MTAS. What does that stand for?
What is an MTAS and what does it do?
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Every citizen in the state is touched by MTAS because if it wasn't there, his taxes, his or her taxes would be that much higher and doing far less.
Many of the cities in Tennessee, most of them in fact, are small cities, and they couldn't function properly without the technical assistance that MTAS gives. It would be awfully expensive to go to legal counsel or whatever we might need in the way of technical service and it's just a tremendous thing for cities across this great state.
I can give you a multitude of city managers and other people who didn't have anywhere to go and had the access to MTAS and what it's meant to their cities and innovative things that they've done in the computer age that we live in, the technical aspects of what faces a city manager, say, in Sparta, with limited resources, and what they have to contend with basically the same problems that Nashville does, but they don't have the specialists or the technical people on the payroll to deal with those problems and boy, here is where MTAS steps in and makes the difference.
I just can't imagine a better organization or better prepared organization to help and assist the cities than MTAS was.
The hardest job I ever had was mayor, and um I was minority leader, that wasn't as hard, and I was also, I'm also state representative. That's not as hard. But with more and more responsibilities shifting back to local government, you're gonna have more, more uh opportunity to need organizations like MTAS.
I think the single greatest thing about it is that they study the problems of cities and make recommendations without having to answer to some politician or somebody else. It's an objective approach. It's really educational. And a lot of states have wished, I've heard them express it many times, that they had an MTAS in their states to work with them.
I give credit to Herb for conceiving of the idea of MTAS and he more than any other one person is responsible for it being there. And over all those years I worked very closely with him. He was a great visionary, I think. He had lots of ideas, and he was tenacious. I would say he was a bulldog. If he got a good idea and he, nobody was more dedicated to the interests of cities than Herb Bingham and he would stay with it. He was really a great person.
Governor Browning promised to us in 1948 when he was running, that he would give the cities a seventh of the state gasoline tax when he got elected governor, and he was elected. And he broke his pledge. We wrote up a twelve-page memo, uh statement, calling Governor Browning a liar on every page. And uh, but we developed a counter-strategy of getting over two-thousand mayors and councilmen to sign a pledge "I will endeavor to defeat any candidate for governor that doesn't pledge the cities one-seventh of the state gasoline tax." Over two-thousand of them signed that pledge. And uh, Governor Browning hung around the president of the municipal league over at Lebanon day and night almost. Every time he was in Middle Tennessee, he'd go over there and visit with our president at Lebanon. And he, he apolog--he came to a meeting and he apologized for not having kept his commitments and he assured us that he would never break his word to us again. Well, he didn't, because he got defeated for governor. These mayors went out there after him. They ran Frank Clement. Now that's the only time that they got into a collective political uh alliance, but after waiting the governor for four years, they weren't about to wait two more.
I said he was dedicated to the interests of cities, and if he thought something was good for cities, he wouldn't let loose of it. And uh it was even rumored at one time, I don't know, I say rumored, I heard it that he'd been thrown out of the governor's office for insisting that something be done. And uh, uh he had a reputation for uh pushing hard.
One fun thing that happened was when we had a huge fight over the um beer dealers trying to cap the beer tax. And uh that was a classic Herb Bingham fight. I mean, he mounted a hell of a campaign, and uh we beat the the uh speaker of the house, a guy named Ned McWhorter, and I don't think he ever totally got over it, you know. [Laughter] I think he still thinks about it every once in a while, probably has a nightmare too. And McWhorter would call me in his office occasionally, we'd send out all these bulletins and press releases, and he'd say, "Call off the damn dogs, I'm tired of my phone ringing." [Laughter]
We emphasized that most of these people on the technical staff had been in city hall and served in city hall and knew practical governmental administration. And furthermore, they delivered answers that they could get accepted by the people and would work when they put them into effect. They developed a terrific reputation. And we selected them to try to get people aboard at MTAS who had not only knowledge and talent but that had winning personalities. They were salesmen. They had to sell ideas. And uh and it just worked. It just worked.
I could call on Dr. Hobday day or night and he'd send somebody immediately to help and assist us. I shall always remember that.
And so I knew Victor Hobday as a colonel and had a lot of interesting experiences with him. One day I, uh he asked me to teach a class at reserve and I did, and I decided it was proper to joke and have fun and he came in when I cracked a joke and he let Sergeant Johnson know that wasn't a proper kind of role. I'm sure he's forgotten that but I never did. And then he was very excited once we were on, we were out somewhere down in Georgia, one of those gosh-forsaken places down there for a two-week camp. And as it turns out, in that group everybody was a lawyer except about four of us, and they were all lieutenants and we were sergeants, and Hobday was always concerned that we have these simulated bombing raids where they'd drop flour on you. And he'd go out and yell and scream at us and tell us we're supposed to take all sorts of precautions, and somebody was always, yeah but it's nothing but flour! And Colonel Hobday didn't think too much of that. And somebody would turn on a flashlight when we had a blackout to look for rattlesnakes and he didn't think too much of that either. So I knew Vic in an unusual kind of way. I've always thought that he ran MTAS much better than he ran the military government reserve unit.
This is what we do. We're providing a service to the citizens of the state of Tennessee, and that's the mission of the University of Tennessee. The University of Tennessee had a service that was more problem-oriented and more on-the-job, in the field service to the clients, than any other university I know of, and I think we probably could still say that. We uh we spent a great deal of our time in the field. We were helping the city officials deal with their real problems. It wasn't academic research. I mean academic research has its place. I don't want to put that down, but that was the difference. Our mission was just different, and we uh we went about it a little differently.
I don't see any limit, limitations to what it can do in the future. There's always gonna be need for city officials to have somebody to give them some technical assistance. When you think of the fact that for instance I'd never been in public office. I hadn't ever run for any public office, and when I came in as mayor of Knoxville I needed somebody I could turn to to get an objective viewpoint and to give me a little training on how to be a better mayor. And you'd think of the turnover in city officials across the state. I think there'll always, long as we have local government, there'll always be a need for Municipal Technical Advisory Service.
He was driving about 95 and this highway patrolman pulled him over, walked up to the car, and he said, "My, you're going a little fast, aren't you?" and uh Al Al had this complementary card that Governor Blanton give him so he showed it to him you know and guy said, "Aw, Mayor, you're going too fast." He said, "You're gonna die, you're gonna get yourself killed. He said, "Mayor, we want you to stay around." And Al kept looking at his watch, he'd let up on the brake a little bit. That guy kept talking, he kept looking at his watch. Finally the guy let him go. Al got going, he was going about almost a hundred. He had to make up that time, and another highway patrolman stopped him, and the guy came up the door, he rolled up the window, he said, "Mayor, you're going a little fast." Said, "Why are you going that fast?" He said, "I'm trying to make up the time that other guy wasted back there!"
One thing sort of funny to me, Vic Hobday always been interested in local government. He got involved in a council race and then he took, he felt so good about it, he took a vacation during the campaign period. He came back, he lost just by a few votes.
Victor Hobday was the president of the Knoxville Humane Society. We always were kidding Victor about things, about his role with it. We called him the Top Dog of the Humane Society. And we have a clipping service, we subscribe to a clipping service so the newspapers from all over the state about city news were clipped. Well, here was a big story in the newspaper, had a picture of Smokey with a football helmet on, it was during football season, and it said under it, "Top Dog," so in one of Mr. Hobday's we substituted the picture there under what "Top Dog" was and Smokey just inserted it in the clippings on his desk and we all sat outside his desk waiting for him to find that clipping with his picture there under "Top Dog" and Smokey in the football helmet and everything. And uh he almost outdid us but all of a sudden one day we heard this huge howl coming from his office. He had come across the picture. I guess I'll always remember that. It was a, it was a funny experience. Fun.
Well, there's a lot of good men who served as president of Tennessee Municipal League, and Vic knew just about I guess he remembers all of them 'cause he's kept up with it and he's going along. I noticed he was out politicking the other day when I called. Yeah. He's still politicking? I don't know who he's working for. Working as election officer to hold the election, Leonard, let's get that straight. OK. Well, that's part of the election process. Well, yeah, the elections have to be held. Someone has to be there. I don't think--I used to think politics was an ugly word, but I don't think it's ugly anymore. It's just whatever politicians make it. They used to accuse me of being a politician before I was ever the mayor, and I objected to that a little, but I know I'm as proud of that now as calling me a Methodist. They called me a politician till I lost and then they knew I wasn't. [Laughter] I like that.
I said Al, "Why don't you sing uh sing us a hymn?" So he sang two or three verses of "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There." And then right on the end, he said, "Now what I do," he said, "I kind of get beered up in Oak Ridge and I get my pickup truck out at election time and I go up and down the streets, singing that."
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