Nashville's Online Source for Daily News
Search Site
McMillan, exploring gubernatorial bid, now says she’s against income tax
Likely Democratic gubernatorial hopeful and former House Majority Leader Kim McMillan now says she does not believe Tennessee needs a state income tax after previously voting for it.
“I don’t think so now,” McMillan said when asked if Tennessee needed an income tax. “I think a lot of it is because we’ve had a governor like Phil Bredesen who has been able to demonstrate to the people of Tennessee that there are better ways, different ways, to manage our finances.
“And I think at this point in time it’s not even an issue because we’ve been able to establish a type of tax revenue system that doesn’t need that particular type of environment.”
In 2002, McMillan (D-Clarksville) voted for a tax reform bill that included an income tax, a controversial measure that failed on the House floor.
That year and in previous years, angry tax demonstrators had circled the state Capitol, honking their horns and loudly protesting against implementing a state income tax introduced by former Republican Gov. Don Sundquist.
McMillan, who filed papers Monday creating an exploratory committee to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, said she supported the income tax because she was following the will of her constituents, who live on the border with Kentucky, which has no sales tax on food.
“When I had to choose between a plan that would allow us to remove the sales tax on food and make us competitive with Kentucky or increase the overall sales tax with no benefit to anybody, I think that was the choice that I took at that time in line with what the constituents of the 67th District told me that they thought was more appropriate,” McMillan said.
McMillan’s entrance into the Democratic race for governor will provide the first test of how Tennesseans react to a statewide candidate who openly pushed for a state income tax.
Since the great fight over a state income tax from 1999 to 2002, no candidate has run for statewide office who openly advocated for the income tax.
Randy Button, a former state Democratic Party chairman, said McMillan’s “byline” at least early in the campaign would be that she “supported an income tax.”
“She’s got to figure out real quick on how she gets out front on that issue,” Button said. “I don’t think you can ever put it to bed solely, but I think that you do have to address it and you have to either say, ‘at that time I thought that was the best thing to do’ or come back and say, ‘I still stand behind what I did.’”
Button added: “I don’t know that you can run on that issue and be elected. I think that could be a big anchor that could drag you down.”
McMillan’s record through 12 years in the House addresses many other issues that could be planks in her campaign platform, including sponsoring a comprehensive ethics reform bill after the Tennessee Waltz sting, working to improve the state’s educational system and sponsoring Bredesen’s Cover Tennessee health insurance program in 2006.
In addition, she was the first woman ever elected majority leader of the state House, an honor she twice garnered.
McMillan says her early entrance into a primary election 27 months away will give her a chance to speak to Tennesseans about what’s important to them while acknowledging that it also affords her the opportunity to start raising money and putting together an organization for a very expensive statewide race.
On the Democratic side, McMillan may be competing for the nomination with U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Pall Mall), who once announced his intention to run for governor before backtracking, former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. as well as ex-Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell.
Button said he doesn’t believe McMillan’s entrance into the gubernatorial field will prevent other high-profile Democrats from joining the race.
“They’re going to make decisions based on what they think they can do, what the issues are going to be, and where they’re headed in their political future,” Button said.
Critics, however, and campaign opponents of McMillan will likely try to tie the income tax to her, just as Democrats will likely try to associate a potential Sen. Bill Frist gubernatorial candidacy with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush.
“I suspect that her opponents, probably both in the primary and in the general, will make her have to explain that frequently,” said Pat Nolan, a political analyst and senior vice president with the public relations firm of Dye, Van Mol & Lawrence.
After leaving the House in 2006, McMillan joined Bredesen’s administration as a senior advisor. In 2007, she left the administration to become executive director of Community and Business Relations for Austin Peay State University, a job she currently holds.
In announcing her gubernatorial candidacy, McMillan, 46, says she has the “experience, the perspective, and the desire to move Tennessee forward.”
“The people of Tennessee want good jobs, close to home. We want to send our kids to first-rate schools and we want to have safe neighborhoods,” McMillan said. “I think these expectations are reasonable.”
McMillan, an attorney, is married to Larry McMillan, a Chancery Court Judge for the 19th Judicial District. The couple has two teenage children.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Technorati
Mailing list sign-up
103 Nottingham Pl, Clarksville
Price: $113,000
Bedrooms/Bathrooms: 3/2
1340 Hwy 130 W, Shelbyville
Price: $0
Bedrooms/Bathrooms: 0/0
View More Homes
Apparently she hasn't looked at the plummeting tax revenues this fiscal year, nor does she care about the poor being punished with a regressive tax.I read a study one time that listed the handful of states that get enough tourism/illegal immigrants to make sales tax viable over income tax. Tennessee wasn't one of them.
The bottom line is this -- close to 70% of Tennesseans will do BETTER under a state income tax. That's a fact. State income taxes are deductible from federal taxes and keep money in the state, using it to shore up education and healthcare costs, which in turn means good businesses are more likely to re-locate here.This is all aside from the fact that an income tax is more progressive. Fairer to the middle and working classes. You'll remember that the biggest cheerleaders against the state income tax were from "the Lexus Brigades" of Williamson County.It's sad that state's Democrats cower on the issue and don't push harder to educate people on how a more progressive tax system will benefit most of us. In a perfect world, McMillan would use her campaign as a platform to stand firm on her support for it and educate the public about the benefits. But I'm not holding my breath. She IS a Tennessee Democrat after all.Oh, and Randy Button is a f**king hayseed hack who couldn't win a hotdog eating contest if everyone else in it was a vegetarian. If Democrats want to nominate a losing candidate, I highly recommend supporting Randy Button's choice - whoever it may be.
McMillan wasn’t asked to vote on an income tax for her district, she was asked to vote on an income tax FOR THE WHOLE STATE, and she cast a vote in favor of an income tax FOR THE WHOLE STATE, which means one of two things.Either she believed back then that an income tax was the best thing for the whole state, and is lying now about her motivation.Or she still believes an income tax is the best thing for the state but can’t say so if she wants to win so she cooked up this cockamamie “my district made me do it” excuse for her vote.Either way, she’s lying.It's a good thing that McMillan's income tax didn't become law back in 2002, else Tennessee state government's current fiscal crises would be a lot worse today than it already is.That's because, historically, states that rely on income taxes see bigger revenue declines during econommic slowdowns than do states that rely on sales taxes.And, to make matters worse, states that rely on income taxes generally see stronger revenue growth during economic booms than do states that rely on sales taxes - and, as Gov. Bredesen showed last year, no revenue surplus is too large to spend it all.Spending all of last year's $1.5 billion surplus bloated state government and made it harder for revenues to keep up during this year's economic slowdown - exacerbating the fiscal crisis.The state now faces a revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year that may reach $500 million, but the state budget as signed into law by Gov. Bredesen was $723 million over the state constitution's "Copeland Cap," which is supposed to limit the annual budget growth to the rate of growth of personal income in the state. The theory behind the Copeland Cap is that if spending doesn't grow faster than the average Tennessean's income, tax increases won't be needed to support rising spending.It works, too, except when the legislature and governor agree to exploit a loophole and bust the cap.In fact, if you trace the fiscal path that led to the push for an income tax back in 1999-2002, you'll find that the extra $1 billion in revenue that would have come from the income tax McMillan voted for (and did come from the sales tax rate increase) was only necessary because the Democratic controlled legislature had approved busting the Copeland Cap by hundreds of millions of dollars in the previous decade. When the recession hit in 2000-2001, sluggish revenue growth simply couldn't sustain all that overspending.McMillan's income tax would have been a fiscal disaster for the state of Tennessee.- Bill Hobbs
Morpheus wrote, "You'll remember that the biggest cheerleaders against the state income tax were from "the Lexus Brigades" of Williamson County."False.I was there for the protests. Most of the protestors were not from Williamson County and most of them did not drive fancy cars. Your typical protestor was of average income and drove an average car. Lydia Lenker, then a WSMV reporter and now Gov. Bredesen's flack, reported falsely that the horn honkers were mostly driving Lexuses.
I agree, tennesseegop. The ones protesting an income tax vs a sales tax are, ironically, the ones who would most benefit from such a change. It's a lack of understanding of the issue.
Will someone please define lower, middle, and upper class for me. Just give me a number. Who is the middle class everyone is so found of looking out for? What defines someone as "rich"?
Mr Hobbs hit another one out of the park. & morph I too was one of the protesters circling with my air horn to stop that ridiculous income tax in my old beat up Chevy truck thank you.