Five years ago, a conservative think tank made an explosive revelation: Tennessee leaders had allowed a key anti-poverty program to amass a $730 million surplus — dollars from the federal government that never reached the struggling families for whom they were earmarked.
Fast forward to today: The state currently has a surplus of $717 million in the same federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — known in Tennessee as “Families First.” The size of Tennessee’s balance dwarfs every state but one.
Officials with the state’s Department of Humans Services say they are making progress in putting the unspent funds to use.
In the coming years, all but $190 million of the amassed funds will be distributed in the form of multi-year grants to community groups, transferred to a health department nurses for newborns program and paid to IT contractors to overhaul the agency’s aging computer system. New grant awards announcements are expected this spring.
“Over the course of the next three to four years we will see a consistent reduction in those unexpended balances as grant funding is distributed,” said Danielle Cotton, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Human Services, which manages the Families First program.