Tennessee's priorities are off when tax refunds prevail over feeding children
What kind of state is Tennessee that it approves $1.5 billion in corporate tax refunds but won't accept a $75 million federal grant to feed hungry children?
Yes, these are two separate issues, but they speak to Tennessee's priorities and in both cases reveal a lack of transparency in explaining how decisionmakers made these choices.
Let's start with the franchise tax refunds.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed this program in 2024 because some state officials and lawmakers said the state potentially could face legal challenges. But no one had sued and no one would explain who exactly was making this claim.
As of late December, $1.28 billion had been returned to businesses and 53% of that is going to companies out of state. There were about 100,000 businesses deemed eligible for the refund.
In the summer, the list of recipients will be made public temporarily. Why can't that list be made permanently available?
Gov. Bill Lee came into office in 2019 with a promise of transparency, but there is far more mystery to this decision. Citizens would benefit from knowing why the state needed this policy in the first place and who benefits.
On the second issue, Lee's administration recently rejected a $75 million grant from the federal government to supplement food assistance low-income children receive when they are out of school.
The state's annual administrative costs were $5 million.
However, instead of spending that money to receive $75 million, the Tennessee Department of Human Services will invest $3 million in a summer food program that benefits only 15 rural counties. There are 95 counties in Tennessee.
DHS will go from serving 700,000 children to 25,000 – about 4% of the number that had benefited from the federal program in past years. Tennessee began participating in the federal program in 2018.
'With this innovative step, we will go even further to provide food security to Tennessee children,' said DHS Commissioner Clarence H. Carter. 'This approach will deliver a fiscally responsible strategy to reach families in underserved communities in the summer months.'
Back to transparency, why was the decision made? Why would the state leave $75 million on the table? Why would they dare call a program that puts hundreds of thousands of children in greater food insecurity 'innovative'?
The reasons could be multiple. When Tennessee lawmakers rejected Insure Tennessee in 2015 – the program to expand Medicaid to 300,000 working poor Tennesseans – it was a clear snub to the federal government. It was a political flex.
This could be the same tactic.
At the same time, low-income people do not have the power that corporations have to move the wheels of government.
State elected officials are accountable to the people who deserve to know the whole truth about how and why taxpayer money is being spent the way it is – and what to tell hungry families about why the state won't help hundreds of thousands of children with summer food assistance anymore.
David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He is an editorial board member of The Tennessean. He hosts the Tennessee Voices videocast and curates the Tennessee Voices and Latino Tennessee Voices newsletters. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or find him on X at @davidplazas or BlueSky at davidplazas.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee children matter more than corporate tax refunds | Opinion
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