In mid-December the Beacon Center released their 13th annual Tennessee Pork Report revealing millions of dollars in government
waste, fraud, and abuse ranging from a new taxpayer-funded MLS soccer
stadium in Nashville to a Memphis company that was given $5 million just
to move across town.
The Pork Report highlights a
combination of government mismanagement, incompetence, and outright
fraud. The Beacon Center allowed Tennesseans to vote on their choice for
the Pork of the Year award, and the “winner” was former Nashville Mayor
Megan Barry. Mayor Barry wasted over $174,000 in taxpayer money on her
extramarital affair, which included paying her bodyguard overtime so
that he could take trips with her to places like France and Greece. To
make matters worse, she consistently lied to both the press and the
public until finally pleading guilty to felony theft.
Other finalists for Pork of the Year included: - $5.5 million of state taxpayer money so that the company ServiceMaster could move from the outskirts of Memphis to downtown Memphis while not creating a single new job.
- At least $17.5 million for the Wall Street Firm AllianceBernstein to move from New York City to the taxpayer-funded 5th and Broadway Building in downtown Nashville. We say “at least” because we have no idea how much the state and city actually gave AllianceBernstein since the number was blacked out for “privacy” concerns.
- Tens of millions of dollars in buyouts by the University in Tennessee to pay for their hiring mistakes, including former Chancellor Beverly Davenport, former football coach Butch Jones, and former athletic director John Currie, just to name a few.
The 2018 Pork Report comes
from state and local budgets, media reports, state audits, and
independent research conducted by Beacon Center staff and scholars. An electronic version of the report can be found here. Pork Report® is a registered trademark of Citizens Against Government Waste and is used with their permission.
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