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Taxpayers shell out millions for super-fast Internet in Tullahoma, TN with no customers

By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog NASHVILLE — Tullahoma, a city of only 18,000 residents, has invested $17 million of taxpayer money in ultra-high-speed Internet in hopes of attracting business to the small Tennessee town. But as city leaders tout the potential economic benefits of the service known as Gigabit Internet, critics question the high cost of the infrastructure and why local government is getting ...
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News & Headlines

Taxpayers shell out millions for super-fast Internet in Tullahoma, TN with no customers

By TNWatchdog Staff on May 10, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog NASHVILLE — Tullahoma, a city of only 18,000 residents, has invested $17 million of taxpayer money in ultra-high-speed Internet in hopes of attracting business to the small Tennessee town. But as city leaders tout the potential economic benefits of the service known as Gigabit Internet, critics question the high cost of the infrastructure and why local [...]Read More>>

Green space for greenbacks? Critics debate use of $7M in TN tax dollars

By TNWatchdog Staff on May 7, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog NASHVILLE — If a teenager in a small Tennessee town is bored with small town life is it the state taxpayers’ responsibility to pay to entertain him? State officials seem to think so. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation recently gave $6.9 million  to officials from 50 counties and small towns for new parks and other [...]Read More>>

Feds give $2 million to Memphis landmark for flood that didn’t affect it

By TNWatchdog Staff on April 30, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog MEMPHIS — An important landmark in American history is about to receive $2 million in federal taxpayer money under the pretense of flood disaster relief — even though the flood in question never came close to hitting it. The flood, by the way, happened not recently but two years ago. The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, [...]Read More>>

New federal courthouses in Nashville, Chattanooga will waste millions, report says

By TNWatchdog Staff on April 26, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog NASHVILLE — Taxpayers may soon shell out at least $144 million to replace the federal courthouse in downtown Nashville with a larger building, even though a new audit suggests a replacement isn’t needed. In a new report, officials with the U.S. Government Accountability Office found fault with a plan to spend $1 billion of taxpayer money [...]Read More>>

Knoxville bridge reconstruction goes beyond costs, businesses suffer

By TNWatchdog Staff on April 24, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog KNOXVILLE — For public safety reasons, a taxpayer-financed project like Knoxville‘s Henley Bridge must have a solid structure — or else. The same sense of structure, however, seems forever elusive to government planners. Officials with the Tennessee Department of Transportation recently altered their two-year, $24 million plan to reconstruct the 70-year-old Henley Bridge, a conduit into one [...]Read More>>

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Blog & Analysis

TAC Air legislation to wait another year

By TNWatchdog Staff on March 22, 2013
By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog NASHVILLE — A proposal in the Tennessee General Assembly that would prohibit state dollars from being used to help a business compete against an entirely private company in Chattanooga will apparently have to wait another year. State Sen. Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) proposed legislation this year that would prohibit transportation equity [...]Read More>>

BLOG: City employees receive $750 extra of taxpayer money, just to stay in shape

By TNWatchdog Staff on September 21, 2012
By CHRISTOPHER BUTLER (Editor’s note): Tennessee Watchdog is launching a series of weekly blogs highlighting stories of government excess and/or waste of taxpayer money throughout the state. McMINNVILLE Does your employer pay you extra to stay in shape? For most people the answer is no, but for city employees in McMinnville the answer is yes. Via taxpayers, their employer [...]Read More>>

(BLOG) Two Tennessee cities gamble with taxpayer money

By TNWatchdog Staff on September 7, 2012
By CHRISTOPHER BUTLER Nashville officials took a huge gamble with taxpayer money as it pertains to the forthcoming Music City Center — almost $700,000 — and the risks did not pay off. Officials in nearby Gallatin, meanwhile, are about to take a huge gamble of their own, with an even greater amount of taxpayer money — $2 million. According [...]Read More>>

Academic overseers or political cronies?

By TNWatchdog Staff on August 19, 2010
by Justin Owen After the recent appointment of Governor Phil Bredesen’s top aide to head the state university system, much attention has been turned on the board that made the selection. The Tennessee Board of Regents is an 18-member board that oversees 45 universities, community colleges, and technical schools across the state. It is the nation’s [...]Read More>>

Analysis: State House members’ actions arrogant in Schelzig debacle

By TNWatchdog Staff on May 18, 2010
In a show of what could only be described as abject thuggery, elected members of the Tennessee House yelled down and ultimately bullied Associated Press reporter Erik Schelzig from the House floor's media area. Schelzig's transgression was attempting to take a picture with his cell phone of House Speaker Kent Williams who collapsed while presiding over a live session of the State House.Read More>>

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