The Case for Ring County Rights
Less than three weeks after Freddie O’Connell signed a brand new property tax hike into law, Knoxville mayor Indya Kincannon announced her plan to raise the city’s sales tax. Between now and November, the second-term mayor hopes to hold a referendum to max out the city’s local option with a .5% increase. Of the more than $47 million in revenue the tax increase should generate, Kincannon plans to use $10 million for “affordable housing,” and $12 million for greenways and roads in a city a sixth of Nashville’s size where the crime rate far exceeds the national average. Of course, the sales tax increase is all the fault of Orange Man and his federal cuts, not the financial mismanagement that has plagued her time in office.
Taking its cues from Music City, Knoxville is becoming East Tennessee’s boomtown with an estimated 75,000 new residents arriving by 2040. It’s even begun attracting the worst specimen of coastal carpetbagging journalists. However, what unites Nashville and Knoxville is that their exponential growth is not occurring within their city limits, but the outlying suburban and rural areas like East Tennessee’s Kingston, Rockwood, Loudon, Powell, and Plainview.
Most ring county communities are lucky to have a Wal-Mart and a Waffle House (we somehow have both in Smith County). Their residents have to pass into the city limits to go Christmas shopping at the mall or see the latest summer blockbuster. In a decade or two, these areas may begin to resemble Knox County’s Farragut or Middle Tennessee’s Franklin. Regardless, they remain beholden to the whims of politicians like O’Connell and Kincannon who strain residents’ finances while making their weekly jaunts to the Big City more dangerous, their local streets more congested, and, eventually, their hometowns unaffordable as well as unrecognizable thanks to the mass exodus from city centers.
For the past three years, The Pamphleteer has repeatedly reported that Nashville is losing population in droves thanks to those heading for the ring county suburbs. According to Axios, what passes for Nashville’s population growth is now almost exclusively reliant on international migrants, which has likely changed since the article’s publication last spring in the wake of the Trump Administration's immigration reform and the ICE visits that landed Mayor O’Connell in hot water. Unsurprisingly, Memphis led the entire nation in population decline last year while the independent Shelby County suburb of Collierville has seen a 43% population increase.
According to the last census, Knoxville’s population was 198,162, Nashville’s 687,150, and Memphis’s 618,639. But, when factoring in the ring counties that make up their greater metro areas, the reality of those directly affected by the machinations that occur at city hall becomes clearer. The Greater Knoxville area serves 932,245, Nashville 2.1 million, and Memphis 1.34 million.
In the 2024 election, Nashville and Memphis were two of the only areas in the state that did not resoundingly support Trump. While Knoxvillians largely broke toward Kamala and have inexplicably kept failed U.S. Senate candidate Gloria Johnson in office, the area’s status as the sole member of Tennessee’s Big Three not under any form of unified government left Knox County solidly conservative. The ring counties of the three cities were some of the reddest in the nation. For Knoxville, this political divide is especially cumbersome as the boundaries between the city and county zigzag, including half of shopping centers and businesses across the street from each other on Kingston Pike, the city’s main drag.
From 2003-2010, Knoxville’s downtown underwent a renaissance thanks to the leadership of Bill Haslam with the storefronts of Market Square and Gay Street that had been dormant for decades full of life in a matter of months. But the draw of vibrant urban living made downtown a mecca for young liberal millennials who, combined with the lifelong lefty workforce and faculty of the University of Tennessee, have kept the mayor’s office under Democratic control since Haslam assumed the office of Tennessee’s governor. Former WWE wrestler Glenn Jacobs has proven a popular and effective Republican county mayor on par with his predecessor, Rep. Tim Burchett. But that doesn’t change that he is unable to counter Kincannon’s Blue Oasis decisions for the 80% of residents who don’t officially live in the city limits despite working and shopping there.
In recent years, the workforces, families, and business owners that make Nashville and Knoxville national hubs for what transplant Roger Simon calls Blue State “American Refugees” have eschewed downtown corridors for quieter lives. The result is that Franklin is fast becoming the cultural center of Middle Tennessee. Mt. Juliet increasingly serves as homebase for Greater Nashville’s most eccentric businesses from VHS rental shops to artisanal dog biscuit bakeries. The suburban bigbox stores in all these areas have begun attracting residents of the city proper because they can shop at these locations unencumbered since half the inventory isn’t locked behind glass security cases. Nashville may be Tennessee’s quintessential city, but the state fair’s recent merger and move to Wilson County in 2021 speaks volumes.
Though addressing disenfranchisement of ring county residents’ say in metro policies may prove difficult, our state and local governments have numerous avenues at their disposal. The obvious solution would be to allow those who work in the city limits or reach a certain tax threshold to vote in city elections. Thankfully, Tennessee does not allow cities to implement income taxes like a host of metro areas from NYC to Bowling Green, KY. While the logistics would be a nightmare for state election commissions, one can only imagine the havoc that the 1.6 million people who commute to NYC daily would wreak on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
A less chaotic and more realistic approach would be for the state legislature to designate Greater Metro Area Commissions that would step in to vote on seismic changes that affect ring counties such as Mayor O’Connell’s transit plan or tax increases in the state’s three biggest cities and Chattanooga. These governing bodies could consist of already serving mayors and council members instead of necessitating brand-new offices.
Those concerned about expanding the size of government could also opt to have ring county officials call a vote on city policies related to taxes and other initiatives that would affect them. Given the Tennessee Court of Appeals’ recent rebuke of home rule provisions that will allow the General Assembly to cut Nashville’s Metro Council in half, constitutional challenges should be kept at a minimum.
Since officials like Mayors O’Connell and Kincannon have routinely expressed their contempt for geographical borders and boundaries when wading into the immigration debate, such an extension of voting rights and oversight beyond city limits should also dovetail nicely with their personal politics as well as the beliefs of many members of their councils.
As The South enters an era of unprecedented growth, states like Tennessee can no longer afford to remain beholden to Blue Dot politics that the overwhelming majority of their general populations oppose. Our cities have the opportunity to become the type of cultural and economic hubs that showcase the best of America. But all whose lives are intertwined with their success should have a say in how they are governed.