Interesting column from the Tennessean’s Gail Kerr. She talks about Dean’s move to get nonprofit grants awarded based on merit:

It’s clear Dean is no Purcell Jr.By GAIL KERR

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean stood before the Metro Council on Tuesday afternoon and presented a budget riddled with service cuts and employee layoffs. He got a standing ovation.

Huh?

Dean never mentioned the name of his former boss and predecessor, Bill Purcell. In fact, he tipped his hat instead to the budgeting skills of Gov. Phil Bredesen, who is Purcell’s nemesis. But it didn’t take a magic wand to spot he-who-was-not-named between the lines.

If there was any lingering doubt from last summer’s election that Dean is not going to be Mayor Purcell Junior, he put it to rest with this budget presentation. Dean is becoming master of the message. Part of that message: keeping his campaign promise to fully fund schools and fully staff the police department.

But another part of that message was loud and clear: Dean intends to undo some of what Purcell did.

Like nearly empty Metro’s savings account. Dean made it clear that he wants every extra dollar in revenue to go into restoring Metro’s fund balance reserve. The city is committed to more bricks-and-mortar projects than it can afford. That provoked the New York bond houses to list Nashville on a “negative watch.” That’s not good.

Purcell had a testy relationship with the council. Dean has courted them. He takes their phone calls. He is respectful. In the budget presentation, the words “openness” and “transparency” were used on two PowerPoint slides.

Dean’s budget also proposes a sweeping elimination of four government offices begun by Purcell’s finance director, David Manning, who created a system called “internal service fees.” Each city department had to kick back part of its budget to handle things like payroll. Government grew and grew.

Dean gets standing O

Dean’s budget closes Manning World. Dean’s finance director, Rich Riebeling, in a slip of the tongue (or was it?), referred to such layers of red tape as “fat.” Manning World drove the council nuts because they couldn’t figure out how to cut it. That’s one reason they created little slush funds for each member to spend in their districts.

Dean addressed that, too: He wants grants to nonprofits to be awarded through a merit-based grant program, to get the politics out of it.

When Dean was done, council members jumped to their feet and applauded. They joked about going ahead and passing the budget as is.

It won’t be that easy, of course. Those 200 layoffs Dean proposes have faces.

But for this moment, Dean should go to a Metro library branch (before hours are cut back) and check out the classic TV show The Honeymooners, laugh at Jackie Gleason and shout out loud for all to hear:

“How sweet it is.”

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