The Tennessee Attorney General’s office often can be relied upon to deliver a sound and logical legal opinion. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for the opinion it delivered last week condoning the County Commission’s wrongful withholding from the school board of some $6 million in PILOT funds. These funds are legally earmarked for the county school system and should be allocated by the county school board.
About the best that can be said of this myopic, contradictory and wholly illogical ruling was what County Commissioner Larry Henry said of it: “Of course, the attorney general’s opinion is the attorney general’s opinion. It hasn’t been tried in court.”
A necessary lawsuit
Indeed, a lawsuit in Chancery Court for a declaratory judgment regarding control of the funds should be the next step. The county school board, and the Tennessee School Board Association, simply cannot allow the attorney general’s office to effectively authorize the misappropriation of school funds by a County Commission.
That would undermine not just the scope and authority of the elected Hamilton County school board to fix the county schools budget, and to assume control for decades of PILOT funds. It also would embolden county governments across the state to usurp the constitutional budget authority of other Tennessee school boards to determine how designated school funds are to be spent.