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Today, the Beacon Center released its most famous annual publication, the Pork Report. The report shows the most offensive examples of wasteful spending across the state of Tennessee. Examples in this year’s report range from the city of Knoxville’s expensive attempt to skirt open records laws to the state’s $200 million handout to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Other 2023 Pork Report entries included:

• The nearly $5 million taxpayer subsidy given by the state of Tennessee, the city of Franklin, and Williamson County to benefit the California burger chain In-N-Out’s move to Tennessee.
• The large property tax increases in counties such as Rutherford, Greene, and Lincoln instead of getting their fiscal house in order.
• Memphis giving out over $1 million to yet another failing TV show on the verge of cancelation.

From Jackson buying an abandoned strip mall to the city of Bristol (Tennessee) paying $5 million to move a summer league baseball team’s stadium a few miles away, there is enough pork in the state this year to feed a sumo wrestling competition. The Pork Report continuously shows the risk to taxpayers for these wasteful projects, including correctly predicting the additional taxpayer expense from Hamilton County taxpayers for the purchase of the McDonald Farm. Hopefully, this year’s report will make politicians and bureaucrats think long and hard about how they spend tax dollars in the future.

The 2023 Pork Report comes from state and local budgets, media reports, state audits, and independent research conducted by Beacon Center staff. Click the button below to see an interactive version of the report, or, for the PDF version, click here.