Did you know that Tennessee’s 30 largest cities spend more than $1.4 million a year to hire private lobbyists to advocate for bigger government at the state Capitol in Nashville? That doesn’t even include the state’s remaining cities, 95 counties, 147 school districts, and nearly 200 public utility districts, many of which also hire their own lobbyists.
Obtaining this information is incredibly opaque and requires months of waiting for responses to open records requests.
This practice, known as taxpayer-funded lobbying, leaves most citizens unaware. But when asked whether their local government officials should be spending their tax dollars to hire lobbyists, a minuscule five percent of voters agree with the practice. Rather, almost all Tennesseans believe that local officials like mayors, city council members, and school board members should be directly responsible for making their case to state policymakers on issues of importance to them. They should not be able to spend taxpayer money to farm this out to highly-paid professional lobbyists.
Do you think that taxpayer-funded lobbying is wrong? Send a message to lawmakers TODAY.