Faster, more reliable, more affordable internet in every Tennessee county, by expanding the municipally owned broadband model that already serves Chattanooga.
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.
Tennessee founders will get single place to find every state startup program and get help applying for federal grants, with priority for businesses in distressed rural counties.
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.
Match city BRT investments with state dollars, set statewide design standards for dedicated lanes and 10-minute service, and fund corridor feasibility studies for connecting Tennessee cities by rail.
Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga are all building transit independently. Nashville voters approved a $3.1 billion plan with 66% support. Memphis won federal funding for bus rapid transit. But there's no dedicated state operating funding for transit and no state-led passenger rail program knitting these efforts together.
We'll create a Tennessee Transit Investment Program. State matching funds that give cities 10 to 20 cents on the dollar for locally raised transit revenue. Statewide BRT design standards will 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 60% within five years. Memphis needs this most: MATA's ridership has collapsed by roughly three-quarters since 2013, and it remains one of only a few major American metros without dedicated transit funding.
Rail planning will start with $7.5 million for corridor feasibility studies. With federal rail funding now uncertain, Tennessee will be ready to lead building rail across the state and the Southeast as a whole.
Tennessee's backlog for roads and bridges is massive, but federal bridge money is sitting unclaimed and shifting to prevention can save money over reconstruction.
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.
Hire mental health clinicians for understaffed community centers, expand 24/7 mobile crisis response to every county, and open three crisis stabilization centers in Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville.
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.
Match local investments and provide technical assistance for traffic calming, bike lanes, and pedestrian-priority zones in Tennessee towns that want them.
Small towns across Tennessee, from Jonesborough to Collierville to Cookeville, already have walkable downtown cores residents love. What they don't have is funding at scale: TDOT's Multimodal Access Grants help, but at roughly $4 million a cycle capped at $1.25 million per project and limited to state routes, they're nowhere near what 300-plus towns need. Meanwhile, every growing town faces the same creep: another lane, another parking lot, another strip mall where a sidewalk used to be.
We'll expand Green Corridors as 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. This way each 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.
Open new clinics and hospitals in the 93 of 95 counties without enough care, by repealing the rule that requires state permission to build them.
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.
Healthcare you can afford regardless of insurance, brought to every Tennessee county through new satellite clinics, mobile health units, and trained community health workers.
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.
Run scheduled bus service between the 75 Tennessee counties without it and their regional hubs, with at least one round-trip per weekday, $5 round-trip fares, and free service for seniors and veterans.
Tennessee has 95 counties and in roughly three-quarters of them, there is no fixed-route bus service. Today's demand-response system only works for the trip you plan a week ahead, not 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, with fees capped at $5 round trip and free rides for seniors and veterans. We'll make sure schedules are published in standard transit data format so routes appear in map applications.
We'll also layer new state operating dollars on top of the existing IMPROVE Act transit investment grants of roughly $21 million per year and federal Section 5311 funds, with no unfunded mandate on any county.
Fund crisis services, rural mental health telehealth, and peer support networks for Tennessee farmers, who, according to the National Rural Health Association, die by suicide at up to 3.5 times the rate of the general population.
Tennessee farms are dwindling, down to just over 60,000 farms, and we're projected to lose over a million acres of farmland by 2040. If we want to save these farms, we need to save the farmers first. According to the National Rural Health Association, farmers and ranchers die by suicide at up to 3.5 times the rate of the general population. With farm debt approaching record levels, crop prices down roughly a third since 2022, and 70% of rural counties without a single psychiatrist, stress can turn into despair, pressures that farmers shouldn't have to face alone.
The Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network established a Farmers Task Force in 2018, but we still need real infrastructure: agriculture-specific crisis services, expanded rural mental health through telehealth and targeted recruitment, and peer support networks modeled on programs working in Wisconsin and North Carolina. Reaching out for help isn't weakness, it's a strength. Tennessee needs to make sure that help is actually there when farmers need it.
Tennessee recycles less than almost every other state. The fund that's supposed to fix that is sitting on $24 million. Spend it.
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.
Get more doctors into rural Tennessee by paying for medical school for kids who promise to come back, and by claiming the federal physician slots Tennessee currently leaves unused.
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.
