Metro Government has responded to a criticism that Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s proposed transportation plan is not legal under state law.
Nashville Tea Party founder Ben Cunningham recently called O’Connell’s referendum illegal because it would increase taxes to fund projects he argues are not covered by the IMPROVE Act, like sidewalks and traffic signals.
The Tennessee Star sent an email inquiry to Metro’s Department of Law Director Wallace Dietz asking him to confirm whether the transportation plan is covered by the IMPROVE Act.
“Mayor O’Connell’s transportation improvement program complies in every way with state law,” Dietz said in an email. “If approved by the council and the voters on November 5, the funds raised by the dedicated revenue will add buses, bus routes, bus transfer stations, smart traffic signals to expedite vehicular traffic, and sidewalks to connect adjacent neighborhoods to bus transfer stations and routes. State law permits each one of those pieces of the program.”
Cunningham disagrees.
“What [O’Connell’s] done is he’s put a lot of elements in this plan which are not mass transit,” Cunningham said in an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “There are many elements of this plan that are simply illegal… Let’s hope that we can find a good attorney that will challenge this in court on behalf of Nashville taxpayers because it needs to be challenged.”
The IMPROVE Act, signed into law in 2017 by Governor Bill Haslam, created a mechanism by which some county governments could levy a tax to fund a “public transit system.”
A public transit system is “any mass transit system intended for shared passenger transport services to the general public, together with any building, structure, appurtenance, utility, transport support facility, transport vehicles, service vehicles, parking facility, or any other facility, structure, vehicle, or property needed to operate the transportation facility or provide connectivity for the transportation facility to any other non-mass transit system transportation infrastructure, including, but not limited to, interstates, highways, roads, streets, alleys, and sidewalks,” according to the IMPROVE Act.
O’Connell’s transit plan, called Choose How You Move, will upgrade about 600 traffic signals, make a complete network of sidewalks, purportedly improve safety, and offer public transportation at all hours, every day.
Cunningham said in a previous installment of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that sidewalks and traffic signals are normal parts of a city’s budget.
“What [O’Connell’s] doing is taking those elements, putting them in this IMPROVE Act referendum, and the IMPROVE Act was never meant to include those elements,” he said. “It was specifically meant for mass transit: buses, trains, that kind of thing. It says in the definition of the act ‘shared transport.’ It’s specifically and explicitly and clearly for mass transit.”
Cunningham went on to warn that O’Connell’s plan is one step toward the goal of “leftists” to “get us out of our automobiles.”
O’Connell unveiled the details of the plan on April 19, but the plan must still be approved by the state comptroller and the Metro Council before it appears as a referendum on the ballot on November 5.
In the meantime, two former members of O’Connell’s election team, attorney Charles Robert Bone, and a “pro-transportation committee” will drive a political campaign for the transportation plan, Axios reported.
The campaign aims to raise between $3.5 million and $5 million, Bone told Axios. The previous transit referendum held by Nashville in 2018 had an effort that reportedly raised $3 million.
“We’re not taking anything for granted,” he said. “We know this isn’t going to be a cakewalk; it’s going to be really hard.”
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Matthew Giffin is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Matthew on X/Twitter.
Photo “Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell” by Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
Fast Freddie wants to tax you to pay for parks, and call it transportation.