Tennessee, from public records

The reset calendar for all 95 counties

Tennessee's certified tax rate law rolls the county rate down after a reappraisal, so a drop is a reset, not a cut. A drop of 8% or more in the county rate from one tax year to the next marks a reset here; the Comptroller's published reappraisal schedule is the authoritative list and this is an inference from the rates. 92 counties reset at least once between 2019 and 2025, 27 of them twice. Hancock, Lake, Perry show no reset in the period. 15 counties raised the rate the year after their latest reset, which is the one place a change is an unambiguous real increase.

County rate is the unincorporated row of the Comptroller's table for each tax year. A green edge marks a county with anyone at TGFOA 2026 (a county government, a city inside it, or both); the "At TGFOA" column is the number of attendees from that county. "Raised the year after" looks at the year following the latest reset; 1 further county raised after an earlier reset and not after its latest. County names link to the county government's page when it has one.

Seven reset cohorts, 2019 to 2025

Peer groups are always by size. Nobody groups counties by reappraisal year, yet that is the group whose budget conversation matches this year. The class of 2025 is 22 counties, and 15 of them have someone in the room. Tap a year to see who is in it.

* someone from this county is at TGFOA 2026. The rate beside each county is its 2025 county rate. A county that reset twice appears in both years, so the cohort counts add to more than 95. The 2025 cohort's following year is tax year 2026, which is not certified yet.

Every city's certified rate

All 299 municipal rows in the Comptroller's 2025 table, with the 2018 city rate beside each. A city that sits in more than one county has a row per county, because the county rate on its bill differs. Combined is the city rate plus the county rate on the city's own row plus any special district rate, computed here, so it is the rate per $100 of assessed value a resident of that city pays in that county. 87 of the rows belong to a municipality at the conference.

* municipality has someone at TGFOA 2026; its name links to its page. "+SD" marks a row whose combined rate includes a special district (school or fire) levy. "n/a" in 2018 means the row was not in the 2018 table. The county rate inside a city can differ from the county's unincorporated rate where cities opt out of a fire, road or ambulance levy, so this column can differ from the county table above.

What the room publishes

Two checks, aggregates only, no organization named. The Department of Justice rule under ADA Title II brings public entities' web content and documents to WCAG 2.1 AA by April 26, 2027 for a population of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for under 50,000 and for every special district government.

How the 47 largest delegations present their budget

The 47 attending city, county and metro governments with two or more people at the conference, 228 of the 293 city, county and metro attendees. Each government's own website was checked for budget documents, audit reports, transparency portals and interactive tools on September 24, 2026.

1. Static PDF only 35 of 47
2. Run an interactive tool 7 of 47
3. Nothing on their own site 5 of 47

"Interactive tool" means any dashboard, open-data portal or online budget book beyond a PDF. "Nothing on their own site" means no budget, no audit report, no portal and no tool found on the government's own website; some of those governments' audits exist only in the Comptroller's archive. 6 of the 47 post no budget document on their own site at all. Source: reporting-practices.csv, September 24, 2026.

Whether the 95 budget and audit PDFs can be read by assistive technology

95 budget books and audited financial reports downloaded from attending organizations' own websites, checked by machine on September 27, 2026 for the five structural signals a WCAG review starts with. Triage, not a conformance audit: a tagged PDF can still fail on reading order, tables, headings and alt text.

1. Tagged, so a screen reader gets headings, tables and reading order 34 of 95
2. Has a document title 40 of 95
3. Has a document language 17 of 95
4. Has bookmarks 66 of 95
5. Scanned image, no text layer at all 12 of 95
6. Pass all five basic checks 7 of 95

In words: 12 of the 95 are pictures of a budget that no assistive technology can read, 49 have text but no structure, and 34 are tagged and could be brought to conformance with a review. Most untagged files came out of print-to-PDF from Word or Excel, which both export tagged PDFs when asked. Source: pdf-accessibility.csv, September 27, 2026. Ask at the booth to see your own organization's result; it is not printed here.

Retail by county, 2025 against 2024

Is the sales tax base growing, and where. Tennessee's retail sales activity was $154.43B in calendar 2024 and $157.27B in 2025, +1.84%. Department of Revenue retail sales activity by county: it is sales activity, not local option sales tax collections, and county level only.

70 of 95 counties grew in 2025; 55 grew faster than the state's +1.84%. Values are the twelve months of each year added together, in dollars of retail sales activity as reported to the Department of Revenue.

A single dealership cluster or outlet mall can dominate a small county, and a new store opening shows as growth in the county it opened in. A green edge marks a county with anyone at TGFOA 2026.