In its annual Pork Report, the Beacon Center of Tennessee highlighted three areas of waste, fraud, and abuse of Tennessee taxpayer money in Middle Tennessee. The report specifically identified the issues of unused homeless pods in Nashville, raised vehicle registration fees in place of emissions testing, and the funding of a grant for Planned Parenthood.
IT'S HERE: Check out the 2022 Pork Report! As always the report sheds light on hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending in Tennessee.https://t.co/Q0QnjVjghN
— Beacon Center of TN (@BeaconTN) December 14, 2022
The Beacon Center first cited the “homeless homeless pods” in Nashville that consist of $1.2 million worth of taxpayer-funded emergency pallet pods that remain unused in storage. The pods were initially provided by the city for emergency use to house the homeless infected with COVID during the pandemic, however, they have been sitting in storage waiting to be authorized for other purposes.
“With a Nashville spokesperson saying the pods can be used for Solution other emergencies, as long as it does not hamper the ability to house people with COVID, Metro leaders should work towards getting these pods as emergency shelters for the city’s homeless, instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on products that serve no one,” the Beacon Center suggests in its Pork Report regarding the homeless pod issue.
The report then pivoted to analyze the increased vehicle registration fees in Rutherford County following the termination of emissions testing requirements. As previously reported by The Tennessee Star, the registration fee for vehicles in Rutherford County increased by $4 after emissions testing requirements were terminated. The Beacon Center identified the registration fee increase as a “burdensome regulation to raise revenue.”
“It is now clear that emissions testing was never about the air quality and all about local governments filling up their coffers under the guise of environmentalism,” the Beacon Center wrote in its report.
The final area of wanted taxpayer money in Middle Tennessee cited by the Beacon Center was the city of Nashville’s Metro Council allocating a large sum of money to Planned Parenthood to fund “sex education and access to contraceptives” for the public. As previously reported by The Tennessee Star, the Nashville Metro Council pulled $500,000 from city departments, including police, to fund the grant for Planned Parenthood following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Calling the grant’s funding a “political play” using taxpayer money, the Beacon Center wrote, “Local governments should be focused on things like crime prevention, quality education, and infrastructure.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Planned Parenthood Building” by Fibonacci Blue. CC BY 2.0.
