Tennessee’s state legislature convened for the second year of the 114th General Assembly on January 13th. Nearly 1,200 new bills were introduced before last week’s bill-filing deadline, joining those that carried over from last year.
As always, ThinkTennessee will be monitoring proposals that will have impacts on Tennessee’s working families – particularly access to affordable and accessible housing, child care, and transportation – and our state’s election processes and civic institutions.
Here are a few of the themes we’re seeing and bills we’re watching closely. There are a few examples of filed proposals and a highlighted bill in each category. Click the link beside each topic if you would like to jump straight to that section of the blog post.
Supporting Working Families
- Tennessee’s ongoing attainable housing crisis [jump]
- Funding for the state’s transportation infrastructure [jump]
- Expanding opportunities for child care [jump]
- Enhancing workforce development programs [jump]
- Eliminating the retail sale of food from the state sales tax [jump]
- Expanding paid leave for state employees [jump]
Strengthening Democracy
- Revising the process for restoring voting rights [jump]
- Questioning, verifying, and requiring citizenship for voters and candidates [jump]
- Consolidating the timing of elections [jump]
- Additional election-related proposals [jump]
- Maintaining judicial integrity [jump]
- Enhancing access to state agency data [jump]
Supporting Working Families
Tennessee’s ongoing attainable housing crisis
Governor Lee’s proposed budget, released last week in conjunction with the State of the State address, includes $30 million to create a Starter Home Revolving Loan Fund to support construction of affordable homes for working Tennesseans. The state’s housing crisis also remains a topic of focus for legislators this year.
Proposals (filed this year and those carried over from last session) address the state’s property assessment process for both market-rate and low-income housing units, allocating funding generated from the realty transfer tax from the general fund to counties to support infrastructure, housing, and other needs, supporting first-time homebuyers, and developing workforce housing.
- HB 2509 (Sexton) / SB 2410 (Powers) would establish the THDA-administered Community Workforce Housing Innovation pilot program to provide construction/rehabilitation loans to support affordable housing options for workers employed in professions considered essential services. Loans would prioritize innovative design and areas where the disparity between the area median income, population growth, and single-home sales prices are the greatest.
Funding for the state’s transportation infrastructure
Conversations around funding the state’s transportation infrastructure (2023’s Transportation Modernization Act (TMA) and 2025’s TACIR report on sustainable transportation funding sources (expected later this year)) are set to continue this year.
New proposals include expanding dedicated funding sources for transportation and those addressing Electric Vehicle (EV) definitions, fees, and charging stations. Additional proposals address the methods of funding nonmetropolitan planning organizations and approval of Nashville’s bus rapid transit system plan.
- SJR 657 (Massey) is a resolution granting legislative approval for three prospective corridors included in the bus rapid transit system portion of Nashville’s voter-approved Choose How You Move transportation improvement plan.
Expanding opportunities for child care
Conversations also continue around the need to expand opportunities for affordable and accessible child care options for Tennessee’s working families. Proposals this year include exemptions from liability for child care host sites and from state licensure requirements for programs licensed by the US Department of Defense; allowing child care programs on state-owned or leased properties; prohibiting HOAs and landlords from preventing home-based child care programs; and a proposal to reallocate state funding to support child care assistance.
- HB 2358 (Hawk) / SB 1921 (Massey) proposes allocating a portion of the state’s TANF rainy day fund to the child care and development fund to support Smart Steps, the state’s child care assistance program providing income-eligible parents financial support for eligible child care services.
Enhancing workforce development programs
New proposals to address Tennesseans’ post-secondary opportunities include capping the TN Promise lottery revenue allocation at $10 million each fiscal year and programming to help ensure Tennesseans are prepared and ready to meet the jobs of the future.
One proposal seeks to coordinate state and federal workforce programming eligible for federal Pell grants, and another creates the “Tennessee Career and Readiness Enhancement Act.”
- HB 1975 (White) / SB 2448 (Powers) would enact the “Tennessee Career Readiness Enhancement Act” to integrate nationally recognized and industry-aligned career readiness tools into the state’s high schools, incentivize student participation, and encourage collaboration with employers to prepare high school students for the high-wage and high-demand careers.
Eliminating the retail sale of food from the state sales tax
Two proposals have been carried over from last year to remove the tax on groceries, and they are joined by a dozen more versions to accomplish the same goal. Additional proposals seek to exempt sales tax from non-food items, including firearms and ammunition (from July 3-6, 2026), school supplies purchased by teachers, books, and feminine hygiene products.
- HB 2186 (Lamberth) / SB 2160 (Watson) and HB 1893 (Hemmer) / SB 1702 (Yarbro), would authorize a county with a metropolitan government to levy a tax on the retail sale of food and food ingredients within the county at a rate lower than the local option sales tax rate.
Expanding paid leave for state employees
A handful of proposals would expand leave (some unpaid leave) for state employees, including for school-related events of a dependent child, a qualifying medical emergency, and for court or counseling services related to the placement of a foster child.
- HB 957 (Slater) / SB 938 (Rose), introduced last year but not discussed would include foster parents in the six-week paid leave policy for state employees the legislature passed in 2023. It passed out of House Public Service Subcommittee this week.
Strengthening Democracy
Revising the process for restoring voting rights
With Public Chapter 298 last year, restoring voting rights in Tennessee moved from an administrative to a judicial process. This year, conversations continue with proposals to allow automatic restoration after sentence completion and to remove some procedural requirements from the judicial process.
Additionally, an effort to alter the legal financial requirement component of eligibility passed the Senate last year and is being discussed in the House this year.
- HB 687 (Camper) / SB 336 (Akbari) returns eligibility to have voting rights restored before court costs are paid and if a person has been compliant on child support orders for 12 months. The bill passed the Senate last year (24-8) and passed out of House Criminal Justice Subcommittee unanimously this week.
Questioning, verifying, and requiring citizenship for voters and candidates
New bills this year continue to propose methods of verifying citizenship of registered voters and prohibiting non-citizen participation in elections, as both a voter and as a candidate.
- HB 2036 (Garrett) / SB 1825 (Taylor) would set different standards for congressional candidates than those set in federal law by prohibiting someone who holds dual citizenship or is not a natural-born US citizen from qualifying as a candidate for federal office.
Consolidating the timing of elections
Conversations continue this year around consolidating municipal and county elections with the state and federal election cycles.
- HJR 729 and SJR 551 propose amending the constitution to change the date of judicial and county offices (except for the assessors of property) from August to November. The proposal would have to pass this legislative session with a majority in both chambers, pass again next session with a two-thirds majority of each chamber, and then voters would decide on the gubernatorial ballot in 2030.
Additional election-related proposals
Other newly filed proposals include prohibiting at-large districts for county legislative bodies, allowing counties to make the school superintendent an elected position, and establishing the “Election Integrity Act of 2026” allowing local candidates to challenge election results in certain circumstances.
Proposals carried over from last year include prohibiting Tennesseans from holding more than one elected office (with a grandfather clause allowing those currently holding more than one to remain eligible), an effort to change the eligibility process for overseas voters, and an effort for voter registration by political party and closing primary participation to registered members only.
- HB 2615 (Hill) / SB 2583 (Crowe) would shorten the period for Early Voting from 15 days to seven.
Maintaining judicial integrity
New proposals this year include efforts to increase state court capacity, including proposals to add a criminal court to Shelby County, review compensation for district attorneys and judges, and create a pilot program providing a magistrate in the 10 counties with the highest criminal court caseload.
A handful of additional proposals seek to make changes to judicial procedures, including removing a cause of action to sue the state, state entities, or state officials or challenge the validity or constitutionality of state laws.
- HB 1971 (Farmer) /SB 1958 (Stevens) would delete the provision in state law granting a cause of action to any affected person seeking declaratory relief in an action regarding the constitutionality of a governmental action and would add language expressly prohibiting that right except for a political subdivision of the state – defined as a city, town, metropolitan government, county, utility district, local school district, public building authority, and development district.
Enhancing access to state agency data
Multiple proposals seek to expand access to data across different state agencies, including criminal justice data and records to inform research, legislative requests of records and information from state government entities to ensure state law compliance, case disposition data from county clerks to district attorneys, and data availability for the legislative fiscal review staff.
- HB 2281 (B. Martin) /SB 2330 (Gardenhire) would require state departments and agencies, including the department of finance and administration, to make information, records, and budget information available to the fiscal review committee of the legislature.
Session is now well underway, and these are just some of the bills we’ll continue to monitor, provide information to help inform legislative discussions, and report out on after session closes in the spring.
