RESEARCH

January 22, 2023 9:00AM

Over the past 10 months, the Beacon Center has traveled the state to listen to our fellow Tennesseans about the challenges they face. This blueprint for restoring Tennesseans’ freedoms is a direct result of that listening tour. The listening tour was comprised of multiple components, including numerous and diverse community visioning panels, focus groups, and... READ MORE

January 11, 2023 4:42PM

Healthcare can be expensive and complex. But Tennessee’s rules and restrictions are making it worse, often for those who can least afford care. Adopted in the 1970s, certificate-of-need (CON) laws require a government permission slip before providing most healthcare services, such as opening a new hospital or purchasing high-tech medical equipment. Imagine if every new... READ MORE

December 14, 2022 5:00AM

Today, the Beacon Center released its most famous annual publication, the Pork Report. As always the report shed light on hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending in Tennessee. Examples in this year’s report range from the state’s no-bid contract for contact tracing given to a company with no previous experience to the unused homeless pods the city of... READ MORE

August 22, 2022 8:00PM

Today, after months of research and open records requests, the Beacon Center released a new report showing how local school districts in Tennessee are budgeting and spending federal COVID dollars through the ESSER program. Congress allocated over $4 billion in federal taxpayer money to Tennessee school districts to address the pandemic. The data suggests that Tennessee public schools have budgeted or spent millions... READ MORE

December 15, 2021 10:28AM

The Beacon Center is proud to release its “recipe book” themed Tennessee Pork Report, revealing hundreds of millions of dollars in government waste, fraud, and abuse. This year’s infamous Pork of the Year “winner” was Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS). MNPS entered into an $18 million no-bid contract with Meharry Medical College Ventures which produced... READ MORE

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