The Volunteer Plan

Chattanooga's municipally owned fiber network became the first gigabit service in the country. A $280 million investment returned $2.69 billion in economic benefits and created over 9,500 jobs. Faster, more reliable, and cheaper than what the big telecoms offer.

The Chattanooga model should be the Tennessee model. We'll expand municipal and cooperative broadband networks statewide, starting in the communities left behind the longest. Tennessee has secured over $813 million in federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program funds, so the state cost of deployment is essentially zero. Network revenues become self-sustaining.

When a publicly owned utility delivers better service at lower cost than a Fortune 500 company, the market isn't working. Our goal is reliable affordable high-speed internet in every county within five years.

Tennesseans pay some of the highest prescription drug prices in the country. The pharmacy benefit manager system takes a cut at every step while hiding the real costs. Oregon and Washington built a better model: the Northwest Prescription Drug Consortium now covers over a million people, passes 100% of manufacturer rebates through to consumers, and has saved over $130 million for residents.

Tennessee has 7 million people, more than enough bargaining power to negotiate real prices. We'll establish a state purchasing cooperative, starting with insulin and naloxone, that buys in bulk and passes the savings directly to Tennesseans.

In the Nashville metro area, home prices have increased roughly 137% in the past decade. Knoxville and Chattanooga, and even rural towns have followed similar trajectories. Young families are being priced out of the communities they grew up in.

We'll change zoning rules so duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings can be built by right on residential lots, increasing housing supply without anyone having to build a skyscraper. And we'll invest in community land trusts, where a nonprofit owns the land, sells homes to income-qualified families at below-market price, and caps resale so affordability is permanent. The Lincoln Institute tracked over 4,000 properties across three decades and found 95% remained affordable through boom, crash, and recovery. Nashville and Memphis already have trusts on the ground. We'll capitalize and expand them statewide.

Tennessee can build its own renewable generation capacity today, inside the rules that already exist. State-owned generators selling wholesale into TVA under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act is a federal obligation TVA cannot refuse.

We'll create the Tennessee Renewable Power Authority. It will develop solar and battery storage on state lands, sell wholesale electricity into the grid, power state facilities at predictable fixed costs, and put $80 to $120 million a year in property tax revenue into the rural counties that host generation projects. Bonds are revenue-backed by the electricity the Authority sells, not by the General Fund.

Whether TVA's rates rise or hold, whether federal policy shifts or stays, Tennessee will have its own generation assets producing revenue and serving state needs.

Every major storm can knock out electricity to hundreds of thousands of Tennessee homes, yet every time we rebuild the same vulnerable lines. West Tennessee experiences the state's highest concentration of severe weather, and the Memphis-to-Jackson I-40 corridor serves a Level 1 trauma center, a naval facility, and several keystone employers.

We'll start with a 15 to 20 mile underground pilot along the highest damage segments of that corridor. At an estimated $3 million per mile, the pilot costs $45 to $60 million, with federal BRIC and DOE grants potentially reducing the state share by 50 to 75%. The pilot will track outage data before and after. That data unlocks the expansion to roughly 105 miles of the highest-priority corridors statewide. Long term, these corridors carry power, water, broadband, and gas underground, a proven model in places like Helsinki and Singapore.

Between 2019 and 2022, nearly two-thirds of corporations operating in Tennessee paid nothing in excise tax. They were profitable. The tax code just lets them shift profits out of state on paper while keeping operations here.

We'll require worldwide combined reporting, so every multistate corporation reports its total income and apportions Tennessee's share based on actual business activity. Twenty-nine states already do this. We'll also set a corporate minimum tax ensuring no profitable corporation pays zero, regardless of credits or accounting strategies.

Combined, these reforms generate an estimated $650 to $900 million a year in revenue Tennessee is currently giving up. Every dollar will go to backfilling revenue lost by eliminating the state grocery tax. The result is that Tennessee families will get a tax cut of $400 per year on average, funded entirely by closing corporate loopholes.

Tennessee is one of ten states that still hasn't closed the Medicaid coverage gap. Every year we don't act, federal dollars that Tennessee taxpayers already paid flow to other states instead.

We'll extend TennCare to every adult earning up to 138% of the federal poverty line. The federal government covers 90% of the cost. For every dollar Tennessee spends, nine federal dollars come home, roughly $420 to $510 million a year flowing to Tennessee hospitals, clinics, and providers.

The expansion includes dental, vision, mental health, and addiction treatment coverage. Because untreated dental disease and vision problems are significant barriers to employment, Tennesseans won't just be more healthy, they'll be more capable of taking care of themselves and each other.

Tennessee already has LaunchTN, APEX, Fund Tennessee, and Small Business Development Centers across the state. The infrastructure works but it's fragmented across half a dozen agencies, weighted toward founders who already know how to navigate it, and nearly invisible to a first-time entrepreneur in a distressed rural county.

We'll create grant preparation stipends so founders can afford to compete for grants like the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. Tennessee captures about $49 million a year in federal innovation awards already, but every unfiled application is money left on the table. With a 1.5x match weight for firms in distressed counties we'll make sure the program doesn't only serve urban areas.

A single front door for founders, modeled on Maryland's TEDCO, will triage people to the right program instead of expecting them to map the system themselves.

Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga are all building transit independently. Nashville voters approved a $3.1 billion plan. Memphis is building bus rapid transit. But there's no state plan connecting these efforts and no coordinated push for federal funding.

We'll create a Tennessee Transit Investment Program. State matching funds give cities 10 to 20 cents on the dollar for locally raised transit revenue. Statewide BRT design standards require dedicated lanes, 10-minute peak headways, and institutional anchor commitments before construction, because Cleveland's HealthLine, anchored by hospitals and a university, increased ridership 80% within five years. Memphis needs this most: MATA's ridership has collapsed 80% since 2013.

Rail planning starts with $7.5 million for corridor feasibility studies. The longer-term goal is connecting Tennessee to the Southeast's emerging rail corridor through Atlanta and Charlotte.

Tennessee home prices have risen faster than wages for a decade. The state controls two levers that directly affect what gets built and where: permitting speed and investment criteria.

We'll publish a library of pre-engineered, code-compliant residential plans through the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, available for free to any builder. Projects using a library plan get automatic fee waivers and a guaranteed 5-business-day permit decision. Oregon's pre-approved plans cut permitting from months to days. In Tennessee we'll apply the same logic across a wider range of housing types.

We'll also change where affordable housing gets built. Tennessee invests $60 million a year in housing tax credits, but scoring doesn't reward proximity to transit or jobs. Families end up in locations where $10,000 to $14,000 in annual transportation costs erase the affordability. We'll fix the scoring to spend the same amount of money in better locations.

Tennessee's legislative districts are drawn by the politicians who benefit from them. If a judge ruled on their own case, we'd call it corruption. When legislators draw their own districts, they call it redistricting, but we know what it is: gerrymandering.

We'll establish an independent redistricting commission made up of citizens, not politicians, to draw maps using mathematically verifiable criteria: equal population, geographic compactness, and respect for existing community boundaries, not partisan data. California, Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado all use independent commissions, and their elections are more competitive, their representatives more responsive, and their voters are more engaged.

We ask politicians to be accountable on taxes, schools, healthcare, and prisons throughout this plan. None of that accountability works if voters don't get a fair say in who represents them.

About 1,500 to 1,900 Tennesseans are chronically homeless, cycling through emergency rooms, jails, and shelters at $20,000 to $40,000 per person per year with zero housing outcome.

Through Housing First we'll build permanent supportive housing with scattered-site apartments, standard leases, no sobriety preconditions, and wraparound services for as long as they're needed. A multi-site randomized trial with over 2,000 participants found 73% housing stability at 12 months, with 69% of costs offset by reduced emergency spending. As participants stabilize, they transition to standard vouchers, cutting per-person cost by more than half.

Nashville already operates on Housing First principles. We'll connect existing programs statewide and redirect federal and Medicaid dollars from less effective interventions into permanent housing. No new state appropriation required.

Private prisons create a financial incentive that runs directly against public safety. The company does better when recidivism is higher and sentences are longer. Tennessee's own Comptroller found CoreCivic facilities operating with 42% guard vacancies and 188% annual staff turnover. Trousdale Turner has the highest homicide rate of any prison in the country. CoreCivic has paid $29.5 million in fines since 2022 for understaffing alone.

We'll phase out private prison contracts over 5 to 10 years as they expire and state facilities absorb capacity. We'll reinvest in rehabilitation and job training that actually lowers recidivism. And we'll pursue a constitutional amendment to make the commitment permanent, because the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery but left a loophole for incarceration, and Tennessee has the opportunity to close it.

Tennessee is one of eight states that still taxes groceries at a meaningful rate. Working families pay 4% on every trip to the store, the same structure that makes Tennessee's tax system the third most regressive in the country. In 2026, 89% of Tennessee voters supported a cut. Yet the legislature passed a $58 billion budget without a single dollar of grocery tax relief.

We'll drop the state grocery tax from 4% to 2% in Year 1 and to 0% by Year 3, following the same timeline Kansas used with bipartisan support. The $775 million revenue loss is fully offset by closing corporate tax loopholes. Schools lose nothing: the $111 million K-12 earmark shifts from the grocery tax to the Future Families Fund, a more stable source. This will save the average family about $400 a year.

Tennessee loses ten people a day to drug overdoses. Only 5.6% of the roughly 70,000 Tennesseans with opioid addiction receive medication-assisted treatment. Only 15 of 95 counties have even one treatment program.

We'll expand medication-assisted treatment to every county using Vermont's hub-and-spoke model, routing patients from local clinics to regional treatment centers. Naloxone, the overdose reversal drug, will be freely available at every pharmacy, fire station, and school. Every dollar spent on naloxone distribution returns $2,742 in cost savings. We'll also crack down on pill mills and invest in recovery-to-work programs that give people a real path back to productive life, because every person pulled back from addiction is a parent who comes home, a worker who shows up, or a neighbor who contributes.

Tennessee has a proud tradition of gun ownership, and nothing in this plan changes that. These proposals keep guns out of dangerous hands.

Universal background checks on all firearm sales, including private sales. Safe storage requirements when kids are in the home. And Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a court-reviewed process that temporarily removes firearms from someone in crisis. Tennessee loses more people to gun suicide than gun homicide. Indiana's red flag law reduced gun suicides by 7.5%. Connecticut's reduced them by 13.7%.

Responsible gun owners already practice these measures. A judge reviews evidence, the gun owner gets a hearing and legal representation with the same due process we require before any other temporary restraining order.

When a new parent, a cancer patient, or someone caring for a dying parent needs time off, they shouldn't have to choose between their family and their paycheck. Tennessee is one of the only states in the Southeast without any form of paid family leave.

Colorado built a program to solve this in three years, passed by ballot initiative in a purple state. Their program provides up to 12 weeks of partial wage replacement, funded by a shared employer and employee premium of 0.9% of wages. Over 175,000 claims have been filed since benefits started flowing. We'll build on Colorado's model. At 0.9% of Tennessee's wage base, the program generates roughly $2 billion a year in insurance premium revenue, fully self-funding paid parental leave. Tennessee's Department of Labor already runs a modern claims platform that can be adapted to serve this purpose.

Tennessee has rich agricultural land, but we've become too dependent on supply chains that stretch thousands of miles. Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose 46% in 2025. When those chains break, our communities suffer.

We'll invest in regional food hubs and cold storage to keep Tennessee-grown food in Tennessee. State institutions, including schools, hospitals, and state facilities, will buy Tennessee-grown food first. Pick Tennessee Products already has over 3,200 members. We'll scale it into a statewide brand with dedicated marketing and retail partnerships, the way Kentucky Proud achieved 80% recognition.

In addition we'll provide state tariff buffer grants to help farmers cover crop diversification and specialty crops that federal aid misses. So when trade disruptions hit, Tennessee's $1 billion per year soybean crop alone isn't impacted. A state that can feed itself is a state that can survive anything.

In March 2025, the federal government cancelled programs that put roughly $20 million into Tennessee schools and Tennessee farms. Meanwhile, nearly one in five Tennessee children live in a food-insecure household.

We'll replace the cancelled federal local food purchasing with a state reimbursement program directed to provide free breakfast and lunch in approximately 40 school districts starting Year 1, covering the state's most distressed counties - roughly 200,000 kids. In addition we'll create kitchen capital grants for schools to give those rural districts the refrigeration and prep equipment to cook from fresh ingredients instead of reheating processed food.

And we'll scale this architecture over time. In year 3 to 4 we'll expand to medium-need districts with the goal of reaching universal statewide breakfast and lunch.

A $20,000 rooftop solar system or a $15,000 whole-home weatherization is out of reach for most Tennessee families, yet heat pump water heaters alone save roughly $268 per year. The savings are real but the upfront cost is the barrier.

We'll create the Tennessee Green Bank, capitalized at $100 million in state funds and matched by federal Inflation Reduction Act dollars. Modeled on the Connecticut Green Bank, which turns every dollar into eight, the Tennessee version will finance residential solar, batteries, heat pumps, and weatherization. On-bill or income-based repayment ensures monthly loan payments stay below the energy savings each project delivers. Households save money from day one.

Tennessee is one of a few states that funds roads with no debt, on a 26-cent gas tax set by the 2017 IMPROVE Act. That fiscal discipline is worth protecting. But the repair backlog is $38 billion, and it falls hardest on rural counties, where locally owned bridges are nearly twice as likely to be rated poor as state-owned ones.

We'll draw down Tennessee's $302 million federal Bridge Formula Program allocation. At least 15% must go to locally owned bridges at up to 100% federal share, no county match required. Nationally, states had committed only 57% of these funds by December 2025. Small rural counties can't navigate the federal paperwork alone, so we'll pair the drawdown with engineering assistance so every eligible county can access it.

We'll also shift maintenance spending toward prevention, sealing and treating roads while they're still in fair condition. Preventive maintenance cuts lifecycle costs by roughly 25% compared to waiting for reconstruction.

Tennessee ranks 44th nationally for mental health, with only 52 mental health workers per 10,000 residents. Nearly two-thirds of youth with major depression receive no treatment. Ninety-five percent of counties carry mental health shortage designations.

We'll add approximately 160 clinical positions to the state's community mental health center network: psychiatrists, social workers, nurse practitioners, and peer recovery specialists. Three new crisis stabilization units in Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville will give people in psychiatric crisis a step-down alternative to the emergency room. Mobile crisis teams will expand to full 24/7 statewide coverage, including rural satellite teams where response times lag most. And we'll fund a loan-repayment pipeline for clinicians who commit to crisis roles makes sure we can staff what we build.

Officers experience PTSD and depression at roughly five times the rate of the general population. In recent years, more officers have died by suicide than in the line of duty. Nearly a quarter report suicidal ideation over their careers, yet fewer than one in five with mental health conditions seek treatment.

Trauma-informed training equips officers to manage their own occupational trauma and respond thoughtfully to trauma in the communities they serve. Nashville's Behavioral Health Services division is already doing this work. We'll put it in every department, at every rank, with peer support programs and confidential wellness services that officers can access without stigma.

Tennessee government has no structured way to find out what Tennesseans actually want it to work on. Elections happen every few years, public comment periods draw the usual suspects like lobbyists, while 72% of Tennesseans say the state lacks transparency on spending.

We'll create the Office of Civic Design under the Comptroller of the Treasury. Each year, a representative sample of 2,000 to 3,000 Tennesseans across the state will set the state's citizen priority list. Two to three times a year, 75 to 100 randomly selected citizens will convene for deliberation, with lost-wage replacement so participation isn't limited to people who can afford to volunteer. The relevant legislative committee will be required to hold a hearing within 90 days, and the chair must respond in writing to accept, modify, or decline with reasoning. The legislature can say no, but it can't make the recommendation disappear.

Tennessee has no state minimum wage. The state defaults to the federal floor of $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. The MIT Living Wage Calculator puts basic expenses for a family of four at nearly $19.

We'll phase the minimum wage up over four years: $12, $15, $17, $19, pegged to the cost of living and adjusted annually after that. California raised fast-food wages to $20 and saw no reduction in employment. Arkansas phased from $6.25 to $11 without documented job losses. We'll pair the increase with tax credits and technical assistance for small businesses during the transition.

We'll also repeal the preemption law that blocks cities from setting their own wages. Even if the legislature won't move on $19 immediately, bigger cities like Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga should have the authority to set wages that reflect their own cost of living.

Hurricane Helene damaged 24 drinking water facilities and forced boil water advisories across East Tennessee. Systems that were aging before climate change are now facing extreme weather they were never designed for.

We'll invest in hardening critical water treatment and distribution systems and building redundancy so that when one system goes down, others pick up the load. Where routes align, water hardening gets bundled with the underground power corridor program to save on construction costs and minimize disruption.

Tennessee has roughly 397,600 veterans. The state doesn't track whether its 95 county veteran service officers are filing claims, whether those claims get approved, or how much federal money they're securing. Meanwhile, the veteran suicide rate is 39.9 per 100,000, roughly three veterans per week.

We'll build statewide outcome tracking for every county service officer and deploy digital screening tools so rural veterans don't drive hours for a form. A veteran-to-veteran peer support network, modeled on New York's Joseph P. Dwyer Project, will start in 30 high-need rural counties. Employment specialists embedded in Tennessee's VA medical centers will use Individual Placement and Support, where a randomized trial found 68.6% of veterans with PTSD obtained competitive employment. Our target to reach 40,000 new veterans receiving VA benefits within four years.

Tennessee loses beginning farmers at the same rate as every other state: roughly 40 to 50% exit within their first decade. The primary barrier is land access, and existing landowners have no incentive to lease to unproven operators.

We already have the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program's Beginning Farmer Option for equipment cost-share, UT and Tennessee State University Extension training in all 95 counties, TN Farm Link matching new farmers to available land, and the Farmland Preservation Act's $25 million permanent fund. What's missing is a mechanism that directly incentivizes landowners to lease to beginning farmers, too.

We'll expand TAEP to include land lease cost-share, lower the Greenbelt Law's acreage minimum so small operations qualify for property tax relief, and direct Farmland Preservation funds toward easements with beginning farmer provisions. Iowa ran a similar program for ten years and improved farmer retention by over 10 percentage points.

Small towns across Tennessee, from Jonesborough to Collierville to Cookeville, already have walkable downtown cores residents love. What they don't have is funding to protect and extend them. Meanwhile, every growing town faces the same creep: another lane, another parking lot, another strip mall where a sidewalk used to be.

Green Corridors are opt-in partnerships between the state and communities that want pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. The Tennessee Department of Transportation will run pilot programs for traffic calming, bike lanes, and pedestrian-priority zones. The state provides matching grants and technical assistance. The community decides what fits because a town square in Pikeville has different needs than a corridor in Murfreesboro. When communities design their own streets, they build places people actually want to live.

When Tennessee builds, Tennesseans should build it. Every infrastructure investment in this plan, from broadband to underground power corridors, creates jobs. The question is whether those jobs go to the people who live here.

We'll require state-funded construction and infrastructure projects to prioritize Tennessee workers and Tennessee contractors first. That includes ConnecTN, the state's $813 million broadband buildout, where every contract should put Tennessee workers first. This is a procurement policy change applied to existing state contracts. It costs nothing new and requires no new agency. This way, every dollar Tennessee spends building its own infrastructure comes back as a Tennessee paycheck.

In 2010, Tennessee gave Hemlock Semiconductor a $95 million FastTrack grant to build a plant in Clarksville. The plant closed in 2014. No office evaluated whether the grant delivered, because the program is exempted from evaluation by statute. Tennessee's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reserve hit $732 million, the largest in the country, while families who qualified for help didn't get it.

We'll require annual evaluation of every state program above $25 million, with evidence-tier ratings and mandatory hearings for underperformers. A Tennessee Federal Opportunity Office will identify federal grants we qualify for and provide grant-writing support to rural counties that lack staff to compete. We'll require every state agency to publish its datasets in machine-readable form on a single portal within 24 months.

Colorado's comparable audit office identified $346.8 million in benefits in one fiscal year.

The word "Tennessee" comes from Tanasi, a Cherokee town on the Little Tennessee River. Before this was Tennessee, it was already home. At Red Clay, the Cherokee Nation held its last councils before removal. More than 8,000 Cherokee were held at Fort Cass before being forced west. Roughly one in four died on the journey.

To begin the process of healing from these injustices, we will strengthen legal protection for Indigenous sacred sites. We'll work with tribal nations and the State Board of Education so every Tennessee student knows Red Clay was the Cherokee Nation's last capital and that the Trail of Tears started in their state. We'll build government-to-government partnerships with the Cherokee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, and other tribes with historical ties to Tennessee. And we'll accelerate the return of remains and sacred objects held by state museums.

Tennessee's story didn't begin in 1796. Honoring the people who came before us makes our state more complete, not less.

The states with the lowest abortion rates aren't the ones with the strictest bans. They're the ones with the best sex education, the most accessible birth control, and the strongest support for mothers and families. This is the pro-life case for prevention. If your values tell you every life matters, invest in the things that actually reduce abortions instead of the things that just push them underground.

Most Tennesseans share the same goal regardless of politics or faith: fewer abortions, healthier families. Roughly six in ten women who seek an abortion are already mothers. They're not the caricature that gets painted in debates. They're women raising children and making some of the hardest medical decisions of their lives.

In July 2025, Tennessee became the first Southern state to protect access to IVF and birth control under state law. We'll enforce and expand that protection. Every Tennessean has the right to make their own medical decisions without the government standing in the exam room.

Eighty-one percent of Tennesseans support legalization, including 53% of Republicans. Legal cannabis generated $30 billion in national sales in 2024. Tennessee is one of the last large states without a legal market. Every year we wait, those jobs go to other states.

We'll establish a regulated adult-use market. Cannabis tax revenue flows to the Future Families Fund and public school funding. Every Tennessean with a cannabis-only offense gets their record cleared automatically, no petition process, no fees. California is the only state that's done truly automatic record clearing. Tennessee will be the first in the South.

A Cannabis Equity Fund capitalized from licensing fees provides direct capital grants to entrepreneurs in communities disproportionately affected by enforcement so social equity applicants pay zero in license fees.

When a combine breaks down during harvest, a Tennessee farmer should be able to fix it. Instead, major equipment manufacturers lock diagnostic software, restrict parts access, and void warranties unless repairs go through their authorized dealer network. The nearest authorized dealer may be hours away. The wait can cost a crop.

Colorado became the first state to pass an agricultural right-to-repair law in 2023 with bipartisan support. The equipment market didn't collapse and instead manufacturers adapted, consumers benefited, and independent repair shops stayed in business.

We'll pass a right-to-repair statute requiring manufacturers to provide diagnostic tools, parts, and software on fair and reasonable terms.

Ninety-three of Tennessee's 95 counties are federally designated healthcare shortage areas. A quarter of rural counties have no hospital at all. Between 2010 and 2021, Tennessee lost 22 hospitals, and 75% of remaining rural hospitals are at risk of closure.

Tennessee currently blocks new hospitals and clinics from opening unless the state approves them through a Certificate of Need. In practice, the rule protects existing hospital monopolies and keeps new providers out of the counties that need them most.

We'll repeal Certificate of Need just like South Carolina did in 2023. Healthcare access in every county starts with letting providers open.

Tennessee has a hidden tax on work. When a family's income rises even slightly, government benefits don't phase out gradually. Medicaid, SNAP, and Childcare subsidies vanish all at once. In Tennessee surveys, 85% of lower-income families report experiencing the benefits cliff, and one in four turned down raises to protect their coverage.

The Future Families Fund will pay for childcare and healthcare up to 300% of the federal poverty level. But those investments are wasted if a modest raise costs families everything the Fund just provided. We'll replace cliffs with gradual phase-outs, sliding-scale copayments, and transition periods where benefits taper as income rises. Modern eligibility systems will calculate sliding-scale benefits in real time instead of applying binary cutoffs.

Tennessee has rebalanced its long-term care spending to roughly the national average. But 15,000 Tennesseans still live in nursing facilities, and by 2040 the oldest cohort will grow 72%. Nursing home care costs approximately $108,000 a year through TennCare. Home and community-based services cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 for the same person.

We'll expand the CHOICES program to meet actual demand instead of capping enrollment. We'll also raise home health aide wages from Tennessee's $14.65 average and build career pathways from aide to licensed nurse. Lastly, we'll increase funding for Meals on Wheels, senior transportation, and elder abuse prevention. The upfront investment is $75 million in Year 1. By Year 5, shifting 400 people a year from facilities to home care generates $181 million in gross Medicaid savings.

Tennessee already subsidizes childcare for families up to roughly $87,000 through Smart Steps. But families earning more get nothing despite being unable to afford quality care on their own.

The Future Families Fund closes that gap with a sliding-scale subsidy. Parents choose the provider: center-based, home-based, faith-based, whatever works for the family. Reimbursement rates tied to actual cost-of-care data ensure providers are paid fairly. If federal childcare funding is cut, the Fund backstops the full population so no Tennessee family loses coverage because of decisions made in Washington.

Together with CoverKids, this creates one threshold: if your family earns under $99,000, your kids are covered. Healthcare and childcare, no gaps.

Forty-three states already use a hospital provider tax to generate their state share of Medicaid expansion costs. Hospitals pay into the system and come out ahead because expanded coverage means fewer patients showing up to the emergency room without insurance.

We'll bundle this into the Medicaid expansion omnibus bill for the 2027 legislative session. A provider assessment on hospital net patient revenue serves as Tennessee's match share. Combined with reduced uncompensated care, the net result is approximately $75 million a year in state-level savings, with hospitals coming out ahead on every dollar they put in.

Two national PFAS settlements are already paying out to public water systems: 3M's package worth $10.3 billion and a combined Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva settlement adds $1.185 billion. Both are claims-based. The money reaches Tennessee only if every eligible water system files. We'll make sure every claim gets submitted.

Tennessee's Attorney General has already sued more than 20 PFAS manufacturers. We'll press every case to judgment or settlement and establish a Tennessee PFAS Cleanup Fund to ring-fence all recoveries, following Minnesota's model, which turned an $850 million 3M settlement into a $720 million dedicated cleanup fund.

Roughly one in five Tennesseans rely on private wells with no federal monitoring. These families have no way to know what's in their water. So our fund will pay for two things: getting PFAS firefighting foam out of Tennessee fire stations and testing and treating private wells. All of this without new taxes or existing revenue - the companies that made the chemicals pay to clean them up.

Tennessee taxpayers fund every primary election. In August 2024, just 13.9% of registered voters showed up, compared to 63.4% in November. A tiny, unrepresentative sliver of voters is choosing the nominees. In a state where many general elections are effectively decided in the primary, most Tennesseans are shut out of the decisions that matter most. Tennessee's primary rules are so vague that the League of Women Voters has filed a federal lawsuit challenging them as unconstitutionally unclear.

States that opened their primaries, including Alaska, California, and Washington, see significantly higher turnout and broader participation. We'll open Tennessee's primaries to every registered voter so the people paying for the election decide who appears on the November ballot.

Tennessee has 13.1 million acres of forestland and 10.9 million acres of farmland. Both are carbon sinks. Right now, landowners get nothing for providing that service. Three programs change that.

We'll pay farmers to adopt cover cropping, no-till, and rotational grazing, proven practices that build soil carbon while improving yields, and connect them to voluntary carbon markets for ongoing revenue. A Forest Carbon Program will pay private landowners to maintain and expand forest cover through conservation easements.

We'll also point Tennessee's farmer-trusted delivery system at water quality. The Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program has invested more than $309 million across nearly 98,000 projects since 2005. We'll add nutrient-reduction practices as eligible cost-share categories, including cover crops, saturated buffers, and riparian plantings. Tennessee's own data attributes 85% of nitrogen and 89% of phosphorus loads to nonpoint runoff. This uses an existing program farmers already trust to cut the pollution flowing into Tennessee's rivers.

The 2020 Cookeville tornado killed 19 people at 1:50 in the morning. The 2021 Waverly flood killed 20 because warnings couldn't reach them. Nighttime tornadoes kill at 2.5 times the rate of daytime events, a disparity directly tied to warning reach.

Tennessee invested hundreds of millions in disaster infrastructure, has a $100 million reserve, a statewide weather mesonet, and FirstNet integration for all 118 public safety answering points. What hasn't been built is the local capacity to use it. The state doesn't track which counties have a full-time emergency director, and no inventory of wheelchair-accessible shelters exists, despite 1.7 million Tennessee adults with disabilities.

We'll close those gaps with a complete 95-county emergency management assessment to implement last-mile warning pilots in the highest-risk areas and a statewide shelter accessibility inventory. The cost is $8 million a year, less than 1.5% increase of what we've already committed.

In 2025, Tennessee dissolved its own Human Rights Commission. Federal enforcement is fracturing at the same time. When federal authority weakens and state authority disappears, Tennesseans who face discrimination have nowhere to turn.

Tennessee law provides no statewide protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing, or public accommodations. A preemption law prevents Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga from passing their own protections. Virginia enacted comprehensive protections in 2020 and the law remained in effect through a subsequent Republican governorship.

We'll repeal the preemption so cities can act now. We'll enact statewide protections consistent with the Virginia model. And we'll restore an enforcement mechanism so these protections mean something beyond paper.

Almost 70% of Tennessee's 2024 votes were cast during early voting. Tennesseans vote when voting is accessible. But Tennessee ranks as low as 45th nationally in turnout. Eight rural counties have registration rates below 75%. An estimated 156,000 eligible residents in the Big Four cities aren't registered.

We'll register voters automatically at the DMV, with opt-out, the way 24 states already do. We'll allow no-excuse absentee voting so shift workers and farmers don't have to explain why they can't show up in person. A flexible voting holiday gives every worker one paid day off during early voting, with the employer choosing which day so businesses aren't all shut down at once.

Tennessee elections are run by Tennesseans. No federal agency may station personnel at a Tennessee polling place without a county invitation.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a public utility and must stay that way. No privatization or sell off unless we can transfer ownership to Tennessee itself.

Tennessee already has four nuclear reactors across two plants, and nuclear capacity complements our goal to expand renewables, as research shows flexible nuclear operations can reduce renewable curtailment by up to 58%, meaning more of our solar actually gets used. We support safer next-generation SMR technology, but we insist on accountability for waste and decommissioning. TVA is developing a small modular reactor at Clinch River, backed by $400 million from the Department of Energy with $50 million in state funds already committed. Small modular reactor development carries real cost pressures, and Tennessee ratepayers deserve rigorous oversight for every dollar spent and on the waste generated to ensure Tennesseeans face no negative health consequences, only cheper more reliable energy.

Tennessee has 30 Federally Qualified Health Centers and about 200 delivery sites, but entire counties have no community health presence. We'll invest in satellite campuses and mobile health units to expand that model statewide, with state matching funds for every new site in an underserved area.

We'll also train doctors where practitioners are needed most. The federal Teaching Health Center program places medical residents in community settings instead of hospital towers, and graduates are 19% more likely to practice near their training site. We'll partner Tennessee's medical schools with community health centers to create residency slots across the state.

Lastly, we'll get community health workers reimbursed through TennCare. These are trusted members of their own communities who reduce ER visits and connect people to services they didn't know existed. Michigan got federal approval for this. Tennessee should be next.

Tennessee started this fight. The Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act was the first law protecting against AI voice cloning. But AI systems are now deciding who gets hired, who gets insured, and what your kids see online, with almost no oversight.

We'll ban social scoring, subliminal manipulation, and real-time mass surveillance. AI systems simulating relationships with children will be prohibited. When AI makes decisions about jobs, healthcare, housing, or criminal justice, we'll require impact assessments, annual audits, human oversight, and consumer notification.

AI-generated media will carry provenance markings, extending the ELVIS Act's protections to all synthetic content. Companies following the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI standards earn a rebuttable presumption of compliance. Cut corners and you're exposed. And a Tennessee AI Commission will classify systems and recommend enforcement.

In 2025, Tennessee surveyed 42,000 educators about their needs. The top answer wasn't pay. It was working conditions: planning time, discipline support, and class sizes.

We'll repeal the Education Freedom Scholarship program and redirect $144 million a year into public schools. Combined with $200 million from the Future Families Fund, we'll pay for behavioral health specialists to bring counselor ratios to national standards, enforce class size caps by hiring more teachers, paraprofessionals for every self-contained special education classroom, and pay retention stipends at the schools that need them most. The package starts at the 108 lowest-performing schools and expands only after independent evaluation proves it works.

Federal redlining maps graded Black neighborhoods across Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville as "hazardous" because of the color of the people living in them. When Interstate 40 needed a route through Nashville, the state moved it through Jefferson Street, demolishing 626 homes and 128 businesses in the city's largest Black commercial district. The Federal Reserve has documented that the effects persist today, in the same neighborhoods, on the same blocks.

We'll create a Community Restoration Fund targeting communities with documented histories of government-caused disinvestment statewide: down payment assistance and community land trusts so longtime residents build equity, startup grants for entrepreneurs, and anti-displacement protections so that when investment raises property values, the people who stayed through decades of neglect aren't priced out by the recovery.

This is not handout, favoritism, or discrimination. It's recompense, and the receipts are in the public record.

Tennessee's rivers are home to more freshwater species than almost anywhere on Earth. The Cumberland River Aquatic Center has already produced 170,990 juvenile mussels across 17 species, 11 of them federally endangered. The constraint is money, not capability.

We'll draw down every available dollar from the federal State Wildlife Grants program, which covers up to 75% of planning and 65% of implementation costs. Tennessee's 2025 State Wildlife Action Plan was approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May 2026, unlocking that match. We'll also scale the propagation center and expand recovery across the Tennessee and Cumberland river systems.

Tennessee has 95 counties. Roughly 75 have no fixed-route public transit. Today's demand-response system works for the trip you plan a week ahead. It doesn't work for the job you have to be at every Tuesday at 6 a.m.

We'll establish opt-in Regional Transit Authorities through Tennessee's nine Development Districts, using existing Human Resource Agency networks as operators. At least one fixed-route round-trip per weekday between each participating county seat and the nearest regional hub. Fares capped at $5 round trip. Free for seniors and veterans. Published schedules in standard transit data format so routes appear in Google Maps.

New state operating dollars layer on top of the existing $21 million IMPROVE Grant and federal Section 5311 funds. No unfunded mandate on any county.

About 643,000 Tennesseans buy health insurance through the federal healthcare.gov platform. Tennessee has no say in how that market operates, and the fees those Tennesseans pay on their premiums, roughly $120 million a year, leave the state entirely. However, twenty states already run their own marketplaces.

We'll create a Tennessee Marketplace Authority to run our own platform, keep the fees, and use the surplus to lower premiums. A state reinsurance program targets a 10 to 15% premium reduction for every marketplace enrollee, with 60 to 70% of the cost covered by federal pass-through savings. For Tennesseans earning $30,000 to $45,000, we'll also cap premiums at 5% of household income through a state subsidy.

The marketplace and reinsurance pay for themselves. The premium subsidy is the only new cost: $50 to $75 million a year from the General Fund.

Farmers and ranchers die by suicide at 3.5 times the rate of the general population. With farm debt at record levels and commodity prices dropping by half in the last decade, while 70% of rural counties don't have a single psychiatrist, farmers are left to suffer without support that could save lives.

Tennessee has 77,300 farms and is projected to lose over a million acres of farmland by 2040. The Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network established a Farmers Task Force in 2018 but we still need agriculture-specific crisis services, expanded rural mental health through telehealth, and peer support networks modeled on programs working in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa.

Pregnancy-related deaths in Tennessee more than doubled between 2019 and 2021. The state's own Maternal Mortality Review Committee says 76% were preventable, and the system is even harsher for Black women who die at roughly 2.5 times the rate of white women. Roughly a third of deaths happen weeks to months after delivery, when the healthcare system has reduced support for mothers.

We need to solve this end-to-end. We'll cover doulas through Medicaid, where a systematic review of 27 trials found continuous support reduces cesarean deliveries by roughly 25%. We'll expand group prenatal care, and co-locate addiction treatment with prenatal care so no mother has to choose between getting help and keeping her child.

Memphis invented Crisis Intervention Team training in 1988. Nashville runs co-responder and fire-based behavioral health programs through Partners in Care. Knoxville's co-responder teams resolve 97% of calls without arrest. These programs work but none of them are fully staffed or funded for expansion.

We'll expand crisis response through competitive matching grants. Cities choose their model: co-responder, alternative response, or hybrid. Behavioral health clinicians stationed in metro 911 dispatch centers will screen incoming calls and divert behavioral health crises to crisis teams instead of patrol officers.

Far from defunding police, this frees officers to focus on real crime instead of spending half their shift on calls they aren't equipped for.

Tennessee diverts roughly 14% of its waste, well short of its own 25% statutory goal. Middle Tennessee's last major landfill is projected to reach capacity around 2029. The state's response has been to import out-of-state garbage and site new mega-landfills on rural counties that absolutely do not want them.

We'll stop those sites from opening and spend the recycling money Tennessee already collects. The Solid Waste Management Fund took in $11.6 million in 2024 but disbursed only $8.8 million, accruing a total $24.2 million surplus sitting idle. We'll direct that money to convenience centers, recycling equipment, and organics grants in the rural counties with the worst access.

We'll also defend the Jackson Law, which givescounties and cities the right to reject new landfill proposals. A 2026 state task force is actively trying to weaken it at the waste industry's urging. We'll protect that authority and publish model host-community-agreement standards so counties consenting to host landfills stop getting shortchanged.

Local law enforcement answers to Tennessee voters, not Washington. When sheriffs and police chiefs act as federal immigration agents through 287(g) agreements, they compromise their ability to do the job their communities need: preventing crime, solving cases, and maintaining the trust that makes policing work.

Research shows that when immigrant communities fear local police, they're 61% less likely to report crimes and 43% less likely to report being victims. A county where people are afraid to call 911 is not a safer county. Meanwhile, Tennessee's immigrant-led households paid $2.68 billion in taxes and hold $8.2 billion in spending power.

Local police should focus on local public safety. Federal immigration enforcement belongs to federal authorities trained and funded for that mission.

Every child in Tennessee deserves the best possible chance to learn, grow, and develop into a caring and capable Tennessean. Many challenges stand in the way, like our lack of school funding for which we now rank last in the nation. But we cannot realistically alter course without new revenue.

To solve this, we will create the Future Families Fund, a permanent sovereign wealth fund modeled on Alaska's Permanent Fund. Four dedicated revenue sources will initially feed it: cannabis legalization and taxation, and a tobacco excise increase, a succession contribution on estates (with after $5M for family homes $5M and $25M for and family farms and businesses), and a capital gains contribution on realized gains above $250k excluding primary homes. Combined annual revenue is projected to reach $1B at maturity. Every year, the Fund pays for current programs and invests surplus in a long-term portfolio. Once returns cover costs, the Fund sustains itself.

Programs will only launch when funding is confirmed. And for Tennesseans who want to do more, the Tennessee Volunteer Roll lets individuals and families contribute tax-free before or after paying any obligation.

Tennessee's agencies produce good data, but nobody puts the whole picture together to answer the question taxpayers deserve: are Tennesseans measurably better off this year than last, and what cost to the land and water did we pass on?

We'll create a Tennessee Outcomes Commissioner under the Comptroller, with a six-year term that spans governors. The Commissioner publishes two annual reports: a Wellbeing Report tracking economic security, health, education, housing, and opportunity across all 95 counties, and an Environmental Quality Report tracking water quality, air quality, soil health, and forest cover. Both reports will be published in machine-readable format and made available to the public in plain language. A statutory cap of 30 indicators keeps the reports focused and readable.

The Governor will be expected to address the findings in the annual budget message. Transparency, not compulsion.

In 38 of Tennessee's 95 counties, there is not a single psychiatrist. Rural emergency departments close or cut hours because they can't staff them. Tennessee spends $48 million a year on medical education through TennCare, but almost none of it is conditioned on placing providers where they're needed.

Mississippi solved this in 2007. The state identified rural kids who wanted to become doctors, supported them through medical school with a service commitment, and tracked what happened. Roughly 90% of graduates who completed their commitment are still practicing in rural Mississippi today. We'll build a grow-your-own program starting with 25 to 50 rural-origin students and one anchor training institution.

We'll also claim every federal physician visa waiver slot and loan repayment match Tennessee currently leaves unused. Roughly $5 to $8 million in state spending draws down $15 to $25 million in federal flow.

Most jobs are created by the businesses already here, so we'll invest in both the workers and the communities where they operate.

Sector partnerships will put employers and community colleges together to co-design training, with employers committing to hire graduates at specified wages. We'll launch eight to ten partnerships focused on healthcare, advanced manufacturing, logistics, construction trades, and clean energy. Project QUEST's randomized trial showed participants earning $5,080 more per year by year six, with gains holding through eleven years of follow-up.

We'll also expand Tennessee's existing Main Street program. We'll add 15 new communities, prioritizing rural counties, and expand Small Business Development Center coverage statewide.

Tennessee has world-class research universities, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and one of the densest healthcare corridors in the world. What we don't have is the connective tissue that turns a breakthrough in a lab into a Tennessee-based company.

Georgia's Research Alliance generated over $16 billion in economic impact on $12 million a year. The Tennessee Accelerated Research and Commercialization Fund will start with $7 million a year to co-funds shared lab equipment at research universities and provides matching grants on investment dollars when researchers are ready to commercialize. The state owns the equipment, the university and/or company owns the IP. Grants are repayable only when a company reaches a liquidity event, so startups aren't burdened during the years they need capital most.

CoverKids already insures Tennessee children up to 250% of the federal poverty level. We'll expand it to 300%, the threshold where the federal Children's Health Insurance Program match covers roughly 90% of the cost. For every dollar Tennessee spends, nine federal dollars flow back to Tennessee providers.

Children's healthcare costs a fraction of adult coverage. For businesses currently covering dependents, this takes a real expense off their books. For families earning just above today's eligibility cutoff, it means their kids see a doctor, a dentist, and a counselor without anyone choosing between care and rent. The cost to the Future Families Fund is roughly $3 million a year after the federal match.

Tennessee's renewable energy economy is partially constrained by federal statute, but three categories of customer-side generation can grow right now.

We'll require fair net metering for rooftop solar. Today, TVA's avoided-cost rate of about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour makes payback 25-plus years. At 10 to 12 cents, payback drops to 7 to 10 years and solar becomes a mainstream choice for Tennessee homeowners. We'll require any industrial site receiving state tax incentives to generate at least 10% of its power on-site from renewables in year one, growing to 50% by year five, capturing the fastest-growing electricity load before it becomes TVA gas demand. And we'll designate Dyersburg, Covington, Oak Ridge, and South Fulton, the four cities Congress explicitly exempted from the TVA service area fence, as Renewable Energy Zones with 100% renewable pilot projects.

Tennessee's Lifetime Wellness standards haven't been updated since 2016. Meanwhile, the state has no financial literacy graduation requirement. Students can graduate without ever learning how a credit score works, how to read a lease, or what compound interest does to a car loan.

We'll refresh the K-12 wellness curriculum with updated nutrition science, mental health literacy, and digital wellness content. We'll add a half-credit financial literacy requirement modeled on Utah, Indiana, and Iowa, all red-state precedents with durable bipartisan support.

This investment will pay dividends as kids who knows how to handle stress, feed themselves well, and manage money grow up to be better prepared for real life.

Medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in Tennessee. Undue Medical Debt already operates here and has abolished $142 million in debt for roughly 73,000 Tennesseans in prior rounds. The organization purchases debt portfolios at pennies on the dollar and forgives them entirely, with no tax consequence to the recipient.

Medical debt acquisition costs range from 21:1 to 110:1, and Tennessee's prior rounds have landed near the high end. We'll scale this statewide with $10 million state investment to purchase over $1 billion in medical debt relief.