Nashville-Based Beacon Center Ranks La Vergne the Freest City in Tennessee

The City of La Vergne is the “Freest City” in all of Tennessee.

This, according to a study that Beacon Center of Tennessee staff call the City Freedom Index. Beacon staff published the study Wednesday.  Beacon, based in Nashville, is a right-of-center think tank.

“The Beacon Center says the reason La Vergne ranked in the number one spot is credit to its strong showing Free Enterprise (ranked 1 out of 30) and Cost of Government (ranked 3 out of 30),” La Vergne officials said in a press release.

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Bluff City Law to Film on Location in Memphis, Likely to Get Corporate Welfare

  The NBC drama Bluff City Law will reportedly film on location in Memphis, and it’s also presumed Tennessee officials will hand out corporate welfare in exchange. This, according to Monday’s Memphis Commercial Appeal. The show stars Jimmy Smits. But Tennessee taxpayers may lose out, said Ron Shultis, policy coordinator for the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee, in an analysis on the group’s website. Beacon is a free-market think tank. “The reason Tennessee should continue to give little—or, even better, outright eliminate these programs—is because film incentives have been shown to be a terrible value. State film incentives became popular in the mid and late 2000s. By 2009, 44 states offered some kind of film incentive. What those in the industry won’t tell you is that since then, thirteen states have completely eliminated their programs and several more have reduced theirs because these programs have been shown to be a bad value for taxpayers,” Shultis wrote. “In fact, a recent study by Tennessee’s Dept. of Economic and Community Development (ECD) found that the $69.1 million given over the life of Tennessee’s program has resulted in $14.7 million in state tax collections, or a 21-cent return on the dollar. This estimate…

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Report: Tennessee Lacks Transparency and Accountability in State Incentive Programs

Tennessee has too many confidential incentive deals, and taxpayers don’t know how much of their money goes to private companies or what return on investment they’re getting, according to a report released Thursday. The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based free market think tank, published the report. “To make matters worse, even when companies are required to disclose the number of jobs created as part of their agreement, some haven’t submitted reports in years,” said Beacon Policy Coordinator Ron Shultis, who authored the report, in a press release. “This report actually leaves us with a lot more questions than answers. No matter where you stand on economic incentives, everyone should be for transparency when it comes to how our tax dollars are being spent, and our economic development programs fail that basic test.” Among some of the report’s findings: • State officials do not require that many companies that receive taxpayer money hire the number of workers promised. All 25 FastTrack agreements that Beacon employees reviewed only required companies to hire 80 percent of the promised jobs. • Companies that received FastTrack Economic and Community Development Grants often did not submit the required documentation on time. In fact, only 51 percent of the mandated…

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