Much ado about an income tax that is dead, buried

 NASHVILLE - If there's been a campaign season filled with more irony and contradiction than this one, I don't recall it.

Today, in the midst of the Republican gubernatorial primary's slugfest over taxes, Democrat Mike McWherter's camp issued a press release accusing Republican Bill Haslam of "lying" about Haslam's father's role in supporting a state income tax in 1999.

The issue - fought between Bill Haslam and Zach Wamp on the Republican side - is how big of a role Jim Haslam II, Bill's father, played.  Jim Haslam was one of four board members of a group called Citizens for Fair Taxes, organized by Democratic Nashville businessman Clayton McWhorter (who, ironically, considered running for governor in the 1990s) to support Republican Gov. Don Sundquist's tax reform push in 1999.

CFT was in the news when it was founded, and it was widely reported at the time that "Big Jim" Haslam was a board member.  A Sept. 11, 1999, Commercial Appeal article that I wrote noted Jim Haslam's board membership while reporting that the group planned to spend $1.8 million on its campaign in support of tax reform. including a statewide TV ad that likened Tennessee's tax system to a Ford "Model T" - antiquated.

The ad did not specifically advocate for an income tax, nor specifically for Sundquist's plan, but instead said that the state budget crisis at the time "is real" and "needs to be fixed."

Bill Haslam vigorously denies Wamp's charges that if he is elected governor, he'll consider a state income tax.  Wamp bases his charge on Haslam's father's role in the 1999 effort and the fact that Bill Haslam pushed through a 13 percent property tax hike in his first year as Knoxville mayor to close a budget deficit.  And the fact that the state faces a much larger deficit next January when the new governor takes office and hundreds of millions of dollars in federal economic stimulus money ceases flowing to the state.

But the irony of McWherter weighing in on an issue about whose father did or didn't support an income tax is, of course, that McWherter's father Ned McWherter actually did propose a state income tax plan when he was governor in 1991 - the first serious run at an income tax since the 1960s. Like Sundquist's a decade later, it failed to win legislative approval.

This is a good place to note the utter nonsense of raising the specter of a state income tax in the first place.  The last time it was on the table a decade ago, it led to a bitter 3½-year legislative battle that involved protests at the State Capitol - and the legislature soundly rejected it.  In the decade since, most of its erstwhile supporters have either been voted out of office, retired or changed their minds on the issue.  Republicans now control the General Assembly. Other than a handful of Memphis legislators, no one campaigns in favor of an income tax.

In short, there is no chance that an income tax will pass the Tennessee legislature in the foreseeable future. But of course, the phrase "state income tax" retains a powerful ability to arouse political passions. 

The gravamen of McWherter's press statement today was not the income tax itself but rather that Bill Haslam "lied" when he told The Associated Press Wednesday that his father did not play a leading role in the 1999 effort.  "He (Wamp) makes it sound like my dad was out leading the effort, which is not true," Haslam was quoted as saying.

As noted, Jim Haslam was one of four publicly identified board members of CFT.  It's up to voters to decide whether that constitutes "leading the effort" - and even whether or not what Jim Haslam, now 79 and retired, did 10 years ago as one of Tennessee's top business leaders matters in his son's race for governor, when his son has pledged opposition to a state income tax.

Rather than viewing the whole affair as irony, it's likely that Mike McWherter - who faces no opposition for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next Thursday - is trying to inoculate himself against a potential general election attack over his own father's advocacy of tax reform a generation ago and perhaps also trying to influence the outcome of the GOP primary.  A Tennessee Newspaper Network poll last week indicated Haslam would be his most formidable opponent in the general election.