July 24, 2002
A monumental decision faces Republicans in this state. This decision could have repercussions for many years to come. In the August 1 st primary, Republicans will choose their candidate for governor to take on Phil Bredesen in the fall. The conventional wisdom has been that Van Hilleary would be the standard-bearer. In recent weeks, people for whom I have a great deal of respect have asked me to take a closer look at Jim Henry. Mr. Henry has always had a standing invitation to be on my show and last week he took me up on the offer.
I must admit that he impressed me during our interview. I asked him point-blank about the salient issue of our day: the income tax. He responded that the only way he would support an income tax is if the people voted for one in a constitutional convention. That ran counter to his earlier statements in various newspapers where he said we would have to either broaden the sales tax base or enact an income tax to fund state services. Mr. Henry maintained that his statement to me was his solid position.
Apparently, Mr. Henry's campaign got a boost from his appearance on the show and he asked to come back on. A second interview would give me the chance to probe a little deeper and probe I did.
I asked Mr. Henry about the fact that although our state constitution limits government spending to growth in the economy, it also allows the general assembly to bypass that provision with a simple majority vote and spend whatever they want. He said there was no such provision to bypass it. Now, I've done an extensive budget analysis each year for the past four years and I was sure of this fact. I was also sure that we had busted the cap on numerous occasions over the past 20 years but Mr. Henry insisted that we could not exceed that limit. How, then, had we increased our spending at double, sometimes triple, the rate of inflation and population growth?
Bill Hobbs, a columnist and ardent student of the budget process, called up after Mr. Henry's interview to inform us that not only did Mr. Henry know about the cap busting provision, he sponsored such a measure on more than one occasion when he was in the legislature!
I also asked Mr. Henry why we didn't adhere to the law requiring zero-based budgeting. That law compels each government department to justify spending from the ground up each year as opposed to incremental budgeting, which simply adds on money to their budget. Mr. Henry insisted that zero-based budgeting only passed this year and had not been tried yet. When I informed him that it was the law but was being ignored by the Sundquist administration which claims the law is merely ‘a suggestion,' Mr. Henry was adamant that no law existed. The truth is, the law has been on the books since 1977 and has been widely debated in the general assembly since then, including the time he was there.
I don't want to be too brutal but I found serious gaps in the truth with Mr. Henry that seemed too egregious to simply write off to a faulty memory. These gaps brought into question his promise to only support an income tax if approved by the voters.
Having picked up endorsements from two of the most damning sources in the state – Governor Sundquist and The Tennessean – Mr. Henry seems to be playing both sides of the fence. There's a good reason why both of them like Jim Henry and it should be reason enough to scare any good Republican to death.