Nashville’s property #tax rate has increased a historic 34% in recent years. You’d think members of the city’s Metro Council would be looking for ways to trim expenses, but more than half of the council dragged their feet when the time came to discuss changes to current lifetime healthcare benefits for themselves and their families. These changes will save Nashville millions of dollars in the future.

Metro Council members who serve eight years – just two terms on the council – were given health insurance for life, continuing even after they are done serving. Metro paid 75% of their expenses, a benefit not found anywhere else in the country. Taxpayers have been footing the bill. It is good news that future council members will not receive the same unprecedented deal because we simply cannot afford it.

The topic of ending these benefits has been brought before the council on many different occasions in the last eight years. In September 2020, council members voted to defer discussion of changes to the benefits until March 2021 with a narrow majority of twenty to eighteen votes. Taxpayers are understandably livid.

Nashville is already billions of dollars in debt. City leaders should be looking for every way to cut costs before raising taxes. Instead they are treating the exorbitant healthcare coverage as something that is absolute. They voted to lower the coverage for future members of the council, yes. But this will not have any effect on current council members.

The health benefit will cost taxpayers $839,000 this year, $1.2 million next year, and will only continue to increase if left unadjusted. The fact that the council wanted to delay a vote on the important issue of amending these health insurance benefits shows poor stewardship of Nashville’s tax dollars, and an apathetic response to the city’s taxpayers complaints.