Hire Tennessee workers and contractors first for every state-funded construction and infrastructure project.
When Tennessee builds, Tennesseans should build it. A 2016 state law blocks cities like Nashville from the local-hire programs their own voters approved and bars the state itself from preferring Tennessee workers on state-funded projects.
We'll replace it with a local workforce law for state-funded projects over $500,000. Contractors will meet hours-based Tennessee-workforce goals, with a good-faith off-ramp instead of punitive debarment and targeting based on economic disadvantage, not residency mandates. Built-in safeguards include published and objective bid scoring, a neutral first-source referral center so no official ever hand-picks a hire, certified-payroll reporting with an annual public compliance report, and an apprenticeship floor that turns projects into careers. This way every dollar Tennessee spends building its own infrastructure can come back as a Tennessee paycheck.
Sixty-three percent of profitable Tennessee corporations pay zero in business tax. We'll require worldwide income reporting and set a corporate minimum tax to make sure every corporation pays its fair share.
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.
Get up to 12 weeks of partial pay to care for a new baby, a sick family member, or your own serious illness, paid for by a small shared payroll premium.
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.
Raise Tennessee's minimum wage to $19 an hour over four years, starting at $12 the first year, and let cities set their own wage floors above the state level.
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.
Help working Tennesseans keep more of every raise by gradually phasing out Medicaid, SNAP, and childcare subsidies instead of cutting off all at once.
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.
Restore Tennessee's civil rights enforcement office, let cities pass their own nondiscrimination ordinances, and enact statewide protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations covering sexual orientation and gender identity.
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.
Tennessee workers get trained for jobs that pay, through partnerships between employers and community colleges, alongside expanded Main Street and small business development support in rural counties.
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.
Build Tennessee companies from Tennessee research by co-funding shared lab equipment at our research universities and matching researchers' first dollars when they're ready to commercialize.
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.
