out by local governments to support suburban growth and development.

The measure has the support of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, who told a South Tipton County Chamber of Commerce group last week that the county might be able to avoid the kind of massive debt that Shelby County has accumulated with a tax on new development.

Negotiations are under way to bring the idea to the top of the legislative agenda in Nashville. Proponents are laboring against real estate and homebuilding interests. In a telling moment, one Tipton County builder said last week he could see the need for the revenue but still couldn't bring himself to support the measure.

Because of the opposition, advocates may have to settle for a local-option tax that couldn't be enacted unless local governments exhaust other sources of revenue and be able to demonstrate a clear and present need for more.

Regarding the constitutional amendment, the General Assembly would pass guidelines that local governments would have to follow and would have the authority to set an income and wealth ceiling on eligibility.

All of which is not exactly what proponents of local autonomy have in mind. But it would represent some progress on the effort to put more local decisions in the hands of local government.

And it would help offset the revenue losses resulting from much-needed property tax relief for seniors, a group whose struggles to hang onto their homes is getting more difficult with every passing year.