Unless you’re jealous that your local airport didn’t think of it first, it’s almost impossible to object to renaming Nashville’s airport after Dolly Parton. That’s how naming a taxpayer-owned facility should work: the honoree is so obvious that the only controversy is why it wasn’t done sooner.
Dolly Parton is the ideal of a person whose generosityand example deserve a permanent, visible reminder. She built, not destroyed. She gave, not took.
Too often, the main qualification for getting your name on a public building is a lifetime spent on a public payroll. There are 13 airports named for U.S. presidents, including Little Rock’s (Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport) and Palm Beach’s President Donald J. Trump International Airport – the only
one named for a sitting president.
In Knoxville we have bus stations, fire stations, parks, libraries, athletic facilities, roads, schools and community centers named for elected officials – many of them while the person was still in office. Plenty of these longtime public employees are friends of mine, good people. But there is something unseemly about drawing a government paycheck for years or decades, then having your former colleagues spend more taxpayer money to bronze the career.
It’s also a risky practice, especially while the public employee is still living and still writing – or damaging – his legacy.
Ourlocal juvenile detention facility is named after a man who was essentially forced out as its directorafter being paid to run the place for more than 50 years. Two public facilities in Knoxville are named for a longtime elected official and city employee who had to resign a school-system job over his role in a federal tax-fraud scheme.
Some states and cities ban naming public facilities after living people, sitting officials, or both. Pittsburgh won’t name a public property for anyone who hasn’t been dead at least three years. St. Petersburg and Jacksonville, Fla., ban naming buildings after the living. West Virginia won’t let a municipality name a building for an official still in office. Minnesota law forbids naming state buildings, roads or other facilities after living people.
Nashville does both: separate Metro ordinances prohibit naming public buildings for living persons and for public officials or employees until they leave office. (I would have assumed a ban on the living would have been enough. The belt-and-suspenders version is for those officials whose time in office seems to outlast their pulse.)
I appreciate the people willing to run for office and put up with the foolishness that consumes far too much of government’s energy. But those who spend a career running for office (or drawing some other government paycheck) are like the people who pray on street corners so they can be seen. They have already received their reward in full.
David Moon, president of Moon Capital Management, may be reached at david@mooncap.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Use Dolly Parton as a model for naming public facilities | Opinion
