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There are those who live paycheck-to-paycheck. There are others who wouldn’t really notice, in lifestyle terms, if a check or two failed to show up on time. (Or so the legend goes.) And then there are those who can’t (or won’t, in some cases) wait for payday to arrive before they require access to cash.

That last group is lucky if they live in Tennessee, as they have a smorgasbord or three of providers from which to choose. Cruise Brainerd Road or Rossville Boulevard and you’ll see what I mean. In fact, there are so many payday loan firms opening up shop in Chattanooga these days that the City Council is fingering its regulatory trigger. They are armed with some new statistics, thanks to the Regional Planning Agency, that seem to imply that property value growth in the vicinity of such establishments is stunted. I am suspicious of the findings. Even if they were 100 percent error-free, though, they speak to a different problem: people make false judgments when considering a real estate purchase. A cluster of title pawn stores occupying a particular stretch of thoroughfare does not denote that residents in the immediate radius comprise the customer base. An alternate interpretation is that there is high-traffic retail space available for fairly low rent, and enterprising loan companies utilize this combination. The property value story, therefore, begins well before the payday loan firms move in. Why is the commercial space already unoccupied? It seems that a symptom is being falsely accused of being a cause.

Councilperson Marti Rutherford has spoken out numerous times against the proliferation of paycheck lenders. She says that their proprietors are “not the best people in the world.” (She seems to always include tattoo/piercing businesses as well, as if these and the loan stores were somehow illegitimate siblings. I think of the check-cashing as offering a much more thorough skewering than the body piercing could ever deliver, but I digress.) She and the other council members want to do something, ostensibly as a result of pressure from neighborhood groups. But wait. News reports from the November 8 City Council meeting suggest that there is an entirely personal motive for this misguided effort. Ms. Rutherford is a Realtor. No, that’s not the news; we knew that. However, the mere idea that she might be using public policy to preserve price increases and thus boost her sales commissions took a back seat to the blatant ethical breach she committed at the meeting. According to reports, while a citizen petitioned the Council for a zoning change, Ms. Rutherford leaned out of her elected seat and handed the guy her business card, saying that she could provide a buyer for his property. Hello? Since when do members of the City Council conduct personal business during sessions? What if the person calls her, and takes her up on the offer? Does the fact that she apparently apologized make it okay if they transact business?

Last week’s Backbeats rather astutely characterized Rutherford’s motive for conducting tirades against the scourge of the year. (Remember when she made us think that cell phone towers were harbingers of the Apocalypse? I assume wireless devices are essential Realtor equipment, nowadays.) “Rutherford—who owns a home and, perhaps more importantly, works as a Realtor in the area—wants to prevent the spread of payday loan firms in order to preserve property values.” I’m not inclined to believe that she wants to restrict or outright prohibit these businesses from Brainerd Road because she cares about the well-being of her constituents.

Before the business card flap, the argument was rhetorical: is a municipal legislative body nothing more than a glorified neighborhood association? Is it the Planning Agency’s job to start discriminating among commercial outfits that seek to do business in the appropriate zone simply because they’re not aesthetically pleasing to some? I asked these questions of a good friend at lunch recently and described my desire to challenge the Council’s probable action. I received an unexpected but interesting response. He said that government officials could be effectively opposed only after they’ve gone too far, so if opposition is my aim, I should let them keep going. I said, “Something like 12 percent of eligible voters put these people into office. The voters are probably the same people who go to neighborhood association meetings and gripe about basketball goals in their neighbors’ yards. You know those miniature holiday village curios people buy and put on the mantel with their snowy little scenes? That’s what these people’s idea of urban planning looks like.” My friend just smiled and reiterated his observation that if the people are aggrieved enough, they will make their voices heard at the polls. “Their current complacency is just an indicator that they simply don’t consider things to be all that bad,” was his sage-like counsel.

So that’s exactly what I’m recommending. Just let this go. Continue to ignore any ethical breach, overbearing initiative or petty squabble in your local government until you’ve just out-and-out had it. This includes Sally Robinson’s free-speech zones, Jack Benson’s car wash paint color restrictions, and Manuel Rico’s ban on chickens. I’ll be enjoying the lack of lines at the voting precinct in the meantime, and I guess I’ll see you there when something really matters.