Americans for Prosperity and the American Federation for Children spent around $1.25 million on lobbying during this year’s legislative session as both pushed for a statewide private school voucher plan.
The expenses — reported as part of a Tennessee requirement for groups to publicly disclose lobbying expenses — continue to show the out-of-state the spending behind Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to offer students $7,200 each in state-funded private school tuition.
The Tennessee Education Association, which opposed vouchers, spent $250,000, according to reports covering the period from Jan. 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024 and filed in August.
Americans for Prosperity and the American Federation for Children are national groups running Tennessee-based operations which hire local lobbyists and political staff. As part of their lobbying expenses, Americans for Prosperity included the money it spent on mailers.
Koch Industries founder Charles Koch funds Americans for Prosperity. The American Federation for Children is funded by several wealthy individuals including Jim and Alice Walton, heirs to the Walmart fortune, and Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary under President Donald Trump.
Lobbying is one element of the pricey pro-private school voucher push. During the August 2024 primary election cycle, a group called the School Freedom Fund spent over $3 million backing pro-voucher Republican candidates through independent expenditures. In total, the pro-voucher groups spent over $4.5 million in this year’s primaries.
Campaign finance laws allow groups to spend unlimited amounts on independent expenditures as long as they don’t coordinate with the candidates they are supporting. The pro-voucher groups also utilize loopholes in campaign finance rules to keep some details about donations from the public. Experts refer to these groups as shadowy money political organizations.
Spending on primaries and lobbying escalated from previous years, when these groups were significant spenders but not always among the top.
Pro-voucher groups spent a little over $1 million in the 2022 primaries, and groups like the American Federation for Children essentially doubled their yearly lobbying expenditures in 2024 compared to past years.
Hospital and health care groups among the top spenders in 2024
Among the other top 10 spenders on lobbying in 2024, three groups were on lobbied in the debate about whether a state board should have the right to approve or deny novel hospitals to protect nonprofit chains from for-profit competitors.
The Center for Individual Freedom and HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, spent almost $1 million combined on lobbying in 2024, while the Tennessee Hospital Association spent over $300,000.
HCA told the Nashville Business Journal earlier this year it would likely benefit from any change to the certificate of need law. The Tennessee Hospital Association has resisted certificate of need reform for years because many of its hospitals utilize profitable procedures, like heart and knee surgeries, to offset charity care costs for patients who come to emergency rooms but can’t afford to pay.
Lawmakers agreed to a compromise that would allow some facilities to open in counties without hospitals without needing approval from the state’s certificate of need board and shrink the area that current health care facilities can claim when trying to block novel types of health care services.
Other groups topping the lobbying list include Ballad Health, which is resisting increased regulation from lawmakers and the state health department on its state-approved monopoly agreement.
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