Nashville News Blog

Eric Crafton has shown some real growth since his days shilling for La Migra.

We can say one thing in defense of Eric Crafton's latest cause, requiring that new Metro employees live in Davidson County: It's not nearly as absurd, divisive and half-baked as his previous raison d'être, the resoundingly defeated English Only bill.

And that's about the only thing. The bill is wrongheaded for a number of reasons, many of them verbalized by Crafton's fellow Metro Council members in Saturday's Tennessean story on the subject:

• It significantly shrinks the recruiting pool during one of the most challenging times Nashville and the nation have ever seen. We need the best and the brightest to fill Metro positions, and the larger the pool, the better the chances of finding those applicants.
• The housing market is abysmal right now, and unemployment is high. Homeowners living in surrounding counties who want to apply for Metro jobs would have to try to sell their houses in the worst market we've seen in years.
• Metro had such a policy in place till 1994, and it just encouraged people to lie about where they lived. There are good reasons the rule was repealed.
• And as council member Randy Foster put it so perfectly: "I just don't think it's right that Metro employees should be bound to the land like Russian serfs."

Crafton, meanwhile, feels that working in Nashville is a privilege that should only be afforded to Davidson County residents. But, as council member Greg Adkins pointed out, that approach is ass-backwards. Instead of mandating people to live in Davidson County, why not work to make Davidson County a more attractive place to live?

Still, unlike the English Only bill, Crafton's "Davidson Only" proposal isn't bat-shit crazy. And maybe that's a step in the right direction. Attaboy, Eric!