Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto to the newsmakers line to discuss his background, fiscal accomplishments, and whether or not he is a true conservative.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line now by the Mayor of Wilson County, Randall Hutto. Good morning, Mayor Hutto.
Hutto: Good morning to you. How are you?
Leahy: I’m great. You have a very interesting background. You’ve been the Mayor of Wilson County since 2010. That’s a long time. And now you’re running for re-election in 2022. You have a couple of challengers.
But before we get into that, I want to talk about your background. You were a teacher. You went to MTSU. Got a master’s at Trevecca.
You’ve been a teacher and coach at Lebanon High School for about 20 years, from 1984 to 2003. What did you teach? What did you coach?
Hutto: I was the head boys basketball coach for twelve years there and assistant football coach for 18. I started out teaching general math and then went to my minor, which was history, and then ended up in physical education in the gym.
Leahy: So it’s interesting that you are a basketball coach. That’s a serious gig here in Tennessee to be the head basketball coach. How did you like being a basketball coach? How did your teams do?
Hutto: I really enjoyed that. Of course, today it kind of still comes back to you when you go to Kroger or Walmart. People say, hey, coach, how are you doing? And so those special relationships were good.
I was really blessed to have some good teams through there. We went to the state tournament in ’94, ’95. I went 2000 and 2001. So three times we got to go there, which was a blessing for us.
As a matter of fact, the coach that got the players that got us to the Final Four actually was the coach this year of Lebanon High School, Jim McDowell. And he coached them and took them to the Final Four. So relived a little bit of history this year.
Leahy: Did you play basketball in college or just in high school?
Hutto: Just in high school.
Leahy: Were you a guard? Were you a shooting guard?
Hutto: It was a guard, yes, sir.
Leahy: I thought so. I don’t know why, but you got the look of a shooting guard.
Hutto: Short so I could be inside.
Leahy: I was the playmaker guard in high school, but I’m 5’9 and a half on a good day.
Hutto: I got you. We’re very close.
Leahy: We’re very close. Then you were the assistant Superintendent of schools for seven years and ran for county mayor. Tell me about this Wilson County.
You began your role as county mayor there in 2010. 12 years ago. My goodness, what growth have you seen in those 12 years?
Hutto: It has been tremendous. We were the third fastest-growing county last year. The year before that, we were the first fastest-growing county. And so I guess people want to move here. Number one, because of the educational system that we provide.
The low tax rate is definitely a big one. Proximity to Nashville probably is another reason. But really and truly, if you get to come and live here, I think it’s really because of the great people that live here in our county.
Growth, of course, is good and bad. When you grow, of course, I talked to some county mayors that talk about they don’t have any growth. And since they don’t have growth and the cost of employees are going up, the cost of materials are going up, and they have to raise taxes.
Of course, in our case, we don’t have that problem because the growth is coming in and our property values. We had reappraised last year. Let’s say you went to bed on in the home, it was worth $200,000.
You may wake up and it’s worth $300,000. You didn’t pay any money for that. And of course, a lot of times people will say, well, they raise my taxes. Well, the state makes you do a certified tax rate, and then the County Commission has the option to raise your taxes.
So our County Commission did not raise the taxes, and we dropped the tax rate from $2.51 to $1.90. So that part is good. When you talk about growth, too, I think you want to say, well, can you control growth?
And I looked at the last four years of where growth came in Wilson County, 52 percent of the growth came occurred in eleven city limits, 32 percent came in the city limits of Mount Juliet. 4 percent came in Watertown, and 15.6 percent came in the county.
The Board of Zoning Appeals has really worked hard at trying to preserve the rural area in Wilson County there that we control. I went back and did a little bit of study over that over the last ten years.
And let’s just say Grandma wants to sell her 300-acre farm. She has that right to do that. And she also has the right by law to put two houses per acre.
But she could come to the Board of Zoning Appeals and say, hey, can I put four houses there? And the Board of Zoning Appeals has really done a good job of not letting a density occur in a rural area.
Leahy: Let me ask you this question. So you have a challenger, at least one, maybe two. Phillip Warren, who worked with you, I think as election administrator there for many years in Wilson County.
He was on the show and basically, he says, you’re a nice guy, but you’re not conservative enough. I hear a lot that Randall Hutto is not a conservative. He’s really an establishment Republican.
And there’s a lot of politics in Wilson County back and forth between sort of conservatives and grassroots conservatives and establishment.
I don’t know all the details, but you seem to be right in the middle of that. Tell us how you characterize yourself as a county mayor.
Hutto: I think most people would call me a conservative. Some people, they call me cheap in some areas, but yeah, we strive hard to take care of our dollars here. And I’ll just give you some examples.
We took advantage of the low-interest rates that have been occurring recently to save the taxpayers $17 million, and you have to kind of stay on that to be able to do that.
We worked hard in our finances to try to make sure that we are clear on what we were doing. And as you look at that, we developed a program called a Clear Gov Where people can go and actually look at our budget for transparency reasons to analyze where our money is at and what we’re doing with that.
We moved the bond rating from AA to AA-plus, and we’re actually going for AAA plus. AA plus, there’s only five counties in the state that have that.
Leahy: So your bond ratings are pretty good. I’m trying to get at this characterization, though, that you’re part of the establishment. I keep hearing grassroots folks say, well, Randall Hutto is more of an establishment guy and he’s not a true conservative.
Are there any particular issues out there that would illustrate that where there’s a difference between you and your challengers, Philip Warren being one?
Hutto: Can you give me a better example, which if you’re not talking about conservative on the monetary side, tell me what you’re thinking about maybe?
Leahy: I’m just telling you what I hear and I’m just trying to see if you can kind of translate that to us, because a lot of this stuff to me, the reason I ask it because I am not sufficiently familiar with all of the inner details of what’s going on there.
But IÂ do get a sense that there’s a lot of sort of intraparty back and forth in Wilson County that kind of pits one group against the other. That’s kind of what I’m trying to elicit from you.
Hutto: I really don’t know that that exists in our county. I think, of course, definitely at our level that we serve all the people that come in there to our office and try to make sure that everybody is served, regardless of if you want to talk about the party.
Of course, my background has been a Republican since 2010, since I got in the office, for sure. I don’t see that at our level. When people walk in the door. Nobody talks about, hey, I’m a Republican. Can you help me? I’m am a Democrat, will you help me.
Leahy: In the day-to-day Mayor Hutto, you don’t really see those stark differences that I hear about?
Hutto: No, sir.
Listen to the full interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
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