A state House subcommittee has rejected a bill for this session that would have given Shelby County residents an opportunity to vote for a sales tax increase to fund a new jail.

“When local governments restrict police officers from carrying out their sworn duty to uphold our laws, we make every community in Tennessee more dangerous,” said State Rep. John Gillespie, who sponsored the law.

A proposed bill could change how local hotel and motel tax is distributed; any reallocation of the existing hotel-motel tax would likely mean Memphis Tourism losing revenue. 

Shelby County Circuit Court Division 7 Judge Mary Wagner, who was appointed to the court last month, was confirmed with a majority vote in the state House and a unanimous vote in the Senate. 

No one at the state level has endorsed the concept of separating the court system in Memphis from the suburbs and unincorporated areas. It would be complicated, with issues both political and constitutional.

State Rep. G.A. Hardaway has introduced a bill proposing a feasibility study for a state-operated crime lab in Shelby County. But he and other state leaders have indicated the state will likely not fund the lab.

A new federal bill could require the Tennessee Valley Authority to consider more public input in its long-term planning process. 

It happened amid Tyre Nichols' family and local Democratic lawmakers accusing the bill’s sponsor of deceit.

A bill that would have allowed more development on certain types of Tennessee wetlands stalled Wednesday, March 6.

The closure will begin Sunday, March 10. Motorists are asked to use Interstate 40 as a detour.

The haggling over Gov. Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act has begun, with three different — and expensive — versions of the bill.

The committee could meet as soon as Thursday, March 7. The process for her removal is not the same as a formal impeachment, which would stop her from running for office again.

The bill seeks transparency from progressive criminal-justice reform groups like the Vera Institute of Justice, Justice Innovation Lab and Memphis-based Just City, which local Republican lawmakers blame in part for crime in Memphis.

“The evidence of incompetence and willful neglect by management in the Shelby County Clerk’s Office is overwhelming,” Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower wrote in a letter to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and the Shelby County Commission.

The bill doesn’t force districts to sell buildings when they don’t want to. But when they do want to sell, it would force them to sell for less then the property is worth.

Bills advancing through the Tennessee General Assembly this week included one aimed at reversing police reforms passed in the wake of Tyre Nichols’ 2023 death in Memphis. 

Here is a brief history of the scandal surrounding the 25-year tenure of Georgia Tann as the head of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis.

County Commissioner Henri Brooks found out three years ago she was adopted through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, a notorious black-market adoption operation. Her lawsuit against the state could open a “floodgate.”

Those in favor of the proposed House Bill 2043, which would eliminate the state tax on groceries if it passes, got together Saturday — where else? — outside a supermarket.

The bill is sponsored by state Rep. Johnny Garrett, one of the central figures who led the expulsion proceedings against state Reps. Justin Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson last April.

A bill moving through the Tennessee General Assembly would make it a felony to block a roadway, a penalty enhancement intended to prevent another protest like the one that blocked the Hernando DeSoto bridge for hours earlier this month.

The gun-reform movement in Tennessee has something it’s never had before: money.

“People living with HIV should not be subjected to a different system of justice based on outdated science and misguided assumptions,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a news release.