Clifford Allen - Assessor of Property

Assessor of Property

In 1960 Allen was elected Assessor of Property for Davidson County, Tennessee. This position was (and generally still is) widely regarded as an unglamorous administrative courthouse position, little-noticed by the public except when complaints are made about increasing property assessments. However, Allen was to make it his political base for the next 15 years. In 1962, Nashville voters agreed to merge many of the functions of the former City of Nashville municipal government and those of Davidson County into a metropolitan government. While the position of assessor of property (popularly referred to as "tax assessor") was retained in the combined government, Allen decided to run for mayor of the consolidated city-county. Allen finished second behind long-time rival Beverly Briley, the last county judge (chief executive) of Davidson County. The new Metropolitan Charter required a runoff since no one received a majority, and Briley defeated Allen in the runoff.

Allen long had positioned himself as a populist, a defender of the rights of the elderly, impoverished, and "average people". He worked to make a certain amount of property held by elderly homeowners with low incomes exempt from property tax. The issue with which he will be perennially identified in Tennessee political history is undoubtedly that of "Question 3". The Tennessee State Constitution had stood unamended from 1870 to 1952, the longest any such document had ever stood such in the world. In part, this was due to the extremely difficult procedure set by the document for amendment. One of the methods permitted allowed the legislature to put on the ballot a call for a limited constitutional convention, one which would be limited to discussion and proposals on only those parts of the constitution named in the call. This procedure was limited to once in a six-year period; beginning in the 1950s conventions began to be held almost as often as allowable, and had made considerable changes in the state's basic document, such as allowing city-county consolidation as alluded to above and also for other updatings such as the extension of gubernatorial and state senate terms from two to four years, allowing legislators to be paid over and above expense money, and other similar modernizations. Allen began to shape the 1971 convention to suit his principal issue. In Tennessee, the rate of assessment to appraisal on property taxes had long varied from county to county, with some counties applying the entire rate (expressed as dollars and cents per hundred of value such as "$1.27") on the entire appraised value of a property; most others applied a percentage of it, which varied wildly (from as low as 25% to as high as 70%). This system was needlessly confusing and arcane, and made comparison of tax rates from one jurisdiction to another very difficult (which some stated was one of the prime reasons for its existence). Allen managed to explain this difficult and confusing issue in such a way as to win a large majority for the holding of a constitutional convention in which it would be discussed. It was known as "Question 3" because the legislature at the same time proposed four other constitutional sections for discussion at the same convention; however these other propositions were all voted down, limiting the scope of the convention solely to the property tax issue. Allen was aided by the existence of the six-year limit between such events; opponents of a state income tax were aware that if a convention were to be held and limited to the property tax issue, another one at which an income tax might be proposed could not be held for at least another six years.

Having helped pass the call for the convention, Allen then set out to shape it to his ideas, firstly by winning election to it as a delegate while continuing to serve as assessor of property. Allen soon became the leading figure of the convention, and its proposal, which called for an assessment of 25% of appraised value on residential and agricultural property and 40% on commercial property and even higher on utilities, was essentially Allen's plan, and was subsequently approved by Tennessee voters and remains the law as of 2012 except that the U.S. Senate overrode the higher tax rate on utilities at the urging of Senator Howard Baker. This victory helped to assuage the defeat which Allen had suffered earlier in the year, when he lost another race for mayor. In this race Allen was shocked to have finished fourth, well short of participation in the runoff (which again was won by Briley over runner-up Casey Jenkins, a former motion picture projectionist who had gained notoriety largely as an opponent of forced busing for school desegregation).Progressives such as Allen in this election were hurt by the busing decision that was announced in the month before the election and fueled massive white turnout for the anti-integration candidates such as Jenkins.