West Tennessee Legal Services (WTLS) secured federal funding Monday, establishing it as the the official nonprofit agency offering legal services to families living below the poverty line in Shelby, Tipton, Fayette, and Lauderdale counties.
Memphis Area Legal Services lost the federal funding this year, as officials had concerns about its operation. The money comes from Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a nonprofit created by Congress. That money ($940,301) will now go to the WTLS.
“LSC’s top priority is that low-income families in the Memphis service area receive high-quality assistance for their civil legal problems,” said LSC president Ronald Flagg. “We support WTLS’ expansion of services in the Memphis region and look forward to following their progress in providing effective legal services to those in need.”
The group is headquartered in Jackson. It will prioritize cases on access to healthcare, securing or retaining income, securing or retaining shelter, personal freedom and security of abused persons or institutionalized persons, and issues that affect family safety, cohesiveness, and stability.
“Our team is eager to get work providing these crucial services to individuals and families across this region,” said Ashley Holliday, executive director of WTLS. “As we grow, our focus will remain constant: to ensure that people in need have access to justice and the support they deserve.”
WTLS is actively hiring attorneys and paralegals to handle cases involving housing, domestic violence, public benefits, and consumer issues. The organization will also hire a pro bono staff attorney, who will be tasked with coordinating additional support from the private bar.
“Initially, our case volume will be limited as we grow our staff,” said Holliday. “We will increase capacity as we hire and train new team members for our Memphis office. We’ll be adding a pro bono staff attorney to build relationships with the private bar, and we anticipate seeing a significant increase in our pro bono unit’s case volume by 2025.”
The number of hate and anti-government groups operating in the Memphis area last year held at four, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), amid a record wave of white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ groups.
Each year, the Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC issues its Year In Hate and Extremism report, which details hate groups and anti-government extremist groups operating across the U.S. This year’s report found a total of 1,430 active groups (in both categories combined) operated in the U.S. last year, up from the 1,225 groups active in 2022.
The number of active groups in the county marked a record in SPLC’s data tracking. The previous record surge in groups was in 2018 when the number totaled 1,020. After that surge, the number of hate groups fell for four years year in a row up to 2022. Last year’s rise broke the streak and the record.
The new report documents 595 hate groups and 835 antigovernment extremist groups, including a growing wave of white nationalism increasingly motivated by theocratic beliefs and conspiracy theories. These groups intensified their efforts over the past year to recruit new members, increase their online presence and in-person demonstrations, exploit international and domestic conflicts, lobby the government and, in some cases, directly participate in elections, especially at the local level.
The report says communities of color, immigrant communities, minority faith communities, and LGBTQ+ communities are all targeted by and experience the negative effects of “hate-filled rhetoric and antigovernment conspiracies through actions such as banning books, protesting drag story hours, and using school boards as political battlegrounds.”
Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center
In Tennessee, 37 hate groups operated here last year, according to the report. They include “racist skinheads,” white nationalists, militia movements, neo-Volkish groups, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Muslim groups, a hate-filled gift shop, and more.
“With a historic election just months away, this year, more than any other, we must act to preserve our democracy,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC. “That will require us to directly address the danger of hate and extremism from our schools to our statehouses.
“Our report exposes these far-right extremists and serves as a tool for advocates and communities working to counter disinformation, false conspiracies and threats to voters and election workers. Together, we can dismantle white supremacy and ensure all communities see themselves represented in our democracy.”
In Memphis, four groups made the SPLC’s annual report. Moms for Liberty and Proud Boys remain active here, it says.
The local Moms for Liberty group says it is “dedicated to the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Jennifer Martin is listed as the county chapter chair on the national group’s website.
The West Tennessee Proud Boys website shows a photo of the group marching on Beale Street and tells its members to “walk your streets with your head held high.” An obviously fake Memphis address is listed as “Freedom Street, Memphis, TN 38503.” The ZIP Code is for Cookeville, Tennessee.
In its website’s “Beliefs” section, the local Proud Boys say they are “are proud Western Chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” They say they want small government, freedom of speech, closed borders, the right to bear arms, to “venerate the housewife,” and more.
On racism, the Proud Boys site says it “may be alive, but it is not well” as “progress has been made in overcoming racial prejudice.” With that, they don’t want “anti-racial guilt.” … “Let no man be burdened with shame for the deeds of his ancestors,” reads the site. “Let no people be held accountable for things they never did.”
The site also offers a portal to join the group. Another button, for complaints, takes a visitor to a YouTube video featuring a tune called “The You Are A Cunt Song.”
Two Bartlett radio stations also made the SPLC’s list this year, as they have for years. The “about” section of Blood River Radio says “genocide is being pursued against white gentile people of the world.” The Political Cesspool hosts have said “we represent a philosophy that is pro-white and are against political centralization.”
Read more about those stations in a previous story here. Read an in-depth look at them, their hosts, and their guests from the SPLC blog here. Read about the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s latest hate crime report here.
Tennessee Republicans cannot stand the federal government telling them what to do — especially when a Democrat’s in the White House — but they do love telling Tennessee’s biggest cities what to do.
Republicans cry “overreach,” in general, when the feds “impose” rules that “overrule the will of the people of Tennessee.” (All of those quoted words came from just one statement on abortion from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who yells “overreach!” the loudest.) But they call it “preemption” when they do it to Memphis and Nashville — their favorite targets — leaving big-city locals to bemoan that same overreach.
When punching up at the federal government, Tennessee conservatives send angry letters to the president lamenting rules they have to follow to get big “seductive” tax dollars. But they don’t often win much in this process.
When they punch down at cities, the power struggle really comes down to rural conservatives exerting whatever influence they have to temper (squash) the sometimes “woke” ideas of urban progressives. They have a lot of power to do this, as state law does, usually, preempt local law.
So, Republicans do what they want in the Tennessee General Assembly and say, “See you in court,” because cities don’t typically give up their authority without a legal fist fight. (This happens so much state Democrats say Republicans pass lawsuits, not laws.)
But cities lose these fights often. Some of that is thanks to the powerful state AG’s office, who gets in the ring for state conservatives. That office has even more punching power with a brand-new $2.25 million, 10-member unit. It force-feeds conservative priorities in Tennessee cities and blocks D.C.’s liberal agenda.
Here’s an example of this double-edged subversion: Skrmetti, the Republican AG, cried “overreach” when a 2022 USDA rule said LGTBQ kids had to have access to lunch at school. But when Memphis and Nashville tried to decriminalize cannabis in 2016, a state Republican said, “You just can’t have cities creating their own criminal code, willy-nilly.”
Same coin. Two sides. Yes, state law rules most times, but the premise of the argument is the same. State citizens and city locals know what’s best for them and pick their leaders accordingly. Then, an outsider who, maybe, doesn’t share their values, swoops in to make locals comply with theirs. It’s like, “Hi, you don’t know me but you’re doing it wrong and are going to do it my way.”
In this game, Memphis has been on the ropes at the legislature this year. State Republicans want to take away some of the power from the Shelby County district attorney. They want to remove a Memphis City Council decision on when Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers make traffic stops. They also wanted to dilute local control of the Memphis-Shelby County School (MSCS) board with members appointed by the governor. But they decided against it. Details on many of these and some from the past are below.
Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have looked up, wondering if they could really cut ties with the federal government. They took a serious, hard look at giving up $1 billion in federal education funding for state schools. They wanted to do it “the Tennessee way.” Left to guess what that meant, many concluded they hoped to eschew national discrimination protections for LGBTQ students.
This year, a state Republican hopes to establish state sovereignty. He wants to draw a clear line between state and fed powers and to install a committee to watch that line. It’s not a new idea, but it’s always had “don’t tread on me” vibes.
The road from Memphis City Hall, to the State Capitol, to Congress and the White House is littered with complaints (usually court papers) about political subversion. All the hollering and legal fights along the way have to leave voters wondering, who’s got the power?
Steve Mulroy (Photo: Steve Mulroy | Facebook)
District Attorney Power Battle
A legal battle over who has the power to decide on some death penalty cases has been waged since Republicans passed a bill here last year.
That bill stripped local control of post-conviction proceedings from local district attorneys and gave it to Skrmetti, the state AG. In Memphis, the bill seemed largely aimed at Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, with some concerned he may be lenient for those facing the death penalty.
“This sudden move appears to be a response to the choices of voters in both Davidson County and Shelby County, who elected prosecutors to support more restorative and less punitive policies,” Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said at the time.
Larry McKay, who received two death sentences for the murders of two store clerks in Shelby County in 1981, requested a court review of previously unexamined evidence in his case. Despite the new law, McKay’s attorney sought to disqualify Skremtti’s office from reviewing the case because he was not elected.
His attorney argued the new law infringes on the responsibilities of local district attorneys. The big changes made in the legislation also violated the state constitution, the attorney said.
Mulroy agreed.
“The newly enacted statute is an unconstitutional effort to divest and diminish the authority granted to Tennessee’s district attorneys general by the Tennessee Constitution,” Mulroy said at the time. “The new statute violates the voting rights of such voters because it strips material discretion from district attorneys, who are elected by the qualified voters of the judicial district.”
But state attorneys did not agree.
“The General Assembly was entitled to take that statuary power away from the district attorneys and give it to the Attorney General in capital cases,” reads the court document. “They have done just that and their mandate must be followed.”
But in July Shelby County Judge Paula Skahan ruled the Republican legislation did violate the state constitution. New arguments on the case were heard by the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals earlier this month. No ruling was issued as of press time. However, an appeal of that ruling seems inevitable, likely pushing the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Pretextual Stops
State Republicans are actively trying to undermine a unanimous decision of the Memphis City Council to stop police from pulling over motorists for minor things like a broken taillight, a loose bumper, and more.
This council move came three months after MPD officers beat and killed Tyre Nichols, who was stopped for a minor traffic infraction. The local law is called the Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols.
Council members said police time could be better spent, that the stops expose more people to the criminal justice system, and, as in the Nichols’ case, could be dangerous. The stops also disproportionately affect Black people, who make up about 64 percent of Memphis’ population but receive 74 percent of its traffic tickets, according to Decarcerate Memphis.
The council’s decision made national headlines. But it found no favor with Republican lawmakers.
Rep. John Gillespie (R-Bartlett) introduced a controversial bill this year that would end that practice and reestablish state control over local decisions on criminal justice.
“We’re simply saying a state law that’s been on the books for decades is what we’re going by here,” Gillespie told Tennessee Lookout earlier this month. “And if there are people that have problems with what state law is, then maybe they should change state law instead of enacting local ordinances that are in conflict with state law.”
He initially cooled on the matter, promising to pause his bill for further review after Nichols’ parents spoke at a press conference.
“I am just appalled by what Republicans are trying to do in this state,” Nichols’ father, Rodney Wells, said at the event.
Gillespie promised Nichols’ family he’d hold the bill but surprised many earlier this month when he brought it to the House floor for a vote, which it won. Some said Gillespie acted in bad faith. State Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) said he straight-up lied to Nichols’ family and subverted local power to boot.
“You, as a person who lives in Shelby County, seek to undo the will of the people of Memphis and Shelby County,” Pearson said on the House floor. “The Wells family spoke with him briefly; he told them this bill wouldn’t come up until probably next Thursday.”
The Senate approved the bill last Thursday. It now heads to Gov. Lee for signature.
Six school board members for Memphis-Shelby County Schools met with three state lawmakers representing Memphis on Feb. 14, 2024, at the state Capitol. Their agenda included pending legislation from Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Republicans, to authorize Gov. Bill Lee to appoint additional members to the board. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis-Shelby County Schools | Chalkbeat)
MSCS School Board
State Republicans want to control schools here, too.
Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), chair of the House Education Committee, filed a bill earlier this year that would add six governor-appointed members (read: more Republican influence) to the MSCS board. When he filed the legislation, he said he was unimpressed with the slate of those vying for the district’s superintendent job and concerned about students falling behind state standards on reading and math.
“I’m very concerned about the district’s direction, and I just can’t sit back any longer,” White told Chalkbeat Tennessee. “I think we’re at a critical juncture.”
However, MSCS board chair Althea Greene said at the time that White’s proposal was unnecessary.
“We may have had some challenges, but more interference from the General Assembly is not warranted at this time,” she said. “We have to stop experimenting with our children.”
Since then, the MSCS board chose Marie Feagins as the district’s superintendent and she got to work early, before her contract was supposed to start. Also, White paused his bill earlier this month to give board members a chance to submit an improvement plan. White said the plan should show how they’ll improve on literacy, truancy, graduation rates, teacher recruitment, underutilized school buildings, and a backlog of building maintenance needs, among other things, according to Chalkbeat.
While it’s the newest move in state “overreach” into schools here, it’s hardly the first. State Republicans once seized dozens of schools in Memphis and Nashville as laboratories for what they called “Achievement School Districts.” After more than a decade, these schools only angered locals, showed abysmal student performance, and now seem to be on their way out.
Cannabis
For six weeks back in 2016, Memphis City Council members debated a move that would have decriminalized possession of small amounts of cannabis in the city.
Hundreds were (and are) arrested each year on simple possession charges, and most of those arrested were (and are) Black. Council members didn’t want cannabis legalization; they wanted to steer folks away from the criminal justice system. They hoped to keep them out of jail and avoid a criminal record, which could hurt their chances at housing, employment, and more.
The city council — even though some had reservations about it — said yes to this. So did the Nashville Metropolitan Council. State Republicans said no.
Upon their return to the Capitol in 2017, they got to work ensuring their control over local decisions on the matter. A bill to strip this control easily won support in the legislature and was signed by then-Gov. Bill Haslam, who said he acted on the will of state lawmakers.
“You just can’t have cities creating their own criminal code, willy-nilly,” Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown), the bill’s House sponsor, told The Tennessean at the time.
Then-Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued an opinion that said, basically, cities can’t make laws that preempt state law. With that, Memphis resumed regular enforcement of cannabis laws.
Ranked Choice Voting
In two elections — 2008 and 2018 — Memphians chose how they wanted to pick their politicians, but they never got a chance to use it. State Republicans said no.
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) would have allowed voters here to rank candidates on a ballot, doing away with the need for run-off elections that always see lower voter turnout. It was new and different but voters here “decided, over and over again, to give it a try,” reads a Commercial Appeal op-ed from 2022 by Mark Luttrell, former Shelby County mayor, and Erika Sugarmon, now a Shelby County commissioner.
However, state Republicans then-Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Rep. Nathan Vaughan (R-Collierville) filed a bill to upend the voters’ decision for good with a bill to end RCV in Tennessee. Kelsey said it was about voter clarity. Opponents said it was about more.
“If the bill passes, it will disrespect Memphis voters, make a mockery of local control,” Luttrell and Sugarmon said in the op-ed.
In the end, the state won. The bill passed and RCV was banned, with added support and sponsorship of Memphis Democrats Rep. Joe Towns Jr. and the late Rep. Barbara Cooper.
State Sovereignty
“So, you hoe in your little garden and stay out of our garden,” said Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Kingsport).
He was explaining to the House Public Service Committee last year how the country’s founders designed the separation of powers between the state and the federal governments, how it was supposed to work, anyway.
But federal government agencies — not elected officials — issue rules pushed on to “we, the people,” he said. They tear families apart. They split marriages. They end lifelong friendships, he said. They bring bankruptcy and suicide. He gave no more details than that. But he was sick of it and said the bill he brought would fix it.
When some Republicans here aren’t busy in committee or court, rending control from local governments, they like to think about state sovereignty. They want to defend Tennessee from the feds, especially when a Democrat is in the White House. They want to know what the exact rules are and to tell D.C. “don’t tread on me.”
Since at least 1995, bills like these have been filed here and there in the state legislature. There’s a new one pending now. In them, “sovereignty” sometimes sounds like a preamble to “secession.”
Hulsey’s bill didn’t go that far. He really wanted to set out a way to nullify D.C. rules he didn’t like. Lee’s office was against it, though. Senate Republicans were, too. The idea failed to even get a review in the Republican-packed Senate State and Local Government Committee. Conservatives worried “nullification” could also nullify big federal tax dollars.
That 1995 bill demanded, “The federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.” Another Republican sovereignty bill later would have voided the powers of any representative of the United Nations once they entered the state.
One in 2014 (that was signed by the governor) simply expressed the state’s sovereignty to set educational standards. A 2016 bill said the feds “seduce” states to go along with their new rules with federal funds they treat as grants, not as tax funds for the state. Another in 2013 would have formed a committee to see what financial and legal troubles could be in store for Tennessee if it scaled back or quit the “state’s participation in the various federal programs.”
Ten years later, this idea is back. The “Tennessee State Sovereignty Act of 2024” would form a 10-person committee to watch and see if any federal rule violates the Tennessee State Constitution. If it does, “it is the duty of both the residents of this state and the General Assembly to resist.”
Now, if that don’t say “don’t tread on me” …
In the Senate, the bill was deferred until near the end of session (usually meaning they’ll get to it if they can). A House review of the idea was slated for this week, after press time.
Education Funding
Sovereignty bills rarely go anywhere but in talking points for reelection campaigns.
However, last year high-ranking Republicans took state sovereignty a step beyond rattling a saber. They announced a bold plan to have a serious look at if and how Tennessee could cut ties with the feds and their $1 billion in education funding. If it did, Tennessee would have been the first state in history to decline such funds.
“We as a state can lead the nation once again in telling the federal government that they can keep their money and we’ll just do things the Tennessee way,” House Speaker Rep. Cameron Sexton said at an event in February last year.
He didn’t outline what the “Tennessee way” entailed, though he complained about testing mandates and strings attached to funding. Many said the big federal string Republicans wanted to cut was the one attached to Title IX mandates. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that get federal money. The Biden administration has promised an update to these that could strengthen protections for LGTBQ students.
Tennessee has passed more anti-LGBTQ laws than any other state, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The week of March 4th alone, 18 such bills were before state lawmakers and targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; made it easier to ban books; and attempted to legalize discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
State Republicans have passed bills to mandate transgender students only play on sports teams that match their gender at birth. They have mandated which bathrooms trans people have to use (a decision struck down by a federal judge). They’ve allowed teachers to go unpunished if they refuse to use pronouns that students identify with. They’ve wanted certain books with LGBTQ themes banned at school. They’ve wanted LGBTQ, especially gender identity, issues banned from discussion in sex-ed classes. This list goes on and on.
However, the precise motive for looking into cutting those federal education dollars was never stated. Some said it was always good to review the relationship between nation and state. In the end, Republicans spent a lot of time and money to research the idea but set it aside. They took the federal money and the strings attached anyway. But taking it so seriously was maybe that “don’t tread on me snake” just shaking its rattle.
“Deep in my Soul”
Separation of powers is a doubled-edge sword. It’s that cartoon drawing of a big fish eating a small fish that is getting eaten by the even bigger fish. It’s a “layer cake” form of federalism.
Call it what you will, but it’s clear locals want to make their own decisions. For Hulsey, the Republican talking about who tends whose garden, the idea runs deep.
“I stood up on that House floor over there a few weeks ago and we raised our hand, and we swore to 7 million people in this state, we swore not that we would rake in all the federal money we could get,” Hulsey told committee members. “We swore that we would always defend the inalienable rights of Tennessee people by defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Tennessee.
“We should not be for sale. I want to tell you that deep in my soul, I have a conviction that is deep-seated. I believe that if state legislatures in this country do not stand up and hold the federal government to obey the Constitution of the United States, we could very easily lose this republic.”
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti along with the state of Virginia has filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA.)
Skrmetti and others are suing the organization for “violating federal antitrust laws with its anticompetitive restrictions on the ability of current and future student-athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL).
“This Court should declare unlawful and enjoin the NCAA’s NIL-recruiting ban and allow this market—which already exists—to function fairly and competitively,” reads the lawsuit.
In a statement, Skrmetti argued that the NCAA’S NIL-recruiting ban violates federal antitrust law, thwarts the free market, and harms student-athletes.
“Student-athletes are entitled to rules that are clear and rules that are fair,” said Skrmetti. “College sports wouldn’t exist without college athletes, and those students shouldn’t be left behind while everybody else involved prospers. The NCAA’s restraints on prospective students’ ability to meaningfully negotiate NIL deals violate federal antitrust law. Only Congress has the power to impose such limits.”
The Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA had violated antitrust law in the case of NCAA v. Alston. In June of 2021, the NCAA adopted an interim policy that allowed athletes to benefit from their NIL. When this policy was initially announced, then-NCAA President Mark Emmert said they would be working with Congress to develop more solutions on a national level.
At the time of the announcement, Emmert said “the current environment – both legal and legislative – prevents us from providing a more permanent solution and the level of detail student-athletes deserve.”
“After the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA violated antitrust law by imposing unreasonable restraints on the compensation college athletes may receive, Tennessee and other states enacted laws to foster a thriving NIL market for the benefit of student-athletes,” said Skrmetti. “Contrary to those state laws, the NCAA has adopted a shifting and opaque series of rules and guidelines that thwart the ability of student-athletes to get fair compensation for their NIL.”
Under current NCAA rules, athletes are allowed to engage in NIL activities that are “consistent with the law of the state where the school is located.” They are also allowed to use a professional service for NIL activities.
However, under these same rules, prospective athletes are prohibited from “discussing potential NIL opportunities prior to enrolling. They are also unable to review offers before they enroll at their university.
The lawsuit alleges that these restrictions “violate the Sherman [Anti-Trust] Act, harm the States and the welfare of their athletes, and should be declared unlawful and enjoined.”
“Student-athletes generate massive revenues for the NCAA, its members, and other constituents in the college sports industry—none of whom would dare accept such anticompetitive restrictions on their ability to negotiate their own rights,” said Skrmetti. “Student-athletes shouldn’t be left behind while everyone else profits from their achievements.”
Tennessee lawmakers are making things harder on the poor and easier on the rich, and those old-timey class frictions are heating up in the rifts.
Republicans blame technical glitches and piles of red tape they created as obstacles to get millions of dollars to help low-income families here. Meanwhile, they cut taxes for the business class last year, plan to cut even more this year, and hope to free up more of everyone’s tax dollars to help everyone — no matter how much money they have — pay for private schools.
Gun violence dominated debate and headlines around the Tennessee General Assembly in 2023. Many vow to keep the issue in front of lawmakers in 2024. But if a school shooting in Nashville during last year’s regular session and an entire special session on gun violence last summer won’t move GOP lawmakers to act, rays of hope on the issue seem faint.
It’s way too early to predict what issue(s) may dominate discussions at the State Capitol in the coming weeks. But money seems an early leader, especially as news came late last year that once-hot state revenues are cooling thanks in large part to those 2023 GOP tax cuts.
Money matters have not seen center stage in Tennessee for awhile. The state’s budget has been pushed up and up in recent years with nary a cut in sight. That’s partly due to the new-ish ability to collect online sales taxes and a major surge in revenues from those business taxes in the past. But that won’t likely be the case this year.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is expected to unveil his new budget for Tennessee on Monday, during the annual State of the State address. Projected revenues — how much money officials think we’ll have to spend in the next year — will likely flatten.
This could present some difficult decisions for lawmakers, especially some on the House side, who may have not yet dealt budget cuts. If cuts come, it will be especially interesting to see where the state’s GOP-dominated purse-string-holders will make them (especially since they made the cuts necessary). This could also likely flatten the state’s ability to fund any new initiatives. (Think of it like this, if you quit a job, you might not have the money to pay for your existing car and you damn sure can’t buy a new one.)
Budgets are more than numbers. Budgets are priorities. For a household, that could mean the difference in saving for college later or going on vacation now. For local governments, that could mean the difference in more police or better parks. With its tax cuts last year, the Tennessee GOP prioritized at least one thing: more long-term money in the bank for the state’s businesses.
Now, as money matters begin to creep into the state spotlight once again, some old, tense questions are rising. Who pays for the government? Who does the government work for? Who wins? Who struggles?
So many of these questions have root in Tennessee’s overarching economic development model. That is, basically, how do we organize our economy? How do we build it?
Republicans here love to tout Tennessee as one of the most “business-friendly” states in the union. But don’t just take their word for it. Yahoo! Finance put the state in its top 10 for business friendliness last year and MSNBC ranked it in the top 3, both using different methodologies.
Tennessee’s economy, like many other Southern states, works on the basic trickle-down theory that lower business taxes will attract more businesses, which will hire more people and create more wealth that will “trickle down” to the lower classes.
Except it doesn’t, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The high tide promised by this economic theory does not lift all boats, it said. For a more in-depth look at how this plays out in Tennessee and across the South, see below (Economic Policy Institute Report).
Here, we’ll look at some issues and opinions on money and class that might shape debates as the legislature heads back to Nashville.
The lowest 20 percent of earners in Tennessee spend 12.8 percent of their total annual household income on taxes. (Chart: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)
The poor and hungry
Back in 2019, The Beacon Center, a free market think tank in Nashville, discovered the Lee administration quietly sat on a stockpile of $730 million meant to help working poor families in Tennessee. For years, Tennessee got $190 million from the federal government to help these families get on their feet with monthly checks for childcare, transportation, and more.
Instead of finding ways to getting all of the money to needy families, Lee just did not. The initial discovery of the funds in 2019 led some on social media to decry Lee’s money management. Others saw GOP disdain for the poor.
“This is why [I march for universal basic income] today, because of villainous shit-holes like the governor of Tennessee who is hoarding $732 M in TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] money instead of spending it on reducing poverty,” reads a tweet from the time from Scott Santens, founder of the Income to Support All Foundation.
By 2021, the fund ballooned to nearly $800 million. Thanks to Beacon, a plan is now in place to spend that money down.
However, Lee’s plan puts a hurdle between those needy families and the money. Rather than go directly to families in need, the funds will in large part go to organizations or health departments that will give them temporary aid.
Lee administration officials said it has found a home for $717 million of the TANF reserve. But state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) wants more in the hands of actual needy families. Introduced last week, her bill would increase TANF payments to cover rising inflation costs each year.
Meanwhile, thousands of families in Tennessee have less literal food on the table thanks to Lee administration computer problems. Last summer the Tennessee Department of Human Services (TDHS) updated some computer software. A glitch in the system resulted in a backlog of benefits for 35,000 recipients of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), sometimes called food stamps.
TDHS Commissioner Clarence Carter said his team hopes to have the backlog cleared by March. He also said he’s not dragging his feet, telling state lawmakers last week that his team has “an almost desperate sense of urgency to get this right.” Tennessee Lookout editor Holly McCall pointed out this “kicker” from their story on the matter: “DHS officials noted that the staff brought in to help are keenly aware of the importance of the work: some department staff rely on food stamps themselves.”
Who pays?
Tennessee has the third-most regressive tax system in the country, according to the seventh annual “Who Pays?” report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Regressive taxes are those paid equally by all, no matter how much money they make. These, of course, hit lower-income taxpayers the hardest.
In Tennessee, this means the lowest 20 percent of earners (those making less than $21,000 each year) spend 12.8 percent of their total annual household income on taxes. The top 1 percent (those making over $661,600 each year) spend just 3.8 percent of their total income on taxes here. The poorest pay more than three times as much as the wealthy.
“States such as Florida, Tennessee, and Texas are often described as ‘low tax’ due to their lack of personal income taxes,” reads the report. “While this characterization holds true for high-income families, these states levy some of the nation’s highest tax rates on the poor.”
State Senator London Lamar (Photo: Dawn Majors | US capitol)
A tale of two tax cuts
State Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) can go back to 2011 and rattle off a list of GOP-sponsored policies “that have truly benefited the wealthy and big corporations.” The repeal of the millionaire estate tax. The repeal of the luxury gift tax. A repeal of income tax on stocks and bonds. A reduction of the jet fuel tax. Corporate exemptions to the sales tax. Exemptions for corporate income taxes.
“Our tax policy is incentivizing businesses for keeping people poor,” Lamar said. “I say that because since 2011 and when the Republicans got in office, the main tax reform and benefits have truly benefited the wealthy and big corporations.
“So, the question is, where are the priorities for those citizens who are working the hardest to contribute to our economy?”
Well, the GOP cut taxes for working-class families just last year. Well, kinda sorta. And it wasn’t much. And it wasn’t forever. But …
Remember that odd, three-month cut on the state’s grocery tax last year? It was a $273 million part of the $400 million Tennessee Works Tax Act, “the largest single tax cut in Tennessee history.” It cut the 4 percent tax for everyone from August to October. Then, the tax went straight back onto receipts.
It was a head-scratcher to many and seemed a solution to a problem that didn’t exist (except, y’know, that Tennessee is one of only 13 states that still tax groceries). Why? Where did this cut come from? Even folks on Reddit couldn’t pin the motivation on some coarse design to win votes because there was no upcoming election.
But it was the remaining cuts in the Tax Act that smarted some working-class taxpayers. While they got a one-time deal that put about $100 in their pockets, the state’s business class got a permanent tax cut worth about $127 million that would put thousands of dollars in their bank accounts each and every year.
The Tax Act seemed to prove Lamar’s notion. Meaningful, permanent cuts for those with means; shallow, temporary cuts for everyone else. (Though, legislation has been filed for this year’s session to permanently cut Tennessee’s grocery tax.)
This might all come into sharper focus later, especially if revenues continue to fall. Because it’s lost revenues from those business tax cuts knocking multi-million-dollar holes in the state budget.
So, should lawmakers indeed need to make cuts to programs it offers Tennessee’s taxpayers, it won’t be because the majority of them got a brief respite from grocery taxes.
Chart: Economic Policy Institute
#VoucherScam
Capitol-watchers have said Lee’s controversial plan to expand his school voucher program could be the biggest fight in Nashville this year. Lee eventually wants to expand the program to every student for any kind of school — public, private, charter, or home.
But the program would allow the vouchers, worth about $7,075 per student each year, for all students, with no income requirements. This means wealthy parents — who now pay taxes for public schools and tuition at private schools — could divert funds from the public school system.
The fight over the legislation may prove to be another class battle that could heat up in Nashville this year. For proof, dig around X for #LeesVoucherScam.
“The voucher scam takes tax dollars from our neighborhood public schools to pay for the private school education of the wealthy,” tweeted Teri Mai, a Democratic candidate running for a House seat in Middle Tennessee. “Simply put, the school voucher scam defunds public schools by funneling your tax dollars to private and religious schools.”
Economic Policy Institute Report
Southern politicians tout the region’s “business-friendly” economic development policies, but a new study finds those policies are rooted in racism and have failed most people who live here.
The October study is from Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank focused on “the needs of low-and-middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.” The study looks at job growth, wages, poverty, and state GDP. The data, EPI said, “show a grim reality.”
The group characterized the Southern economic development model as one with “low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions.”
The state of Tennessee basically agrees with this and shouts it in all caps (literally) on its website under the “business climate” section.
“We believe in high expectations, low debt, and a pro-business regulatory environment,” reads the page from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. “Tennessee is proud to be a right-to-work state [also noting Tennessee’s low union participation] with no personal income tax. Our state and local tax burdens are among the lowest in the country, and our state budget operates with a healthy surplus, rather than a deficit.”
The EPI study said this does not work for everyone.
“While this economic model has garnered vast amounts of riches for the wealthiest people across the region, it is leaving most Southerners with low wages, underfunded public services, a weak safety net in times of economic downturns, deep racial divisions, and high rates of poverty,” said report author Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst for EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network.
Here are a few key takeaways from the report:
• Job growth across the South has failed to keep up with population growth. The share of prime-age workers (ages 25–54) who have a job is lower than the national average in most Southern states.
• Workers in Southern states tend to have lower earnings. Median earnings in nine Southern states are among the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for lower cost of living in the South.
• Poverty rates are above the national average in most Southern states. Louisiana and Mississippi have the highest poverty rates in the nation, with nearly one in five residents living in poverty.
• Child poverty is highest in the South compared to any other region. At 20.9 percent, child poverty rates in the South are 3.7 percentage points higher than the region with the next-highest child poverty rate — the Midwest (17.2 percent).
• Southern states are among the lowest-GDP states. Nine of the 15 states with the lowest per-worker GDP are in the South.
The racist remnant of the Southern economic development model, according to EPI, is that business owners in the South continue to rely on “large pools of cheap labor,” particularly Black and brown people. The study points back to slavery in the South when Black people were not paid at all and then to Pullman porters who were “forced to rely on tips” after slavery ended. Now, incarcerated individuals can be required to work with no pay at all, the study said.
“The racist roots of this model have been obscured and have been replaced by a more acceptable ‘pro-business’ narrative,” reads the study. “The pro-business narrative suggests that low wages, low taxes, anti-union policies, a weak safety net, and limited regulation on businesses creates a rising tide that ‘lifts all boats.’”
Tennessee policies fit into this model, the study said, as the state has no minimum wage, no income tax, a high sales-tax burden for all residents, no expanded Medicaid program, a low per-worker GDP, and more.
Poverty is higher in Tennessee than in other parts of the country. This is especially true for people of color and particularly women of color, according to the data. The highest rates of poverty across the South are experienced by Black women. One in five lives in poverty, but it’s not due to an unwillingness to work, the study says. Black women have a higher employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio than women from any other racial or ethnic group in the South.
“One reason Black women’s poverty rates remain high in the South — despite a relatively high EPOP — is that they are disproportionately employed in jobs consistent with the occupations they were largely limited to during and after the end of slavery: care work, cleaning, and food production, including agricultural and animal slaughter work,” reads the study. “Because this work is largely done by Black, brown, and immigrant workers, consistent with the Southern economic development model, these jobs pay very low wages.”
Wages are lower in Tennessee than in other parts of the country, and again it’s especially true for people of color and particularly women of color, according to the report.
“On average, Black women in the South are paid $35,884 at the median and Hispanic women just $30,984, compared with $58,008 for white men,” reads the report.
If the Tennessee economic model is working like politicians claim, where does the money go? The study says it goes to the wealthiest Tennesseans. The top 20 percent richest Tennesseans share more than half (51 percent) of the state’s total income. The top 5 percent share 23 percent of the state’s aggregate income. The bottom 20 percent share just 3.4 percent.
“Many Southerners may believe their politician’s arguments that the Southern economic development model will deliver good, well-paying jobs,” reads the report. “However, the data presented here show clearly and emphatically that this model has failed those living in Southern states.”
Tennessee has one of the highest overall rates of child homicide in the nation but ranks even higher for the rate of kids killed by guns: one out of every four children who died in 2021 was killed by a bullet.
New data released Monday by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth provides a comprehensive portrait of the lives and deaths of Tennessee’s children and the economic and social forces that shape their childhoods, from poverty to educational achievement, access to healthcare and housing.
While child deaths by firearms are on the rise — Tennessee ranks 7th in the nation for children murdered by guns — youth in Tennessee are much more likely to be the victim of a firearm crime than to perpetuate one, the “State of the Child in Tennessee 2023” report notes.
In 2022, kids were perpetrators of 1,561 crimes involving firearms; they were victims in 4,490 firearm-related crimes, according to the report.
At the same time, the state’s largest cities — Memphis, Chattanooga and Nashville — all experienced a decline in the under-18 crime rate. Nashville and Memphis experienced some of the largest declines in youth crime in Tennessee, according to the report.
The report also noted that infant mortality from all causes has increased in Tennessee, after a slight decline between 2019 and 2022. Tennessee’s infant mortality rate of 6.6 per 1,000 surpasses the national average of 5.6 per 1,000.
“Our state does better when all children have access to the resources, supports and services they need to thrive,” said Richard Kennedy, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. “We hope this report can serve as a guidebook for where we as a state are getting things right and where we can focus our investment and attention to improve outcomes.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Tennessee officials are devising the state’s first-ever climate action plan thanks to federal funds through the Inflation Reduction Act.
So far, 33 states have created and released climate plans, according to Climate Central, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to reporting on the changing climate. Tennessee’s big-four cities — Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga — all have individual plans.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) is now working with groups across the state for a greenhouse gas emission reduction plan, called the Tennessee Volunteer Emission Reduction Strategy (TVERS).
The “volunteer” part of the name is more than a reference to the Volunteer State, one of Tennessee’s nicknames. The planning approach so far does not seem to favor any mandates to curb climate change.
”Through TVERS, TDEC is focusing on voluntary or incentive-based activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants,” reads a website for the plan. “While other states have imposed mandates to reduce emissions, we hope to reach established goals through voluntary measures that may differ throughout the state.”
TDEC won $3 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in July to develop the statewide climate action plan. Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville each received $1 million to develop further plans.
The state owes the EPA a draft of a greenhouse gas inventory by the beginning of next month, according to state documents. Tennessee has never published (and has maybe never conducted) an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions.
When Memphis officials measured the city’s greenhouse gases for its climate action plan in 2016, they found emissions here came from three major sectors: energy, transportation, and waste.
Energy emissions were 46 percent of the total. The figure includes emissions from energy used in residential, commercial/institutional, and industrial buildings. Transportation emissions (42 percent) included passenger, freight, on-road and off-road vehicles. Waste emissions (12 percent) included solid waste disposal in landfills and wastewater treatment processes.
The total greenhouse gas output that year here was about 17.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. An EPA calculator says that amount of emissions is equal to more than 44 million miles driven by gas-powered cars, more than 94,000 railcars worth of coal burned, and more than 2 trillion smartphones charged. The Memphis climate plan said “emissions are fairly comparable to, and even lower than, several other peer cities, including Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville, and St. Louis.”
Credit: City of Memphis
After turning in a cursory greenhouse gas emissions inventory, the state will then owe the EPA a draft climate action plan by March. Then, officials will have to turn over a comprehensive climate action plan.
The process mandates states to provide greenhouse gas emission reduction measures. These could include “transitioning to low-or zero-emission vehicles, reducing carbon intensity of fuels, and expanding transportation options (biking, walking, public transit).” For buildings, these could include “increasing energy efficiency through incentive programs, weatherization retrofits, building codes and standards, and increasing electrification.”
Climate change has been a particularly thorny political issue in Tennessee with the state’s GOP-dominated legislature. This year, the General Assembly legally defined natural gas as “clean energy,” fought building codes that would reduce electricity consumption, and blocked a weather infrastructure project that would have given real-time data in every county.
In 2019, Gov. Bill Lee said he was was undecided as to whether climate change was real or not. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has battled companies on climate change issues throughout his tenure. But at least one Tennessee state government official was frank about climate issues during a presentation on the TVERS plan last month.
“Reducing emissions will result in cleaner air and improve public health,” said Jennifer Tribble, director of TDEC’s Office of Policy and Planning. “Greenhouse gas emissions are also contributing to the warming of our climate and an increase in number and severity of extreme weather events, such as drought, forest fires and hurricanes. These effects have important consequences on human health, such as exposure to extreme heat. Reducing these emissions will improve our resilience to these impacts in the long-term.”
State Capitol (Credit: Tennessee State Government)
The days of skyrocketing tax revenues are likely over, multiple budget experts told Tennessee’s panel in charge of predicting revenue growth.
The financial experts predict the state and national economy will grow, but at a slower pace over the next two years. This, combined with the state’s business tax cuts enacted earlier this year, will slow the state’s revenue, making them harder to predict.
For the past five years, Tennessee’s revenue has grown from $17.4 billion to $24.7 billion. This has allowed the state to spend more money on projects and keep up with the growing wages for employees.
The revenue projections made by the state funding board are crucial as programs boosted by federal coronavirus relief funds expire, leaving the state with the option of whether to cut them or fund them from its own revenue. The projections will also factor into whether the state can afford to fund any new programs or whether it can cut taxes.
If the panel goes with a negative growth rate, the state would have to cut its current spending, dip into its reserve funds, or increase revenue with new taxes.
The funding panel heard presentations from economic experts at East Tennessee State University, the state Department of Revenue, the Federal Reserve, the Tennessee General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee and the University of Tennessee.
The various officials detailed Tennessee’s economic outlook, giving out projections for future tax revenue over the next two years. The funding board will use these predictions as it sets the revenue projections for state officials to use when developing next year’s budget.
Tennessee’s budget hearings start Tuesday, and the governor will submit his proposed budget to state lawmakers before his State of the State address in late January or early February of 2024.
Several of the experts pointed out that part of the reason Tennessee’s revenue isn’t growing as fast is because of a significant business tax cut already leading to a slowdown in franchise and excise tax collections. From July 1 to Sept. 30, 2023, these taxes missed projections by around $61.4 million.
Most of the state’s revenue gain over the past five years has been driven by the ability to collect taxes on internet sales and an enormous growth in franchise and excise tax collections. Budget data shows that nearly two-thirds of the increase in state revenues came from these two areas.
He predicted tax revenue would grow by less than 1 percent in each of the next two years. Officials from the revenue department made a similar prediction, estimating virtually no revenue growth over the next two years.
Representatives with the Tennessee General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee and those from East Tennessee State University were more optimistic, predicting positive growth. Fiscal review officials projected 1.1 percent revenue growth next year and 3.4 percent the year after, while ETSU economists went with 4.8 percent and 4.2 percent.
Over the past few years, the state’s funding panel has used expert predictions to set revenue growth below their estimates, creating a surplus in revenue.
During this period, state officials used the surplus to increase its funding for schools by $1 billion, give $884 million in incentives to Ford and contribute $850 million towards professional sports stadiums in Nashville and Memphis.
The state funding board — whose members are Finance and Administration Commissioner Jim Bryson, Secretary of State Tre Hargett, state treasurer David Lillard and Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower — will meet again on November 29th to finalize the projected growth rate.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Southern politicians tout the region’s “business friendly” economic development policies but a new study finds those policies are rooted in racism and have failed most people who live in the region.
The October study is from Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank focused on “the needs of low-and-middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.” The study looks at job growth, wages, poverty, and state GDP. The data, EPI said, “show a grim reality.”
The Southern economic development model has totally failed. It has led to lower employment rates, lower wages, and higher poverty. https://t.co/bAEuXYYqfJ via @economicpolicy
The group characterized the Southern economic development model as one with ”low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions.”
“…it is leaving most Southerners with low wages, underfunded public services, a weak safety net in times of economic downturns, deep racial divisions, and high rates of poverty.”
Chandra Childers, Economic Policy Institute
“While this economic model has garnered vast amounts of riches for the wealthiest people across the region, it is leaving most Southerners with low wages, underfunded public services, a weak safety net in times of economic downturns, deep racial divisions, and high rates of poverty,” said report author Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst for EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network.
Here are a few key takeaways from the report:
• Job growth across the South has failed to keep up with population growth. The share of prime-age workers (ages 25–54) who have a job is lower than the national average in most Southern states.
• Workers in Southern states tend to have lower earnings. Median earnings in nine Southern states are among the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for lower cost of living in the South.
• Poverty rates are above the national average in most Southern states. Louisiana and Mississippi have the highest poverty rates in the nation, with nearly 1 in 5 residents living in poverty.
• Child poverty is highest in the South compared to any other region. At 20.9 percent, child poverty rates in the South are 3.7 percentage points higher than the region with the next-highest child poverty rate — the Midwest (17.2 percent).
• Southern states are among the lowest-GDP states. Nine of the 15 states with the lowest per-worker GDP are in the South.
Credit: Economic Policy Institute
The racist remnant of the Southern economic development model, according to EPI, is that business owners in the South continue to rely on “large pools of cheap labor,” particularly Black and brown people. The study points back to slavery in the South when Black people were not paid at all and then to Pullman porters who were “forced to rely on tips” after slavery ended. Now, incarcerated individuals can be required to work with no pay at all, the study said.
”The racist roots of this model have been obscured and have been replaced by a more acceptable ’pro-business’ narrative,” reads the study. “The pro-business narrative suggests that low wages, low taxes, anti-union policies, a weak safety net, and limited regulation on businesses creates a rising tide that ‘lifts all boats.’”
Tennessee policies fit into this model, the study said, as the state has no minimum wage, no income tax, a high sales-tax burden for all residents, no expanded Medicaid program, a low per-worker GDP, and more.
Poverty is higher in Tennessee than in other parts of the country. This is especially true for people of color and particularly women of color, according to the data.
Similarly, wages are lower in Tennessee than in other parts of the country, and again it’s especially true for people of color and particularly women of color, according to the report.
“On average, Black women in the South are paid $35,884 at the median and Hispanic women just $30,984, compared with $58,008 for white men,” reads the report.
Credit: Economic Policy InstituteCredit: Economic Policy Institute
If the Tennessee economic model is working like politicians claim, where does the money go? The study says it goes to the wealthiest Tennesseans. The top 20 richest Tennesseans share more than half (51 percent) of the state’s total income. The top 5 percent share 23 percent of of the state’s aggregate income. The bottom 20 percent share just 3.4 percent.
Credit: Economic Policy Institute
“Many Southerners may believe their politician’s arguments that the Southern economic development model will deliver good, well-paying jobs,” reads the report. “However, the data presented here show clearly and emphatically that this model has failed those living in Southern states.”
An aerial view of the Central Station Hotel, where the City of New Orleans train makes a stop (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Three hours separate Bluff City and Music City on an I-40 straight shot Memphis drivers know all too well.
“Oh, Jackson is bigger than I remember! Look kids, the Tennessee River! Ha, Bucksnort! There’s the Batman Building!”
Any Memphian who has routinely made that drive will have at one point wished for (a Buc-ee’s, of course, but also) a rail line to connect the two cities. This is especially true for any Memphian who has ever boarded the City of New Orleans train for a hands-off-the-wheel trip to another city up or down the rails.
But those choo-choo wishes here fade into the same place as win-the-lottery daydreams. Passenger rail is for those East Coast types or some European travel show on PBS. This is Tennessee. We won’t even expand Medicaid to save lives, let alone build a statewide train set so the fancies can swan around like they’re Rick Steves. So, I-40 drivers’ dreams go poof, they sigh, turn off the cruise control, and wait to pass a Big G Express truck in the left lane.
But a few things have happened recently to give those rail dreams a flicker of hope.
In 2021, Congress passed President Joe Biden’s massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It promised $1.2 trillion in transportation and infrastructure projects with $550 billion for new projects. That pot of money opened the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Corridor Identification and Development program. Flush with $1.8 billion, it will help cities and states pick new routes for intercity passenger rail service.
In 2022, the Tennessee General Assembly publicly but quietly directed a state-housed group of experts called the Tennessee Advisory Commission for Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR, pronounced TASS-err) to study the feasibility of passenger rail here.
The bipartisan bill was sponsored by the unlikely duo of Sen. Ken Yager, a Republican from the far-east corner of Tennessee (Bristol), and Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from the far-west corner (Memphis). But they had one thing in common — rail could help their cities. For Yager, Bristol could connect to Virginia’s ever-growing rail system. Memphis could connect to Nashville and beyond, and all of it could bring in people and their money.
“I have all the faith and confidence that [TACIR is] going to bring us back something completely comprehensive, whether it shows that rail is feasible or not,” Parkinson said when he introduced the bill. “It might not even be feasible, but whatever alternatives are available for us, we just need something to connect all of our people and all the tourists that come into our state.”
But as Parkinson introduced the bill to just even study the idea, GOP members quickly questioned the cost of rail. Many thought the idea was a good one (if not at least a pretty one), and no one voted against the study. But some knew already the Feds would not pay for the lines, nor the equipment, nor the resources it would take to maintain it. Hawk mode, it seemed, was already engaged.
In March 2023, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly announced on X that “it’s time to bring the Choo Choo back to Chattanooga! This week, I submitted an application for federal funds in partnership with [the mayors of Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis] to begin planning for a new Amtrak route through our cities.”
It’s unclear just where in line that application is now. But if the project is picked, the cities will get $500,000 to earnestly study routes and crunch numbers.
While rail in Tennessee has seen a flurry of activity over the last couple of years, Parkinson said it could take up to 15 years for a new passenger train to leave a station here. TACIR said if the process gets started and leaders remain committed to it, a train line could be operational in a hasty seven years.
Rail action could likely see the floors of the Tennessee state House and Senate in its next session this winter. Parkinson added that any rail ideas would need buy-in, also, from the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and Gov. Bill Lee’s office.
For now, lawmakers are likely mulling the TACIR study and, maybe, gauging where the political winds blow on it. Also for now, it still takes three hours of hands-on-the-wheel, going-the-speed-limit driving for an I-40 nonstop trip between Memphis and Nashville.
Central Station Hotel seen from South Main Street (Photo: Calvin L. Leake | Dreamstime.com)
A Rail Assessment
Rail travel shriveled across the U.S. over the last few decades. While Tennessee was never famous for its great passenger systems, the state certainly had more lines than it does today.
For example, ever wonder why Nashville’s beautiful Union Station luxury hotel is called a “station,” sits on train tracks, but has no trains? Well, it used to. It was once a major stop on Amtrak’s Floridian line, a 1,400-mile route that ran from Chicago, through Nashville, to Miami. But Amtrak stopped the service in 1979.
So, what does Tennessee have now as far as real, people-moving rail service, not meant as nostalgia machines? Very little.
Amtrak stations at Memphis and Newbern to the north are the only two such stations in the state. It’s another sort of feather in West Tennessee’s cap. It seems glitzy, but ridership figures dull the story. Ridership was still below pre-pandemic levels last year when about 40,000 boarded the train here. That’s roughly 3 percent of the Memphis MSA population. That ridership figure is down from a recent high of about 72,000 in 2017, or about 6 percent of the population. The station was on a shortlist for closure with looming budget cuts in 2017, but it was saved with the stroke of a Congressional pen.
Amtrak’s only train running through Tennessee, the City of New Orleans, runs between Chicago and New Orleans. The route through Tennessee follows the Mississippi River along the western border of the state, making only two stops, one in Newbern (close to Dyersburg) and another in Memphis at Central Station on South Main Street. Memphis is the state’s busiest station. While ridership here may have ducked during and after the pandemic, numbers climbed through the aughts, growing 15 percent between 2010 and 2018.
Nashville’s WeGo Star (formerly known as the Music City Star) began operations in 2006 and remains the state’s lone commuter rail line. The train runs east from Downtown Nashville to nearby Lebanon with several stops along the way on a 32-mile line. It was heralded as a helping hand to remove some congestion from the city’s famously jammed interstates. Ridership figures there haven’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, either, down by about 67 percent in fiscal year 2022. A WPLN story in July said that number rose to 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels this year, and now about 400 people ride the WeGo Star each day.
Trolleys move people in Memphis, but mostly tourists. Even though they run regularly enough (and usually on time), when was the last time you heard someone talk about their commute to work and say, “You won’t believe what happened on the trolley this morning”? However, sharp-eyed Memphians may have glimpsed sleek, modern streetcars on the Madison Line last year. The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is testing the new cars that could, one day, regularly carry commuters. The rail trolley system here is the only one in the state.
That’s really it. Other Tennessee trains do carry passengers, but do so for pleasure’s sake, not efficiency. That is, unless you count Lookout Mountain workers taking the Incline Railway.
Proposed rail infrastructure could connect Memphis to the rest of Tennessee and to states like Virginia and Georgia. (Photo: TACIR)
What’s Proposed
Parkinson said when he proposed a transportation study from TACIR, it wasn’t only about rail. It was about moving people across the state and beyond, and about economic opportunities.
“I wanted to keep it broad enough for us to look at everything — not just rail — but any alternatives,” he said. “I wanted to know what those alternatives were, whatever the future of transport is. And if not rail, then what’s the future of transportation so we can be on the front end of it?”
The legislation he sponsored wanted a top-to-bottom review of the idea. That review had to look at physical train tracks in Tennessee, show what an intercity rail network would look like, and find alternatives to rail that might get the same job done. Lawmakers also wanted to see what kinds of projects like these have been done over the last decade. They wanted to hear from three other states about their rail projects. They wanted to know about possible stakeholders, costs, ridership estimates, operations, equipment, and more.
Two recommendations from the study made headlines when it was released in July. One, an intercity passenger rail system could “improve mobility and the state’s economy,” meaning it could work. Two, the group recommended five routes built in five phases.
The first would connect Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. To this, many Memphians likely sighed a unanimous “well, of course, Nashville ….” But the decision was based on moving the most people, connecting larger swathes of the country via rail, and existing infrastructure, like rail lines at airports in Chattanooga and Atlanta.
The next proposed route would connect Memphis and Nashville. The route was mentioned in 2020’s massive Southern Rail Plan from the Feds but was given a lower priority, though details on why were not given. That plan, however, saw the route as best suited as a link from the East to Midwest cities served by the City of New Orleans.
Well before TACIR recommended the Memphis-Nashville line, mayors of Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Chattanooga had done one better and applied to the FRA’s Corridor ID Program. That application seeks to get rail done quickly with minimal investment.
Letters of support for the application flowed from every corner of every state involved right into the mailboxes of Pete Buttigieg, secretary of transportation, and Amit Bose, administrator of the FRA. Many of those letters refer to the proposed route as the Sunbelt-Atlantic Connector Corridor, even though that name does not yet even appear in any Google search.
“Each of our four cities are leading transportation and tourism hubs in their own right, and such a service would connect many millions of residents from beyond our municipal and state borders to reliable and frequent rail travel opportunities,” wrote Dennis Newman, executive vice president of strategy and planning for Amtrak.
Many of the letters read the same, including mentions of how the route could expand the economy and mobility, drive higher workforce participation and equity, advance “our international climate commitments,” and push tourism and leisure travel.
But letters from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) mention one Memphis-specific need of the proposed route: BlueOval City. Work is underway now on the massive, Haywood County campus that will house Ford’s production line for its electric F-Series pickup trucks and batteries.
“The Memphis region will most benefit from the opportunity to help connect the 5,800 new workers needed to power the coming BlueOval City,” Strickland and Cohen wrote in their letters. “This mega-campus is envisioned to be a sustainable automotive manufacturing ecosystem. The $5.6 billion battery and vehicle manufacturing campus just outside of Memphis will be the largest in the Ford Motor Co. world.”
TDOT studied BlueOval City’s transportation needs, but only a passing mention of it made TACIR’s final report. TDOT aimed to figure out ways to move what it said could be between 5,800 to 7,000 employees from Memphis, Jackson, and nearby areas to the site, “and to try to avoid a surge in congestion along the I‐40 corridor.”
They came up with three ideas. Two of them are mixtures of buses and vanpools with start-up price tags ranging from $8.6 million to $14.6 million. Another option included a passenger rail system with a price tag between $490 million and $600 million. All of these transit options “would be used only by BlueOval workers,” according to TACIR documents.
While the 234-mile Memphis-Nashville route came in second, it does have a few things going for it, adding to its feasibility. For one, freight tracks already exist between the cities. Also, the TACIR study found lower freight volume between them, causing fewer supply-chain disruptions. The route is mostly flat, making it easier to build. While the population it would serve is smaller than the route to Atlanta, it would still connect a collective 3.4 million people in both cities and the roughly 171,000 folks who live in the 29 cities between them. Finally, other transportation infrastructure already exists in both cities.
Another Memphis route recommended by the TACIR study would enhance service from here to Chicago. Amtrak now runs this route once a day. But the study suggested connecting two other train routes — the Illini and Saluki routes — to increase daily frequency and mobility between the states.
Photo: Iandewarphotography | Dreamstime.com
The Money Barrier
Money will easily be the biggest barrier to making any Tennessee passenger rail dreams come true. They’re not cheap to build, they’re not cheap to run, and the state will likely have to pay for most, if not all, of it.
“The experience of other states suggests that costs can range from the hundreds of millions of dollars for more straightforward passenger rail projects to billions of dollars for more intensive projects,” reads the TACIR report. ”For example, Virginia estimates spending $4.1 billion on capital projects over 10 years.”
For costs to run a rail network, TACIR looked to North Carolina, another state making major investments in passenger rail. State-supported Amtrak routes there between 2015 and 2019 ranged from about $14 million to $17 million each year.
But as the study pointed out, Tennessee has, for years, committed millions upon millions of dollars, and staff, and other resources, to roads.
“As a result, [Tennessee] has a first-class road network,” the study said. “The experience of other states demonstrates that a similar approach can be used to overcome the barriers to establishing passenger rail.”
When asked about costs as a barrier, Parkinson was quick to say that, “operationally, they lose money.”
“But when you think about the indirect impact to the cities, to those towns, and those rural areas that are going to benefit from it, it would prove profitable from the rippling effect,” he said.
Others agree. The Southern Rail Plan said the Nashville-to-Atlanta route could produce a total economic output of $18.2 billion and support over 17,000 construction jobs. For travelers, the route could save $1.8 million every year.
Tennessee state numbers say 141 million tourists spent $29 billion here last year. Most of those originated from nearby states, all of which could be connected to Tennessee by rail. How could that impact tourism spending here? The closest analogue is a 2020 study from the Southern Rail Commission. It found that if rail brought even 1 percent more tourists to Alabama, it would generate an additional $11.8 million each year.
But For Now …
Where Tennessee will land on passenger rail is anyone’s guess. It will take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. That’s even if the idea gets off the ground, and getting there is promising to be a fist fight in the state capitol.
Now, however, most Memphians will do what we’ve always done: fill up the tank, buckle up, hit the gas, and, maybe, dream of a rail system one day. But we’ll definitely dream of a Buc-ee’s, preferably near Bucksnort.
