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Submitted by Peter Maher –
Tennessee’s elected officials are responsible for a wide range of critical duties, including managing budgets, overseeing policing, and directing the daily operations of government. Yet the agencies responsible for training these officials statewide are not independent bodies—they are housed in Knoxville inside our University of Tennessee.
Tennessee stands out nationally because it grants a public university the legal authority to create, administer, and oversee mandatory training programs for its elected officials, a structure that is highly unusual across the country.
Our University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service (IPS) oversees seven statewide agencies. According to IPS, its mission is to serve business and government to improve the lives of Tennesseans. The seven agencies under IPS are the Center for Industrial Services (CIS), County Technical Assistance Service (CTAS), Law Enforcement Innovation Center (LEIC), Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS), Center for Effective Leadership (NCEL), Tennessee Language Center (TLC), and the Substance Misuse and Addiction Resource for Tennessee (SMART) Initiative.
Two of these IPS agencies carry the statutory responsibility for training Tennessee’s county and municipal elected officials. CTAS was created by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1973 and codified at T.C.A. 49‑9‑402. Its purpose is to provide counties with technical assistance, legal guidance, and mandatory county official training. MTAS was established earlier, in 1949, through Public Act Chapter 261 (Senate Bill 607), to train and advise Tennessee’s municipal officials. Both are housed in Knoxville in our University of Tennessee system.
Tennessee law also requires continuing education for many local officials. For example, county commissioners must complete the County Official Certificate Training Program administered by CTAS. This makes CTAS not only a training resource but the exclusive gatekeeper for elected official’s legally required education.
The national picture looks very different. Across most states, mandatory training for elected officials is provided by state agencies, legislative bodies, independent oversight commissions, or organizations such as Secretaries of State, election boards, or municipal and county associations. A national analysis shows that 43 states offer state-level training for election officials, yet almost none place this authority in a public university. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission provides nationwide training tools through its Learning Lab platform, which is open to any state or local official. Other states rely on independent leadership academies, nonprofit organizations, or professional bodies like the International City/County Management Association. Where public universities do participate, they do so only as optional educational partners rather than statutory authorities controlling mandatory governance training.
In short, no other state places such extensive statutory authority for training elected officials inside a single public university the way Tennessee does. Most states structure training around governmental or independent entities and use universities only as optional contributors, not mandatory gatekeepers.
My own unscientific review of the annual County Commissioner Reports suggests that only about half of Tennessee’s county commissioners appear to be meeting their statutory CTAS continuing‑education requirements. Since Tennessee does not publish a statewide audit number or aggregated compliance percentage, the only available data comes from individual county commissioner listings within the annual County Commissioner Report to the Comptroller—which reports each commissioner’s hours but doesn’t total statewide compliance.
This raises an important question: if only around 50 percent of Tennessee’s county commissioners are completing the mandatory training, what exactly are Tennesseans paying for? The state continues to fund CTAS to administer these legally required trainings, yet the available records show significant gaps in actual participation. Without a centralized statewide compliance rate or an audit designation tied to CTAS training outcomes, taxpayers have no straightforward way to understand how effectively these mandated programs are being delivered—or whether they are achieving their intended purpose.
My own experience reflects why Tennessee’s model is concerning. Recently, although I am not a Tennessee county commissioner or official, I requested access to our University of Tennessee CTAS County Commissioner Training Course. I received a formal denial. Our CTAS legal consultants informed me that training access was “restricted to elected county officials or county employees,” citing T.C.A. 5‑1‑302 and the statute that created CTAS, T.C.A. 49‑9‑402. I was told “CTAS was created to furnish services to counties and that citizens should instead reach out to their county officials.” The message I received stated that they could provide resources but could not create an account for me to access the same training required of Tennessee’s county commissioners.
Despite this denial from our CTAS management team, I continued to advocate for lawful access to this public training. After roughly six months of communication, clarification, and explanation of the law, I eventually received permission, a username, and a password, apparently becoming the first non‑elected county official in Tennessee to access our CTAS county commissioner training program. In a state-sponsored system intended to teach transparency and accountability, it should not require half a year of arguments and debate to simply gain access to any of our state’s public training materials.
Our University of Tennessee system-controlled model raises several concerns.
First, IPS’s mission is explicitly to serve business and government. That means the priorities of these agencies are structurally aligned with serving officials, not ensuring public oversight of those officials. When training and advising local government is performed by an institution that depends on those same governments for funding and political cooperation, the risk of conflict of interest is built in. An independent oversight body, by contrast, would be designed to put taxpayer interests first.
Second, CTAS and MTAS uniquely serve as exclusive gatekeepers for statutory training. Unlike other states, where multiple agencies and institutions support education and compliance, Tennessee statute requires training through a single public university-run system. This creates a single point of control and restricts both transparency and public access.
Third, transparency training itself is restricted behind institutional barriers. A public agency that teaches open records law should model openness. When CTAS denies access to training on public records to someone working in a county capacity, it highlights the inherent tension in having a university serve simultaneously as advisor, trainer, and regulator.
Fourth, is that the University of Tennessee actively lobbies the Tennessee General Assembly for funding, policy priorities, and legislative support through its government relations division. UT employs a full team of state‑level government relations professionals—effectively lobbyists—whose job is to advocate for the university’s budget requests and statutory interests. This means the same institution that controls mandatory training for county and city officials also uses formal lobbying operations to secure its own state appropriations and influence legislation. When a public university both trains elected officials and simultaneously lobbies those officials for money and policy changes, it creates an additional layer of conflict of interest. The people receiving UT’s training are the same individuals UT must persuade for funding, leaving taxpayers to question whether the training system is truly designed for accountability or whether it reinforces a cycle of dependence and institutional influence.
Finally, Tennessee’s system contradicts best practices. Many states purposely separate training, compliance, and oversight functions to ensure impartiality. Tennessee consolidates these functions inside a public university whose mission is not centered on transparency or public accountability.
A better path forward would align Tennessee with national norms. The state should establish an independent, statutorily chartered training and oversight entity that is legally separate from any public university or local governments. Naturally, its curriculum and practices would be subject to independent evaluation, public participation, and annual reporting.
Under such a system, universities like our University of Tennessee could remain valuable educational participants, offering optional supplemental training—but would no longer hold exclusive statutory authority over mandatory elected official training. That model aligns with what most states already do and would better protect all Tennesseans.
Tennesseans deserve a system that is transparent, accessible, and independent. The current University of Tennessee-run model clearly does not meet that standard.
