What is “the referendum”?
A referendum is a vote by the general public on a single issue. “The referendum” that you keep hearing about is the result of a petition started by a radical, right-wing group called 4 Good Government that is funded by the Koch Brothers.
This is the second recent attempt of 4 Good Government to bring a referendum to the ballot in Nashville. The last attempt was struck down by the courts.
What does this referendum do?
The current referendum will bring about many drastic changes to our city, but some of the most important are:
1. Roll back property taxes to 2019 levels, which will cut education, teachers, teacher pay, schools, firefighters, public services and public employees, trash pick-up and makes for slower first responders response time.
2. Make a property tax increase of even 3% go to a public referendum. An election could possibly happen multiple times a year making the funding of essential services and education unreliable. It puts Nashville into a perpetual fight for basic funding and caps this funding source.
3. It will limit revenue to fund public schools, public services and public safety funding which are funded by revenue from the property taxes collected. It will in effect have an immediate impact on the current state of funding for teacher pay increase (those will end).
4. It would only require 10% of the voters in the last election to recall an elected official. Plus, that elected official’s name could not even be on the new election ballot. For example, if a council member was elected with 5,000 votes it would take 500 signatures to recall that elected official and that person would be disqualified for running for the seat in the recall election.
I thought the referendum got struck down by Chancery Court. Is it still happening?
Unfortunately, yes. The Metro Election Commission voted on Friday, June 25th to appeal the Chancery Court decision. That means the question of whether the referendum can go to a vote will be taken up by an appellate court. There were some really questionable things that happened at that meeting, including the Election Commission’s current lawyer’s involvement with drafting the referendum. The case could continue to be appealed all the way to the TN Supreme Court. The referendum election has been rescheduled to September.
Where can I find more information about this?
What Can I Do to Help?
MNEA is not going to sit around and wait for what you fought so hard to achieve to be taken away. We have joined up with the Nashville Justice League to run a grassroots canvassing campaign to make sure voters are ready and informed. By joining us, you will be making sure voters understand what is at stake.
Click here to sign up!
#WeIsGreaterThanMe #MNEA #UnionStrong #FightForTheSchoolsOurKidsDeserve