County Representation at the State Level | What is TCSA and How Does it Benefit Tennessee County Officials?

Welcome to the very first in-studio episode of the Tennessee County Voice — the podcast centered around county officials across the Volunteer State! This podcast will share valuable insight for new and long-serving county officials in Tennessee. Stay tuned as we release monthly episodes highlighting the issues and solutions across all 95 wonderful Tennessee counties!

In this episode, we're laying the foundation: What exactly is the Tennessee County Services Association (TCSA), and why does it matter to you as a county official? Whether you're a longtime officeholder or brand new to county government, this episode is your essential introduction to one of Tennessee's most valuable resources for local leaders.

We break down the mission and purpose of TCSA, explore the wide range of services and support it provides to county governments statewide, and discuss how membership translates into real, practical benefits — from legal guidance and legislative advocacy to training, research, and networking with peers facing the same challenges you do.

If you've ever wondered how TCSA fits into the larger picture of Tennessee county government — or how to get more out of your membership — this episode is the place to start.

In this episode we discuss:

1. An overview of TCSA and its role in supporting Tennessee's 95 counties
2. The key services and resources available to county officials and staff
3. How TCSA advocates for counties at the state level
4. Why connecting with TCSA can make your job easier

The Tennessee County Voice is a production of the Tennessee County Services Association. New episodes release regularly — subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode is sponsored by NACo EDGE HPLA and Amazon Business Prime for Counties.

©️ 2026 Tennessee County Services Association

For more information, visit www.tncounties.org

Transcript

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Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 0:06

Thank you for joining us today. We're here in Nashville, just across the road from the state capitol. And I wanted to get into um sort of what TCSA is and why it was created and some of the historical background. So to get us started, can you tell us um some of the background about TCSA and how it might have come to be?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 0:23

Sure. Thanks

What is TCSA and Why Was it Formed?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 0:24

for having me today. Happy to be a part of this podcast. TCSA was created as an association back in 1954. And if you go back and look at the original documents, which I'm nerdy enough to have done, uh it talks about it was in chartered for the purpose of collecting information, statistical and otherwise, about the functions and operations of county government for promoting and developing more efficient and effective functions of local government, to promote the common welfare of the people through orderly development of counties and skillful planning and things like that. So it was really an idea that county officials said we want to gather together, we want to create an organization where we can meet, we can share ideas, share experiences. That's even part of our bylaws, too, is that the association exists to provide a means where those officials can share information, share experiences and obtain expert information and advice.

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 1:17

Great, great. And um I sort of as we're coming into this new this new

What would you say to those newer officials who might be curious about TCSA and what they can get out of our membership?

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 1:22

election season, you know, a lot of the local elections are happening. Um and a lot of our new county officials may not know that there are agencies or organizations on the state level that might exist to serve and represent all of our county governments. So what right now, what would you say to those newer officials who might be curious about TCSA or other associations and what they can what they can get out of our membership specifically at TCSA?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 1:47

Absolutely. Our membership is is made up of county officials from all 95 counties, uh, county mayors, county commissioners, county highway officials. They're our main focus of our our association. And really what I would say to someone newly elected, it's you may not realize this organization exists, but basically it was created by people who sat in your seat uh over 70 years ago who thought there was value in getting together. Um there's a lot of county commissioners in Tennessee, but if you think about county mayors and highway superintendents, there are basically a fewer than a hundred people who do your job, specifically as it is in this state. Sure, there's officials like you in other parts of the parts of the country, but in Tennessee there's less than a hundred county mayors, there's less than a hundred county highway officials. And if you think about the value you could find in getting together in a room where there may be sixty or seventy of those people who do your same job, face your chain same challenges, uh, have some of your same frustrations, there's a lot of um value and aid that can be found and or maybe just commiseration in getting in a room with people that you uh who know and understand what you deal with day to day. Uh for the newly elected officials, um, it's a great opportunity to meet with your counterparts who may have been in the office for a while and have had some experiences that you haven't seen yet. Uh Tennessee, there's not a lot of requirements for serving in county office. So many people coming in to to serve in local government haven't had a background, don't have any experience with it. Uh it's a very different animal. It's not necessarily like running a business. A lot of people say they want government to run more like a business, and certainly there's principles and ideas that we can pick up from efficiency in private sector, but um there's a lot of rules, a lot of requirements, a lot of things that you have to do, a lot of restrictions around what you can and can't do as a public official in government that you may never have thought about if you were coming strictly out of the private sector.

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 3:39

Great, great, thank you for that.

What Events Does TCSA Host for Its Members and Partners?

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 3:41

And when it comes to um TCSA, does it host any what sort of events do they host that might allow our uh county officials to connect?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 3:50

TCSA hosts three major conferences in a year. We do a county government day on the hill, which is really about bringing officials from the county governments across the state into Nashville to meet and engage and work with their state legislators and and with the the governor's administration on how things that the state is considering and doing are affecting local government. So we have that one, that's an important one that plays a role in our our advocacy efforts. Uh we have a May conference every year that we call the legislative conference, but really is the wrap-up and report on what all changed, what all happened this year with the General Assembly, uh, what new laws are going into effect, what new programs are going to be there that counties need to know about. And then our biggest conference each year is our annual meeting, which is usually in October, that it's a fall conference and trade show. And we try to really fill it with a lot of good speakers, a lot of training opportunities, workshops, um, the affiliates within TCSA, and there are the three, the Association of County Mayors, the Tennessee County Commissioners Association, and the Tennessee County Highway Officials Association. They all gather and meet, um, both their boards meet and their membership meets so they can have training and discussion specific to the operations of their offices. So those those are our three big conferences throughout the year. We try to pack all of them with some good training and learning opportunities and up-to-date recent information that affects counties and how they need to be operating.

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Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 5:42

Great, great, and thank you for that. It's um a lot of good, a lot of good information for our new officials. So when it comes to TCSA's engagement over there on the Hill, how do they how does the association engage with state legislators to ensure that county interests are are represented across the board?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 6:00

We maintain a constant present at presence with the um General Assembly when they're in session. The um we feel like county governments basically were created by the state constitution, state laws, almost everything about how they function and how they get their funding, how they what they can and can't do, their authority, uh their responsibilities, that all comes out of um structures set up in Tennessee Code. So every year there are over a thousand bills that get filed at the General Assembly. Many of them, probably three to four hundred of them, could in some way affect the laws that direct how county governments operate.

How does TCSA engage with state legislators to ensure county interests are represented?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 6:36

So we try to maintain a presence, we monitor what's going on with legislation, we try to keep local officials informed about some of the most important bills, and then we're available as a resource uh to legislators meeting with some of the uh especially with some of the critical committees that are examining bills specific to local government, meeting with individual legislators, talking to them about um how these bills may or may not benefit uh local government, what there may be unforeseen consequences, there may be other matters like that. And really uh when I speak to sometimes public groups and others out there, they're thinking like, wait, so government has an organization that is advocating or lobbying to government. And it's like yeah, but it's it's different. This is a county government speaking to the state government, and if you are around the General Assembly at all, you'll see very quickly there are hundreds of people representing all kinds of businesses and industries and special interest groups that are there. They've got somebody on the ground that is speaking on their behalf, whether it's uh the Realtors Association or the Tennessee Medical Association or the Hospital Association or AARP or you know, all kinds of organizations and groups as well as individual companies and industries. Um So if they have a voice there, we feel like there also needs to be a voice for how these changes and these laws that are being considered would affect county government and its overall operations.

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 7:59

That's great. And it's good to hear that we're represented, at least on the state level. But can you talk a little bit more about

What partnerships and connections are available at the federal level for county governments in Tennessee?

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 8:05

at the federal level? Um, does TCSA have partnerships there? How are we represented there, or how how can we, how can our local officials connect federally?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 8:15

We do. We work um in hand in hand with the National Association of Counties. Um I'll say like their director, Matt Chase, is a great leader, a good individual who's been with that organization for well over a decade. And the way Matt puts it, he considers us to be sibling organizations. It's not like it's a parent-child thing. We don't answer to the National Association of Counties. They don't direct us on what to do, but we work hand in hand trying to support them on their efforts to help and assist counties uh across the country. And um so there's they have some great conferences and meetings as well. They do a legislative conference. Theirs is in D.C. instead of Nashville, obviously. They do an annual conference that moves all around the country, and it's been to Nashville a few times. Um they have other events throughout the year. They've got workshops, they've got committees that people can get involved in. Generally they meet um via Zoom or online video streaming. So county officials from all across the country, if they're interested in education and social services, if they're interested in transportation or criminal justice, or a whole array of issues, they can get involved in one of the different standing committees that NACO has. So they advocate in N DC with um with the White House and with Congress about uh issues that are affecting them at the federal level. Just recently there was a major win they had that helped about a dozen of our Tennessee counties where they were able to get the Congress to reauthorize some funding for counties that are specifically affected by federal forest lands, because when the federal government takes up a big swath of land and those counties end up taking away land off their tax base. And so there has been some funding that was assisting those counties with some needs for education and other things. And it had the funding had gotten cut, and NACO was able to get that restored, so that helped us think it was 11 counties in Tennessee, some of them significant amounts of money for smaller rural counties that didn't have a large tax base. So they're always working on issues like that across the country.

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Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 11:57

So to sort of wrap things up here, when it comes to things that we're we're counties are facing on the uh the state level and just across the state here at home, how

What are the biggest challenges facing Tennessee counties today, and how is TCSA preparing to address them?

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 12:09

what are the biggest challenges that that you see this those counties facing today? And sort of how how is TCSA preparing to address them? How are we navigating them associate as an association with all these different offices represented?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 12:24

Sure. I think our local officials who are newly elected for county government will soon start discovering there is almost an infinite amount of services or demands that the citizens are expecting out of their county government. They're always looking for something more or better, whether it's how do we pay our teachers better and recruit and retain the best teachers we can get, how do we fund our emergency services, how do we respond to a disaster, how do we deal with fire protection and law enforcement and a new jail or highway and bridge construction, all those kinds of things. There's a huge amount of needs and a very limited amount of resources. There are very limited areas where counties can go to get additional resources they need. So that's kind of always a challenge. Um, trying to do as much as you can with a very limited amount of resources. Specifically today, I think we have heard more about growth, housing affordability, the pressures put on services and infrastructure by population growth in Tennessee. A lot of people are moving here from other parts of the country, and that's putting a lot of pressure. And in some cases, they're coming from states where they had been in a higher tax, higher service area, and they're coming in with different expectations, wanting our counties to start getting into doing things that they traditionally haven't done. Tennessee tends to be comparatively a very low-tax state, but that also usually means there's a limit to the amount of services we can provide. So we have different expectations sometimes with the new residents who may have moved here because they like the fact that Tennessee doesn't have an income tax and its property taxes are relatively low, and they like those things, but then when they get here, it's like, well, how come I don't have curbside recycling? It's like, well, because you live five miles out of town, out in a rural area where there's a very sparse population or you know, things like that. But um so I think dealing with growth uh is something certainly after the pandemic, uh we have always heard that from especially certain fast-growing suburban areas, but it seemed like every county in the state almost now is talking about we've got an influx of people, we've got a lot of growth, we've got a lot of things happening. There's new traffic on our roads, there's new kids in our school system, there's demands for new neighborhoods, and uh and how do we keep up with this and how do we deal with it? So I think growth has been um probably one of the biggest challenges Tennessee officials, county officials are facing.

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 14:51

Great, great, thank you for that, David. Um and is there anything else you'd like to add as we as we wrap up? Um maybe for for new officials if they're unfamiliar with us or they just um want to learn more about us?

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 15:06

Sure. I mean, we've talked

Final Thoughts from TCSA Director David Connor

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 15:07

some about just the value of associating, for sharing information, networking, um, having that support group from official to official. That's certainly one of the fundamental reasons why TCSA was created. Advocacy, we talked about um the importance of having a voice to talk, both at the state and the national level. I would really say I guess the third leg of the stool are um programs that we've tried to help develop over the years to support county governments in different ways or create cost savings, things like that. Um, I mean, one of the most important things I think TCSA was involved in was back in the early 1970s, 1973, um, the University of Tennessee's County Technical Assistance Service was created. And TCSA played a role in helping get that done. They had seen that there was a municipal technical advisory service serving city governments in Tennessee, and they lobbied to try to get the state to fund a county technical assistance service, with the idea being that if we can have one repository of experts and information and resources like that, um helping our county officials be more effective and more efficient, then it would improve county government all across the state. So TCSA worked with the General Assembly back then. Um there's some state funding that goes into it. They also dedicated some streams of revenues that were coming to county governments to also help support its operations to say, let's create this organization. So creation of CTAS was a program. Uh it's not technically a part of TCSA at all, but we were involved in that. Uh later on in the 80s, uh, local governments were facing a lot of pressures on the cost of their uh liability on property and casualty insurance. And to some extent, that's coming back now. There's a lot of local government facilities and it's becoming more expensive to insure them. Uh so TCSA was involved in creating a insurance pool that does both workers' compensation and property and casualty insurance, that a lot of our counties participate in that, and it's a low-cost way that they can manage and keep their insurance costs down. Then I think it was around 1990, we created a Tennessee County Services Loan Program, which was a similar type of thing, set up a pool of resources and funds that counties can dip into and make use of for their capital needs, whether it's everything from a $150 million high school to a $500,000 capital outlay note for buying ambulances or school buses, things like that. So it's a borrowing program that hopefully keeps down cost of issuing debt. Um we partner, we talked about NACO earlier. They have a number of national programs that they're involved with that we try to find ways and endorse those programs to help assist counties in Tennessee. We've worked with them on promoting some leadership training programs they've got for county officials who want to improve their skills. We work with them on a program called Cash Vest, which is about helping counties use um sophisticated technology to figure out whether or not they're getting the most out of their idle funds and how they're invested and how long they can keep those invested, help improve interest income to provide another source of revenue. Um there's a new program we've endorsed called Savvy that's about helping manage, helping the actually county employees. So this is a way to recruit and retain employees to a benefit, uh, but help them identify ways they can get relief on their student loans or the possibility of even some student loan forgiveness for people who are working and serving in the pr in the public sector. So we try to find programs like that that could be beneficial to county governments across the state. Uh, one of the things we were able to negotiate recently with Amazon was an agreement whereby all counties in the state can get uh Amazon Business Prime without having to pay the annual fees for that. So uh that's saving counties a lot of money on some reduced cost and shipping and savings, uh, in addition to just the uh not having to pay that annual fee for the the business prime membership. So we try to identify little things like that that we call member services that are ways that are saving counties money, creating more efficiencies, um helping them address the challenges they're facing.

Wes Doyle, CTAS Communications Specialist 19:17

Great, great, thank you for that, David. And thank you for joining us today. Um, if you have any other questions or uh or want to learn more about TCSA, you can find us online at www.tncounties.org. Um all of our contact further contact information is on there, including information about everything we've talked today, most of our member programs, services, events, and uh things of that nature. So thanks again, David.

David Connor, TCSA Executive Director 19:42

Thank you. Thanks for having me.