A mayor who believes the rules are for everyone but her…

A message to the members and supporters of Friends of Old Hickory Lake and Make Gallatin Nice Again

A mayor who believes the rules are for everyone but her…
Could Gallatin Have Its Own "Black Wednesday"?
 

Attorney Tom Lee, who represents the citizen plaintiffs in Alfieri v. Brown, published a sobering opinion piece in last Thursday's Gallatin News that every FOHL and MGNA-PAC member should read carefully. His warning is simple: Gallatin may be walking straight toward a legal and political mess that another Tennessee city has already lived through — and it isn't pretty.

Lee opens with a story many of us have forgotten, or never knew. Back in 1994, Knox County voters adopted a charter imposing two-term limits on their elected officials. For over a decade, nobody enforced it. Officials kept running, kept winning, and kept serving — until 2006, when a handful of incumbents finally noticed the law might apply to them and sued the county for the right to stay on the ballot. The Tennessee Supreme Court's answer, in Jordan v. Knox County, was unambiguous: the law meant what it said, and every one of those officials — the sheriff, the county clerk, the trustee, the register of deeds, and multiple commissioners — was removed from office by court order. The fallout from that ruling triggered what Knoxville still calls "Black Wednesday": a chaotic, hastily called meeting to fill eight sudden vacancies that itself violated the state's Open Meetings Law so badly it shut down county government for months.

Sound familiar? It should. In 2018, Gallatin voters approved term limits for the mayor and city council by an overwhelming 80-20 margin. The language was crystal clear at every stage: it was what the Legislature approved to authorize the referendum, what the City Council put on the ballot, and what the Gallatin News itself reported to voters — that the mayor and council would be "limited to three consecutive four-year terms." Even then-Councilman Craig Hayes, who was preparing to run for his own sixth consecutive term, told the paper, "I've always been for it." The voters agreed with him, decisively.

Now, Mayor Paige Brown appears to be preparing to run for a fourth consecutive full term. A Sumner County Chancery Court judge has ruled — for now — that she has the right to do so, reading an ambiguity into charter language that council members, state legislators, local media, and 80% of Gallatin's own voters never saw. But as Lee points out, that ruling is not the last word. The case is now before the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and ultimately may reach the Tennessee Supreme Court — the very court that, in the Knox County case, sided firmly with the plain meaning of a voter-approved term limit, even after officials had been re-elected under the assumption they were exempt.

Lee's closing line is the one worth sitting with: Gallatin does not need its own Black Wednesday. If the appellate courts read our charter the way everyone else has read it since 2018 — the council, the press, the Legislature, and the voters — the law will be enforced, whether that happens before November's election or after it. Anyone who casts a ballot for a fourth Brown term should understand exactly what kind of legal uncertainty they may be voting into.

A mayor who believes the rules are for everyone but her...

What should trouble every citizen of Gallatin isn't just the legal question — it's the attitude behind it. Eight in ten Gallatin voters said, in plain language, that three terms was enough. That wasn't a technicality or an accident; it was a deliberate, decisive act of self-government. Yet rather than accept that verdict and step aside gracefully, Mayor Brown chose to fight her own constituents in court for the right to stay in power a fourth time. That is not the posture of a public servant. It is the posture of someone who has come to see the mayor's office as hers by entitlement rather than by the continued consent of the people she serves.

Tom Lee said it plainly when the lawsuit was first filed: if you're the kind of officeholder willing to litigate against the very citizens who elected you just to get your name on the ballot again, it should surprise no one that you intend to be on that ballot regardless of what the voters wanted. That is precisely what has played out here. The people spoke clearly in 2018. The mayor's answer has been lawyers, court filings, and now an appeal — all so she can hold onto a job the voters already told her, by a supermajority, should have someone new in it. Gallatin doesn't need a leader who treats term limits as an inconvenience to be litigated around. It needs one willing to honor the will of the people who put her there in the first place.

FOHL and MGNA-PAC will continue tracking the appeal in Alfieri v. Brown and will keep members updated as the Tennessee Court of Appeals takes up the case.

Read Tom Lee’s full opinion peice here in the Gallatin News. 

Paid for by Make Gallatin Nice Again, Guy Alfieri, Treasurer