Glenn Jacobs, Tim Burchett and Mike Ragsdale ought to take Tommy Schumpert out to dinner.
Back in 1999 – before county executives ran down to Nashville and got their title changed to mayor so they’d be more instantly recognizable as big shots when visiting dignitaries came to town – Schumpert was a year into his second term of office.
A quiet, modest guy, he had been a coach and a business teacher at Central High School for decades before taking a job as Knox County Schools’ finance director when his colleague Earl Hoffmeister was elected superintendent of schools. Schumpert ran for trustee in 1990 and then faced off against incumbent County Executive Dwight Kessel in 1994.
Schumpert won, and it’s probably worth mentioning that he is a Democrat and Kessel a Republican. That doesn’t happen anymore.
Schumpert defeated another Republican in 1998 and passed some big-ticket items, including a growth policy plan that was adopted statewide and eventually resulted in curbing involuntary annexation in Tennessee.
But nothing was bigger than his 1999 budget proposal, which was based on a record-setting 55-cent property tax increase that translated to a 20 percent tax hike. He got it, mostly thanks to city-dwelling commissioners, but we haven’t had another property tax increase (or a Democrat as mayor) since then. Schumpert’s successors – Ragsdale, Burchett and Jacobs – were elected on the Reagan-esque promise not to raise taxes.
Unlike Schumpert, both Ragsdale and Burchett had plans for elected office beyond the sixth floor of the City County Building. Ragsdale, who saw himself in the governor’s office one day, wooed the likeliest of voters by building senior centers, offsetting the cost with a wheel tax. He saw his political star dimmed by a variety of high-profile scandals.
Burchett, who emphasized paying down debt and made a swearing-in-day show of giving back the keys to the mayor’s county-owned vehicle, stretched his budget by selling off county property and had a hand in building three schools, one of which – Carter Elementary School – he proudly paid for in cash. He has moved on up to the Second District Congressional seat. Courthouse insiders say that Jacobs, a small-government libertarian who has barely been in office long enough to find the men’s room, has his eye on a future run for governor.
But he has fewer options than his immediate predecessors since Ragsdale wore out the wheel tax and Burchett sold all the surplus property that wasn’t nailed down.
And in addition to facing the usual pressure points of education and law enforcement, Jacobs has gnarly, expensive Twenty First Century issues. The population has grown by some 100,000. Floods, fires and giant sinkholes won’t fix themselves, and Jacobs isn’t about to touch that third rail of GOP politics – taxes.
Twenty years ago, Schumpert’s humongous tax hike was called historic. And it has been. Imagine where teachers’ and deputies’ salaries, roads and parks would be without it.
That’s why they need to take Tommy to dinner. They’ve dined out on him for a long, long time.