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Mayor Karl Dean is misleading the public about the state of Metro's finances and making a political mistake by not preparing voters for the need for a property tax increase.

Just about everyone familiar with the city's finances figures a tax hike will be needed next year to avoid some serious slashing of spending. But as we write in this week's Scene, Dean has been running around the city telling people that a little belt-tightening will take care of our problems.

To this point, Dean has pretended not to understand the troubles that lie ahead. (Or maybe he’s naive. Over drinks during the campaign, one Dean adviser griped to Scene staffers, “We’re talking about a candidate with about as much political sense as this beer mug.”)

At Glencliff High School during one of his town meetings last month, Dean actually said this: “The stars have sort of aligned right now in our city where we can make an investment in our schools.” And this: “If we plan for some tight years, we’re going to be fine.”

In his State of Metro speech Tuesday, he suggested “smart fiscal management” is all that’s needed. “Although times are tight,” he said, “we know that will not always be the case.”

Dean did say during last year's election campaign that he wouldn't raise taxes as mayor. But breaking that promise is inevitable. With the kinds of comments he's making, he'll eventually damage his credibility with voters, and he's going to need it. When the time for the tax increase arrives, he'll have to mount a big campaign to persuade the public that the city needs more money. Then, how's he going to explain away all those times he said the government could manage its way out of trouble?

I just finished reading The Tennessean's series on Metro schools, which I found refreshingly pessimistic. But in part two of the series, which reported on the supposed superiority of Williamson County schools, I couldn't find any discussion of the racial and ethnic profiles of both districts. It would be lovely if those weren't factors in a school district's performance but because of a host of thorny issues—segregated housing patterns, the challenges in educating immigrant children—we can't just ignore them because they make us uncomfortable.

Perhaps the most irritating part of the story was when a Williamson County biz pig claimed that civic leadership is responsible for the district's academic profile, even though the county largely gets to educate the children of middle and upper class parents. Even Pedro could have handled that task.

The Hill newspaper, which functions as the class secretary of the D.C. political world, has asked all the U.S. Senators how they would respond if offered the vice presidency of these United States. The answers range from the hilarious—“I would say, ‘You’re out of your mind,’ ” said Sen. James Inhofe, (R-Okla.)—to the succinct—“Nope,” said Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.)

The Tennessee delegation, consisting of Republicans Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, also said they would decline the veep position if asked. In his three-sentence answer, Alexander comes off as both a know-it-all and a chauvinist. If only Congress were always so efficient.

Both senators' full answers after the jump. Hat tip, Wonkette.

Bob Tuke is walking across Tennessee. What an original idea! And he's wearing his combat boots. He's an ex-Marine. But how could you not know that? With nearly every breath he takes, he tells us that he was a Marine.

"This march also will demonstrate an important difference between Lamar Alexander and me," Tuke says in an email to supporters today. "My boots aren't a gimmick – they are the real thing, earned by military service in war. Our nation is fighting two wars now and we need at least one more senator who has fought in combat and understands the difficulty of ending a war with minimal casualties and maximum honor."

Personally, I'm tired of hearing Tuke talk about his military service. To some voters, it may matter as a sign of his willingness to sacrifice for his country. And that's fine. But it's wrong to claim, as Tuke is doing, that military service is a prerequisite to understanding foreign policy. If that were the case, then Barack Obama, whom Tuke supports, shouldn't be president.

Mayor Karl Dean, operating in a tight budget year, was reduced this morning to trying to make a big deal out of a few minor initiatives in his first State of Metro speech.

Nashville has been chosen to participate in a National League of Cities program, which apparently will bring more "small learning communities" to schools. The juvenile court system is going to start running an attendance center for kids who play hooky. And the mayor will add funding to the capital budget for a DNA crime lab for police.

Otherwise, Dean congratulated Maplewood High, arguably Tennessee's worst school academically, for losing the state championship football game. (The Panthers "outplayed all but one other class 4A football team in the state last year," Dean gushed.) And he recognized a couple of cops for fixing a family's flat tire last Thanksgiving. We're not making this up.

There was nothing in the speech about the central issue confronting Dean's administration: how hard it will be for Metro to raise enough revenue to provide the same level of services in the future because of the 2006 charter amendment that requires public approval of property tax rate increases. In fact, Dean pretended it'll only take "smart fiscal management" to overcome these little pesky money problems we're facing now.

"Although times are tight," the mayor said, "we know that will not always be the case." That's reassuring.

After the jump, the text of Dean's speech.

Progressives statewide will gather Friday and Saturday for the Tennessee Alliance for Progress’s fifth annual Compass conference in Nashville. The Friday highlight is a celebration and awards ceremony featuring celebrity populist Jim Hightower. Saturday brings a morning keynote by former Mayor Bill Purcell, and a bunch o’ panels on social justice, the environment, workers' rights, globalization and more. A closing keynote late Saturday tackles “Hip-Hop as a Force for Community Empowerment.”

The full scoop here. I’ll be a panelist Saturday on the topic “Government as an Agent for the Common Good.” (This one’s for you, Gilbert M.)

But this time it's a David Carr piece in the Times recounting how Village Voice Media's Mike Lacey and partner Jim Larkin are taking on the crooked Phoenix sheriff who had them arrested for, as Carr puts it, "committing journalism."

Reporters around the world work under state-imposed limits on information, and there are even places where police show up in the dead of night and spirit them away to jail for having the temerity to commit journalism. It is a grim tableau repeated too often all over the world: it happens in Iran, it happens in China, it happens in Zimbabwe. And last fall, it happened in Phoenix.

The staggering drama—go read the whole piece—makes me wish just a little that Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall was a mercenary backwater jackass, which he is not. Course, there's always Terry Ashe.

Former Tennessean columnist and anti-abortion crusader Tim Chavez has started a blog called Political Salsa. Last September, we reported that the Gannett-owned daily unceremoniously canned Chavez after he took an extended medical leave to beat leukemia. His column has been replaced by the writings of radio bloviator Phil “Shooter” Valentine. Chavez’s blog appears to have launched on Sunday, so there are only a few posts up right now. Topics so far include media criticism and wild political speculation.

We’ll be watching…

Jim Cooper is ranting against Hillary Clinton again for opposing his health-care reform bill back in 1993. To the Memphis Daily News, he comments on The Hill newspaper's report last week that Rep. Lincoln Davis, one of the Democratic Party's uncommitted superdelegates, turned down an invitation to meet with Clinton.

"He says that's not true," U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., told The Daily News about Davis' refusal to meet with Clinton. "But that's on the front page of The Hill. I told him he might as well go ahead and endorse Barack (Obama), because once Hillary sees that he's a dead man anyway."

There's more Cooper venting in the article. He paints Clinton as petty and vindictive, which is an interesting complaint coming from someone who's still steaming over something that happened 15 years ago.

Cooper's comments prompted the blogger Chris Bowers to examine the congressman's ancient health-care plan. He calls Cooper "a right-wing Democrat, about as bad as they come" and puzzles over how he gets away with it while supposedly representing a relatively liberal district. We've been asking ourselves that question.

A sidebar piece in Sunday’s Tennessean package on public schools raised a contentious issue that rears its head every so often: Does it matter whether elected officials and civic leaders who make so much noise about improving public schools send their own kids to public schools? The Tennessean story reminded us that both the mayor and the chair of the Metro Council’s education committee are privateers when it comes to educating their own children. Some say this is no big deal—your kids’ education is your own business. Others find it unsettling (that’s putting it gently) that those who would control the system’s fate think the schools are good enough for other people’s kids but not their own.

Does a different standard apply to those who serve on the school board? That question popped up last week on a Pith comment thread about District 9 school board candidate Alan Coverstone, whom I described as an involved public school parent (which is true). An anonymous commenter then offered up the factoid that one of Coverstone's kids will go private next year. Invited to comment, Coverstone, a teacher and administrator at Montgomery Bell Academy, tells Pith:

My older son is very excited about the prospect of attending USN next year, and I hope that every 5th grader in Nashville will be as excited about school next fall. I am and will remain an active public school parent at Hull-Jackson, and I am running to make sure that every family who struggles with what is best for their children will have options that their children can be excited about. I am committed and passionate about public education. I believe that we can bring all communities together to expand the choices parents have in public schools. My experiences in private and public education, as well as my personal experiences with the most personal of school choice decisions, qualify me to bring people together for the common good of all children and families in Nashville.

My own view is that everyone—elected officials included—has the right to educate their kids as they wish. But if you’re going to seek public office with direct responsibility for the school system—the largest piece of the county’s budget—you incur an obligation to say publicly and specifically what it is about the system that makes it unacceptable for your own kids. You might not be morally obligated to send your kid to public school, but you do have a moral obligation to say concretely why not. To say it's “what we think is best for our children; it's not a political decision," as Karl Dean tells The Tennessean, doesn’t cut it. The system is made worse when the city’s elites, people with money and influence to invest in the system's future, abandon it. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Only in Washington. For those who weren't aware, three of Tennessee's U.S. House members voted against motherhood this week—including one member with ovaries, Rep. Marsha Blackburn. (John Duncan and Zach Wamp cast the other two votes.) From the Washington Post's Dana Milbank today on this staggering floor vote:

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

Just in time for Mother's Day. Asses.

The 67th running of the Iroquois Steeplechase is Saturday and, at the risk of offending my Nfocus cohorts upstairs who generously ply me with Hot Tamales, I'm here to say there are myriad reasons to avoid this event. (To support Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, just write a check.)

Back to those reasons: If you don't have an aversion to animal cruelty, then consider the portable potties, which are often positioned beyond a well-traveled swath of mud; the inbred monied elite who, what with their plastic surgery and creepy smiles, look like Appalachians in linen; and the overabundance of dirty feet, which happen when the younger attendees abandon their open-toed contraptions for a more carefree existence.

Other reasons include possible sitings sightings of John Jay Hooker and Vic Lineweaver.

Tennessee Democrats have found a new issue for this fall's legislative elections. Over the weekend, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey criticized a gas tax holiday as "a short-term gimmick" that would "devastate our road construction budget." Today, Sen. Jim Kyle has suddenly decided it's a great idea.

"If 49 states in the country are going to have a gas tax holiday, then I believe that Tennessee should have one, too," Kyle says. "I'm committed to making sure that we get a break at the gas pumps just like everyone else.

Gov. Phil Bredesen, taking time out from budget cutting, is criticizing superdelegates who haven't made up their minds yet.

"For a lot of people, it’s a lot easier to hide in the weeds here until the convention comes around," he tells Politico.

Did Bredesen declare who he's supporting? We must have missed it.

Faced with new scrutiny of the infamous Bredesen Bunker, your Tennessee governor's office is making the unlikely claim that emails transmitted on public computers and with state addresses are not necessarily public record, a mind-boggling stance that contradicts years of accepted practice here and throughout the country.

Late last year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research asked Gov. Phil Bredesen's office for copies of all emails related to the ongoing renovation of the Executive Residence, a massive project that sparked controversy among Republicans and the first couple's immediate neighbors. But administration officials refused to turn over correspondence it regards as “personal,” even though state open records law makes no such distinction.

After the jump, we bust out some Tennessee Code Annotated for y'all: