A nationally recognized research center released a report detailing policy suggestions that Tennessee could implement to help protect property acquisitions and increase housing development.
As a state, Tennessee’s population is estimated to increase to around 8 million people by 2040.
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A poll of 1,200 likely Tennessee voters shows both Democrats and Republicans would back candidates who support school choice.
Democratic voters were even more likely than Republicans, with 58% saying they would vote for a proponent of school choice compared to 56% of their GOP counterparts, according to a poll by The Beacon Center.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published results of its poll on Tuesday revealing how registered Tennessee voters would vote in the 2024 presidential and senate general election races.
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West Tennessee is projected to have a significant population increase in coming years with Ford’s Blue Oval set to open outside Memphis but zoning regulations will have a large impact on the affordability of new housing in the region, according to a new report from Beacon Center of Tennessee.
Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development estimates that, by 2045, West Tennessee’s population will grow by more than 176,000 and the region will need more than 70,000 new housing units.
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According to a poll from the Tennessee-based Beacon Center shows that support for former President Donald Trump has risen for his 2024 reelection bid after he was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying documents in New York.
Trump was convicted on May 30.
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Ron Shultis, the Director of Policy and Research for both the Beacon Center and Beacon Impact, said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit plan is subject to major changes if approved by voters on the November ballot.
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Governor Bill Lee released a statement Monday announcing there is “not a pathway” for his universal school choice voucher bill this legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published results of its poll on Wednesday revealing how registered Tennessee voters would vote in the 2024 presidential and senate general election races.
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The Right on Transparency coalition is asking five states to stop restricting public records requests based on residency.
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Tennessee and Virginia all are known to restrict records requests based upon residency. The coalition has published model policy to change those laws.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee filed a lawsuit on behalf of two freelance journalists against the U.S. Department of Labor’s Independent Contractor Rule on Wednesday.
The think tank is representing Tennessee freelance journalists Margaret Littman and Jennifer Chesak in the suit, arguing that the department’s updated rule “threatens to destroy the livelihoods of freelancers” by “forcing freelancers into employment relationships that they neither want nor need.”
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A Tennessee bill would cap property tax increases in the state at 2 percent plus inflation each year and 6 percent plus inflation over a three-year span.
A higher percentage increase in property tax rates would require a referendum.
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee released a statement on Tuesday celebrating the Mt. Juliet Board of Commissioners for passing an ordinance setting a uniform rate for both in-city and out-of-city food trucks to operate within city limits.
“We are absolutely thrilled that our lawsuit prompted the City of Mt. Juliet to repeal its unconstitutional $100/day permitting fee for food truck operators located outside of Mt. Juliet,” Beacon Director of Legal Affairs Wen Fa said in a statement. “That exorbitant fee essentially shut out our clients— food truck owners who have served many satisfied Mt. Juliet residents in the past— from Mt. Juliet. We’re delighted for both our clients and for the residents of Mt. Juliet that the food trucks are now able to return.”
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A Majority of Tennessee voters who support former President Donald Trump say they will not vote for another candidate if the former president is convicted at any of the charges levied against him in four states and by the federal government.
The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published data on Thursday indicating 58 percent of voters who support Trump “would still vote for him” even if he “were to be convicted of one or more of the crimes that he has been charged with before the next election.”
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published results Thursday of its poll revealing which topics registered Tennessee voters are looking forward to being discussed this upcoming legislative session.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee has revealed federal pandemic funds meant for schools to “support students’ social-emotional well-being and academic achievement” were misused this year throughout the Volunteer State.
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Drew Johnson, who founded and served as the first president of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, formerly the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, told The Tennessee Star he intends to take his years of policy experience to Congress if he wins election to the U.S. House to represent Nevada’s 3rd Congressional district.
Johnson explained to The Star that he started Beacon Center when in his early twenties, and lived and operated from his personal vehicle for the think tank’s first few months of operation. He told The Star he saved American taxpayers around $60 billion and brought about 100 charter schools to Tennessee over his time in public policy.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published results of its poll this week revealing how registered Tennessee voters would vote in the 2024 presidential and senate races.
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The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee filed a new lawsuit against the State of Tennessee in a challenge to Public Chapter No. 471 – a law that requires online auctioneers to be licensed.
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On Thursday, the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published results of its first-ever poll revealing how Tennessee voters feel about a variety of issues.
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After finding housing affordability is the most pressing issue for Tennesseans through its 2022 listening tour, Beacon Center has developed and released an atlas of Tennessee zoning requirements that highlight how the state has become unaffordable for the average person in Middle Tennessee.
Local and state policies have contributed to an environment where housing prices have outpaced the median income.
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee recently released its 2023 agenda focusing on the top four policy issues most affecting Tennesseans. The organization describes its ‘2023 Back to the Basics’ agenda as a “blueprint for restoring Tennesseans’ freedom.”
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee released a report Thursday highlighting challenges to healthcare access in the state posed by Certificate-of-Needs (CON) laws.
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In its annual Pork Report highlighting waste, fraud, and abuse of Tennessee taxpayer money, the Beacon Center of Tennessee identified 2022’s ‘Pork of the Year’ – the biggest waste of taxpayer money – as the funding and proposals of many sports stadiums across the state.
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee published its annual Pork Report this week, highlighting the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars this past year across Tennessee.
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A new report was released by the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday examining the return on investment for students and taxpayers at Tennessee’s public universities and colleges.
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A new report by the Beacon Center of Tennessee says that $4 billion worth of federal COVID-19 relief funding allocated to Tennessee’s school systems was largely spent on items unrelated to COVID-19.
“The data suggests that Tennessee public schools have budgeted or spent millions of dollars on areas that had little to nothing to do with COVID or student performance,” said Beacon Research Associate and report author Jason Edmonds. “School districts across the state budgeted tens of millions of dollars for ‘indirect costs’ without any further explanation and also funded pet projects such as walk-in coolers and retractable bleachers.”
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Former U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President Trump, retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson joined the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s Over-Caffeinated podcast, where he discussed a variety of issues including who he thinks could get the Republican and Democrat nominations for the 2024 presidential election.
The podcast was released on Monday.
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U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) said late last month that he wonders whether certain aspects of inflation haven’t happened by design, as a means of pushing the United States closer to socialism. Burchett said this on the talk show, Over-Caffeinated.
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Staff at the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday bestowed the Metro Nashville Public School System (MNPS) with their yearly Pork of the Year Award, for more reasons than one. Beacon, a Nashville-based center right think tank, published their 2021 Pork Report on Wednesday.
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A new documentary profiles examples of corporate welfare that shortchanged taxpayers and business owners, including in Memphis, where city officials bestowed a generous tax break upon IKEA. This documentary, Corporate Welfare: Where’s the Outrage?, debuted on public television and YouTube late last month. Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg hosted the documentary.
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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on a recent podcast that the constantly-increasing federal debt imperils future generations and could rob them of their chance to pursue the American Dream. Blackburn said this on the talk show, Over-Caffeinated.
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During COVID-19, Georgia and Tennessee have both fared substantially better economically than Kentucky and Michigan with no significant increase in cases from reopening their economy. This, according to a report that members of the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published this month. Beacon is a free market think tank.
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based policy institute and fiscal watchdog, has added its voice to those calling for an investigation into Metro Nashville Public Schools’ (MNPS) contract with Meharry Medical College Ventures.
The contract provided COVID-19 testing and other services, including a COVID website for the school district—one that cost about $1.8 million.
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The Tennessee Supreme Court has agreed to the state’s appeal on the constitutionality of its education savings account program (ESA). The pilot school voucher program has been tied up in a legal battle for all of 2020 after its passage by the General Assembly in 2019, thereby preventing any planned advancement of the program.
The program was previously ruled unconstitutional by Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Anne Martin. She assessed it would disproportionately impact two counties: Shelby County Schools (SCS) and Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS). Those districts reportedly contain about 90 percent of the state’s failing schools list. The Court of Appeals upheld Martin’s decision last September.
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Tennessee’s Hall Tax, as of this coming Friday, will cease to exist.
Experts say that will bring new opportunities to Tennessee and make the state’s economy more competitive.
The Hall Tax, instituted in 1929, applies a 6 percent tax to Tennesseans’ interest and dividend income. In 2016 members of the Tennessee General Assembly phased out the Hall Income Tax over years of scheduled reductions.
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Nashville’s 34 percent property tax increase is the “Pork of the Year,” according to the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s annual Pork Report, which the organization released Tuesday. Staff at the Beacon Center of Tennessee say that their annual Tennessee Pork Report reveals millions of dollars in government waste, fraud, and abuse.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper has placed new limits on gatherings just in time for Thanksgiving, leading one conservative watchdog to liken all the mayor’s decrees to a “game of duck duck goose.”
With the dramatically named “Rule of 8,” Cooper announced a limit of eight for public and private gatherings. The limits start Monday.
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Shelby County Schools would save more than $2,000 for each student who chooses to utilize Education Savings Accounts, and Metro Nashville Schools would save more than $500 for each student who uses them.
This, according to a new research report that staff at the Beacon Center of Tennessee published Thursday.
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State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) wants to add Tennessee’s Right to Work law to the state constitution.
Kelsey this week filed a Senate Joint Resolution for the 112th General Assembly to consider to add the Right to Work law to the constitution for its second required passage by the legislature. This, before officials send it to voters on the ballot.
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Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle on Tuesday gave members of the Davidson County Election Commission what they wanted and ruled against arguments in favor of the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act.
The Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act referendum, if approved, would roll back Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s 34 to 37 percent tax increase.
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Members of the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee this week filed a lawsuit against the city of Nashville on behalf of two homeowners that Metro officials forced to pay for public sidewalks.
Beacon officials said in an emailed press release that they are filing the case to prevent Metro officials from holding building permits hostage until individual property owners agree to pay for public infrastructure like sidewalks.
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Dennis Ferrier of Fox News 17 continues his reporting on Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s overreach in closing restaurants and bars, which account for only a fraction of coronavirus cases even as that industry continues to suffer.
Ferrier has been digging into the story for some time to gain the actual number of cases.
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The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled Governor Bill Lee’s educational savings account (ESA) program “unconstitutional” on Tuesday. The court’s decision upheld a lower court’s ruling on the school voucher program.
The court of appeals ruled that the unconstitutionality of the ESA program is because “is local in effect, and applicable to Davidson and Shelby counties in their governmental capacity.” This decision references article XI, section 9, paragraph 2 of the Tennessee Constitution.
When Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced at a July 2 press conference that he was shutting down all the city’s bars for 14 days, reducing restaurant capacity from 75 percent to 50 percent, and temporarily closing event venues and entertainment venues, all due to “record” cases of COVID-19 traceable to restaurants and bars, he apparently knew that his own Metro Health Department said less than two dozen cases of COVID-19 could be traced to those establishments. But he failed to disclose that the “record” of bar and restaurant traceable cases to which he referred to was about one tenth of one percent of Davidson County’s 20,000 cases of COVID-19.
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The president of a Nashville-based center-right think tank said members of the Nashville Metro Council refuse to make the kinds of sacrifices that they ask their own constituents to make.
Beacon Center President Justin Owen said as much in a column on the organization’s website.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper and members of his administration weren’t straightforward enough with their COVID-19 data and, in effect, hurt local businesses and justified fears that government officials would abuse their power during this long emergency.
This, according to Beacon Center of Tennessee spokesman Mark Cunningham. Cunningham responded to a FOX 17 of Nashville report that suggested Cooper and his staff members kept secret the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases coming out of the bars and restaurants in the city’s lower Broadway area.
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Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee (AFP-TN) this week announced that members of the group and other concerned citizens would turn in roughly 20,000 signatures to the Metro Clerk’s office in support of the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act.
This, according to a press release that AFP-TN members published on their website. Members of the group helped gather the requisite number of signatures for the initiative for the December 5 ballot.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said this week that protecting public safety while also protecting the state’s small businesses during COVID-19 is his administration’s primary “balancing act” and it was “heartbreaking” to watch small businesses close.
Lee also said he and other state officials used stimulus money to help the state’s business owners.
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A Memphis man has won a lawsuit against the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners for denying him the right to work.
As The Tennessee Star reported in 2018, state officials denied that man, Elias Zarate, a barber’s license because he did not have a high school diploma.
A press release that the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee emailed Monday updated Zarate’s case. Beacon, a right-of-center think tank, represented him.
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Cancel culture and higher taxes during COVID-19 have burdened at least one Nashville business owner, so much so he worries about his personal and professional well-being.
Carey Bringle, who owns Nashville’s Pork Leg Porker restaurant, said this on a new episode of the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s Over-Caffeinated podcast.
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