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Election Commission hires a new attorney to assess referendum signature issue





Blumstein

Blumstein

Davidson County Election commissioners will engage Vanderbilt law professor Jim Blumstein to provide independent legal advice on the number of signatures needed to trigger a citywide referendum election petitioned by 4 Good Government.

Commissioners met at the Howard Office Building on Tuesday evening to discuss hiring an attorney to advise on whether the 4 Good Government group, represented by attorney Jim Roberts, has filed enough signatures to trigger a referendum election to roll back property tax rates and five other reforms. Roberts has already filed a lawsuit on behalf of 4 Good Government over the number of signatures needed.

Commissioners discussed Thursday whether to keep on former Tennessee Supreme Court Justice William Koch and Junaid Odubeko of the Bradley Firm, who represented the commission in last year’s case, or to engage other attorneys.

Commissioner Tricia Herzfeld suggested retaining Koch and Odubeko, as they are already familiar with the case from previously serving the Commission.

 

 

But the three GOP-appointed commissioners raised concerns that Koch and Odubeko have a conflict of interest because Metro Legal retained them to continue representing the Commission before the Commission went through organizational proceedings during its meeting on Tuesday.

“It is a little concerning that all this stuff was pre-done at the last meeting,” said Commissioner Dan Davis, who assumed his role on the commission Tuesday.

Commission Chairman Jim DeLanis said the advice commissioners have received so far from Metro Legal and from Koch has been “adversarial in nature.”

“I believe there is a conflict. I think everybody recognizes that Metro Legal has a conflict in advising us on matters of substance relating to this referendum petition,” DeLanis said.

DeLanis said the commission was not consulted before being informed that Koch and Odubeko had been retained by Metro.

“I would have problems with proceeding with him,” DeLanis said. “Even though we are, and we should be independent from Metro, Judge Koch made a decision to be retained by Metro without consulting with us.”

Metro Legal Director Bob Cooper said the two had been retained “in the interest of time.”

“It was certainly not intended in any way to infringe on this commission’s prerogative to choose whatever attorney it wants to choose,” Cooper said.

As an alternative, DeLanis suggested commissioners engage Vanderbilt University law professor Jim Blumstein to review the relevant documents, prepare a written opinion on the matter, and appear before the commission within the next week to discuss it further.

DeLanis said Blumstein would charge within the range of $15,000 for the services. The Commission voted unanimously to engage Blumstein.

Commissioners also discussed retaining Austin McMullen, of the Bradley Firm, to join Blumstein as legal counsel in future legal proceedings, but did not vote on the matter.

The effort is the second in less than a year to get such proposals before voters. After a trial last fall, a similar petition was ruled unconstitutional due to issues with the way it was written. This time around, before the content of proposed changes can even be discussed, commissioners must determine whether the 4 Good Government group collected and filed enough signatures to trigger a referendum election.

A total of 14,010 petition signatures were filed with the Metro Clerk last month. Since then, Election Commission staff have worked through three rounds of signature verification.

Currently, 12,398 petition signatures are certified, after duplicates and other invalid signatures were disqualified, Administrator of Elections Jeff Roberts confirmed on Thursday.

According to the Metro Charter, to be placed on a ballot for a citywide election, a petition must be signed by at least 10% of voters who participated in the last citywide election. Based on voter turnout in Metro’s general election last August, more than 12,100 signatures would be needed, according to Metro Legal. But if petition signatures needed are based on voter turnout in the November election — in which there was one election for a vacant school board seat — 31,000 signatures would be required to trigger an election.

The petition proposes six separate amendments to the Metro Charter that would:

• Require next year’s property tax rate to revert to the level it was before the 34% increase was approved last year, and bar the Metro Council from raising property tax rates by more than 3% in any fiscal year without voter approval.

• Eliminate lifetime benefits for elected officials.

• Prohibit the Metro Council from transferring publicly owned parks or land without support of 31 council members, and require a referendum for approval to transfer any property valued at more than $5 million.

• Require that if a professional sports team like the Titans leaves Nashville, or no games are played for more than 24 months, related facilities become public property.

• Bar the Metro Council from undoing any changes to the Metro Charter made by voter petition after Jan. 1, 2021, by requiring another voter petition to undo such changes.

• To trigger a recall election for an official, lower the number of voter signatures needed from 15% to 10% of voters in the official’s district who voted in the previous metro general election, and extend the days to collect such signatures from 30 to 75 days.

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