Brain Straessle on Property Taxes and Housing Challenges Facing TN
Spencer and Carli talk with Brian Straessle, Executive Director of The Sycamore Institute, about the economic challenges facing Tennessee, including property taxes and housing affordability. Brian explains how Sycamore’s nonpartisan research provides valuable insights into the impact of these issues on communities across the state. Drawing from Sycamore’s recent reports, he discusses how data-driven analysis can inform smarter policy decisions that promote economic stability and mobility in Tennessee.
About Brian Straessle
Brian Straessle is the Executive Director of The Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan research center focused on Tennessee’s most pressing policy issues. He leads efforts to provide data-driven insights on topics like property taxes, housing, and economic mobility, helping policymakers and communities better understand these challenges.
Before joining Sycamore, Brian shaped policy and public relations initiatives for Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), the U.S. House Republican Study Committee, and the American Petroleum Institute. His extensive experience includes involvement in debates on economic policy, health care, welfare, energy, transportation, and the federal budget. Brian began his career as an intern at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Join us on January 9th for an enlightening event with Brian Straessle, to discuss the critical factors influencing the state’s ecnomic landscape. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear his insights. Reserve your spot today!
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Spencer Patton 00:35
Brian Straessle, welcome to signature required. We are excited to have you. You are the executive director of the sycamore Institute, and a lot of people probably don't know what the sycamore Institute is. I've had the chance to go to some of your events, consume some of your content, but officially, the sycamore Institute is a non partisan research center that provides policy analysis on Tennessee's key challenges. So that sounds pretty academic.
Brian Straessle 01:10
A little bit yeah. So what do you do? What do I do? Or what does Sycamore do? Let's say, What does Sycamore do, yeah. So really, when you boil it down, what we try to do is provide insights, analyzes, context to help decision makers, policy makers, civic leaders, your engaged members of the public grapple with the challenges that we face in Tennessee. You know, our focus is on state and local issues. There's a lot happening at the national, international level, that's not our bailiwick. What we really try to do is equip people with the data driven tools and information they need to figure out. Which direction do we want to go as a society, in my local community and as a state.
Spencer Patton 02:00
I can appreciate that. And one of my favorite sayings is, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. And I think what I hear in your answer is that you all are two things. One, you're pretty Tennessee focused. Are you exclusively Tennessee?
Brian Straessle 02:15
We are? Yeah. I mean, we do a lot of work that will kind of put Tennessee in context with other parts of the country, and we have had some inquiries from time to time, hey, can you do something for us here in, you know, South Carolina, or can you come present at this national conference in Lake Tahoe or whatever? And if that makes sense.
Multiple Speakers 02:34
Yeah, I didn't get to do that one. Unfortunately, that sounds like a rough ask.
Brian Straessle 02:38
Yeah, but you know, so we have done a lot of work like that one, for example, where folks from other parts of the country have seen us as kind of a national leader on a topic. I believe that one was on fees and fines in the criminal justice system, and which is very much state and local kind of issue, but it's something that is an issue in every state in the Union, but it looks a little different everywhere. And so they kind of brought one of our team members in to say, hey, here's the work that we've done to try to make sense of this sort of morass, because it's a very complex system. And so, you know, people do look to us from outside of Tennessee. We get, you know, decent bit of kind of media coverage, sometimes from other states to say, Oh, well, Sycamore said this in Tennessee, but the bread and butter of what we do, 99% of what we do is focused here.
Spencer Patton 03:25
So it's Tennessee focused for the majority. And two, it's really data driven. And what I also really like about Sycamore and why I've been attracted to the work that you all put out is that you all rarely choose the safe topics, like, if there was a lightning rod, I feel like you might be grabbing a hold of it to say, All right, we'll take a little juice here, and you cover some stuff that a lot of other organizations, especially from a non partisan standpoint, are gonna say, oh, that's like the third rail. We can't touch that. So how do you all decide what you're going to cover?
Brian Straessle 04:04
Yeah, well, you know, the one overarching kind of drive and what we figure out, what we're going to work on is, can do we think that we have value to add to a conversation? There are, you know, obviously, like you said, our work is very data driven. It's kind of evidence. And what do we know? How can we apply that? What can we learn from elsewhere? And that's incredibly important information for decision makers to have on hand. But we also fully recognize that, you know, data and evidence don't dictate everything that happens in the political realm, in the policy making realm, right? Like so, much of that is driven by values and beliefs, which may or may not be based on fact. That's just, you know, humanity, that's who we are. And so we look for opportunities where the kind of information that we provide. And the way that we provide it can help move the needle, not in a particular direction, but in a way to drive more informed and effective public discourse, productive public discourse.
Carli Patton 05:14
So what do you do at the institute?
Brian Straessle 05:16
Yeah, well, these days, as Executive Director, spend a decent amount of time fundraising. We are a nonprofit organization, and so kind of, you know, grants and donations and sponsorships and all that kind of keep the lights on, and then helping to provide some of the organizational vision casting, a little bit of admin and HR, a little bit of therapy when necessary to just sort of help keep the bus going in the right direction.
Spencer Patton 05:46
I can appreciate that as a nonprofit, there are a ton of really compelling, worthy causes that you go to a nonprofit event. They have the banquet, they play the video, and by the end of the video, you are simultaneously crying as well as writing a check. Yes, okay, so transitioning to Sycamore Institute, you have a tough bill to have to say. All right, how do I play that emotional video?
Carli Patton 06:15
There's no Sarah McLachlan music in the back of your fundraising videos.
Brian Straessle 06:20
I had a professional fundraiser. Acquaintance once tell me that this was like the hardest type of thing to raise money for, because, you're right, we don't tug on people's heart strings. Someone once told me this, and I kind of like the line we tug on your head strings, right, like we are pulling at that intellectual curiosity part of you, and we're not trying to scare you too, like we're just trying to tell you, here's the world and how it works, and, you know, maybe some options to consider of what you do next. And there's a certain type of sort of civically minded person, I think, who is really drawn to that as a potential donor, we have largely been grant funded throughout our history. I'm trying to sort of redirect and get a little bit more towards like individual fundraising and all that, just because it gives us more flexibility to work on things that pop up. Because, you know, the grant cycle, if you've ever dealt with that, it can be an enormously long lead time in terms of, we have an idea, we're going to write a proposal, they're going to think about it, they're going to get back to us, and then finally, maybe 612, months later, we can start working on the topic. And maybe it's still timely and relevant, and maybe it's not.
Carli Patton 07:37
I can see how that would be uniquely challenging when this, we have this 24 hour news cycle. I mean, it is rapid fire trying to respond in a political mindset to things that you think are coming in a couple of years. You know, as we're taping this, we're in the middle of an election season, and I think people feel unbelievably saturated with political content. But what I hear you saying is you're not trying to throw things at them to be just another source of, I don't know, vibrant color. You're trying to help educate them and bring it a little bit more home. So how do you do that for the moms in the pickup line and the dads trying to run kids to appointments and to and from work? How is this accessible to regular Tennesseans? Maybe not the people that are in the legislature.
Brian Straessle 08:26
We care a lot about making sure that the work we do is accessible to everyone, regardless of your level of expertise or your political perspective. So you know, our staff and our board of directors comes from across the political spectrum, and what that does is it allows us to see each other's blind spots and come up with ways to talk about, as you said, kind of hot topics, sometimes thorny topics, in ways that are not going to inflame your political alarm bells. And have you say, Oh, you're some of those people. I'm gonna stop listening. So that's on the political side, on the kind of, you know, speaking to the layperson side, we structure our reports in a way that, unless you see it from the inside, like you probably don't notice. It's subtle. But at the very, very top, there are, like, key takeaways, if all you have is 10 seconds to see what is the gist. Key takeaways are right there and then throughout the report, we actually, you know, we use headings and subheadings. We will bold the first sentence of every paragraph because, like, that's the most important sentence of that paragraph. It's kind of an upside down pyramid. And then within each section, it's another upside down pyramid where the most important information is up top. And if you don't have much time, you can skim it. We've got a lot of data visualizations to help you know people who learn that way. I'm one of them. But if you do have time to dig in and get everything you know the details are there, the limitations. Of what we know and can safely say are there, and then we've got our list of sources at the end, which sometimes runs into the hundreds, if you want to go do your own continued reading with links to that kind of stuff.
Spencer Patton 10:12
So maybe we'll just choose two topics, maybe not the most third rail topics, but just talk about some of the work that Sycamore is doing to put it into focus, housing is a real issue in Tennessee. It is expensive. There are all sorts of regulations that impact things that go down the food chain and up the supply chain that are impacting why housing is so expensive. We've done some research just in prep for this, to say that families in Tennessee are spending upwards of 30% of their income on housing, a third. So talk to us a little bit about housing and some of the research that Sycamore has done to take us beyond the surface level and into actually, like, what are the root causes of what's happening?
Brian Straessle 11:02
So we are just launching into a kind of multi year effort to dig into that very topic. And actually today, as we're recording this, we've just this week, have published our first report on that, which starts, by the way, we often start with big topics, which is, let's level set right. Let's look around and get the best available information to help people come at this topic from the same sort of grounding in terms of understanding. And so this one looks at, you know, it really just try to explain, like, what are all the different ways that housing matters. You know, obviously shelter, it's an enormous financial asset. It you know, where and how we build housing has an enormous impact on how we get around, right, our transportation system and how much traffic we're sitting in. It's it impacts your health. You know, if you live in kind of substandard housing like that, can affect both your physical health and your mental health. It has enormous implications for local finance. How do we pay for the things that local government does, and it has a lot of implications for kind of civic life and social capital, and how connected do we feel to our neighbors and the community in which we live? There's just layer after layer of why housing matters. And as you say, Yeah, this is not just in Tennessee everywhere, like it's getting more and more expensive, and there's this kind of metric called being cost burdened, where, if you spend more than 30% of your income on housing, that's kind of a red flag. And then if you add in transportation costs, I think it's maybe 45% of your income on those two combined, another red flag. A lot of Tennesseans spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Tons of us spend more than 45% on housing and transportation. Combined, which just doesn't leave all that much for the other parts of our lives that are so important,
Carli Patton 13:09
Like food and fuel. I guess maybe that's in your transportation cost is fuel a part of that 45% so okay, and all the stuff that kids apparently need.
Spencer Patton 13:19
So does the research go a layer deeper? There is to say, Okay, we know that this really sucks. It is expensive, it's painful. We're aware. Does it go to the next answer of either, what do we do about it, or what are the causes for it? What kind of, do you try to explore?
Brian Straessle 13:41
So that this you're following the progression that we usually take on these bigger projects after the level set is, well, what's happening right now? And what do we need to understand about, you know, where we are and how we got here? And then what could we do about it? And, you know, Sycamore does not advocate. We don't lobby for particular policy outcomes. We will lay out a menu of options that people could consider based on, you know, just either academic research or what you know we can learn from other states and communities, what has worked and what has not in other places. And so that's where we're heading. Like said, we just published the first piece. We've got some of those next installments coming, and then in the next weeks and months and years.
Carli Patton 14:33
I have to ask, is it on a human level, you're doing all this research, seeing what could be done across the country and how it can apply to Tennessee? Is it ever super hard for you to not want to lobby, to not be partisan, whatever? I don't actually know sitting here what your political views are. Is it hard to try to stay in that middle because I guess I'm sitting over here thinking our country is so divided, and I. Everyone just feels like they want to shout from the rooftops, and you, as part of your mission, can't.
Brian Straessle 15:06
Yeah, it can be hard. I think for me, you know, my career started on the other side of that where, you know, I was waving the flag for one team, and eventually realized that my team wasn't always right, and sometimes I didn't really want to wave that flag on that particular topic. And so I love being in a position at Sycamore where we get to weigh in. I get to learn. My team gets to learn about all these different topics. We get to help other people learn, and sort of foster those more productive discussions, but not have to get into the messy political parts of it. So for me, it's not that hard. The challenge really is in making sure that we are not perceived as having done that right, and so we are very aware of kind of what we do and how we do it, and what we say and how we say it, and how are the people going to hear that, right? How is that going to strike them? That's really the hard part. In addition to, you know, like I said, our staff, we disagree on a lot of things internally. If you were drawn to this sort of work, you probably have some strong convictions about what is the right thing to go do as society and as government, but you have to have an open mind as well. You have to be willing to recognize that there may be some valid points that you haven't thought of. There may be a perspective that isn't yours that is worth considering.
Spencer Patton 16:45
So when you think about your interface with elected officials, I would imagine, if I'm an elected official, there are areas that are close to my heart that I really feel like a subject matter expert on, and then there's other areas where I know they're important to my constituents, but I'm not as much of a subject matter expert on it. And knowing from running a business like I don't try to run HR and be the CFO and be the COO like some things I'm just actively bad at. So I know that I need help there. Do you have elected officials? Can they openly come to you and say, I need you to write this legislature, this piece of legislative action, I need you to inform this opinion. How far can you go into supporting an elected official and what are the rules and regulations around that?
Brian Straessle 17:41
So we have. There have been plenty of instances where a state lawmaker or local official said, Hey, I have questions about this. Can you help me understand it? And sometimes that is one off little Oh, well, here's the best information we could find, or here's some data on this. And sometimes it leads to a much longer report that ends up going up on our website, free for everyone to visit. Sycamore, tn.org We are always, always willing to be a thought partner, to be a wall that you can bounce ideas off of. We're never, we're never going to walk into a lawmakers office and say, here is this model legislation that we think you should go implement right now. If they said, Hey, I'm trying to come up with a bill to do X. I saw that you guys have done some work on this. Can you help me think about the best way to go forward? Yeah, we'd be happy to do that. There is a it's a fine line, and it's kind of, it's a little bit more art than science. I think, you know, this is a human business, and we don't. The world is not as black and white as many of us want it to be both in like policy and what should we do, but also on something like this where, you know, I think if my gut tells me this is, this is we shouldn't touch that, that's a hot stove, maybe we'd stay away from it. But otherwise, you know, we lean on other folks on our team, our board, to kind of tell us, hey, this you're going up against the shoals. There's rocky waters there, maybe, maybe be careful or not.
Spencer Patton 19:29
So I think if I'm in your shoes, there's some level of interfacing with the decision makers, but maybe you're more trying to influence the public at large and key influencers that can then get into the ear of the legislature. I'm just trying to see that both.
Brian Straessle 19:50
So I see our audience in four categories. Really. First is policy makers, so those elected officials, the folks who work at agencies. Is, you know, the people pull on those levers of power, right? The next is what I kind of call policy influencers. So these are advocates, lobbyists, people who, for one reason or another, are going and trying to convince those decision makers to do what they want. Right? The The next category is journalists, right? Who are, you know, often using our work to kind of help inform or add context to the stories that they provide. And then finally, it's those civically engaged members of the public. You know, we were kind of the opposite of click bait. We are not reality TV like we're not a mass market kind of product, right?
Spencer Patton 20:42
You'd raise more money. Brian,
Brian Straessle 20:45
Yes, yeah, but the mission would would struggle. And so I think each of those last three are sort of, they in turn, you know, put influence on the policy makers, right? Whether you're voting or kind of setting the agenda as a journalist, or, you know, going and actively lobbying, if that's your gig, because ultimately, our work is about the policy, right? What are we doing? Could we be doing it better or differently? Is this what we want to be doing? Are we getting the outcomes we want? Is this working? And you know, the folks who have been elected to those offices or appointed or gotten the jobs within the government to work on those things, they're the ones doing that work on a daily basis. But you know, as you kind of alluded to at the state legislature in particular. I mean, that's a part time job. They have other full time jobs that they do which are often not at all in the fields with which they are focused on when they're in the legislature, and then they're only in session maybe four months a year, and when there are they've got 1000s of bills that they're considering. So it is they don't have often, a lot of time to really dig into things that they don't already know a lot about. And that's why an organization like the sycamore Institute can be helpful by serving as a resource and saying, Look, you don't have time, you don't have the staff to go do tons and tons of research on this. But you know who we are, and you know the work that we do, in the way that we do it, you know that we, you know are credible and reliable in terms of the information we provide. And we have something here that can help you kind of wrap your head around a topic, and then you can figure out what you want to do from there.
Carli Patton 22:36
I love all this conversation about metrics, and since you were saying, if it is measurable, it can be managed. My question for you is, how do you measure success? I mean, because this is a really important thing that you're doing is providing data, helping people make good decisions. You have such a broad market of civic minded folks, whether they be in the legislature, personal citizens or journalists, et cetera. How do you tell someone we did it, we made it,
Brian Straessle 23:05
Man, y'all are really hitting on all the things that we grapple with. It is hard because we aren't saying, go past this bill, and when that bill passes, we get to say, Yay, we did that. Right? That's not the role that we play, it is a lot harder for us than many other organizations to show the impact of the work that we do. But sometimes there are just glaring, amazing examples, and I'll give you one. So last year, the state legislature looked at the question of, you know, there's about a billion dollars of federal funding that we get in Tennessee for K through 12 education, and they the legislature said, Well, do we want to continue getting that money? Because there are things that we have to do in order to get it, and maybe we don't want to do those things anymore. And so we did a lot of work to kind of help the lawmakers understand. And this is all again, reports published on our website. We also testified at the legislature to say, well, here's what all this money is for, the kind of categories it breaks down into, and here are the things we have to do to get it and a lot of these things we would still have to do regardless. And ultimately, the legislature, the House and Senate members were part of this working group, and they didn't fully agree. The House released their report and the Senate released their report, but both of those reports drew extensively on the work that we had done to the point like quoting, you know, paragraphs verbatim, we actually had to kind of follow up after it came out, and say, Do you mind citing us a little bit more? It is rare to see like our work just taken and put into hey, here's how we understand this and how it has guided our decision in such a clear way. I. Uh, I would love to see it happen more, but that was one where we we felt really good about the impact that we had had on the conversation. And because these lawmakers, again, this was a topic they had never really spent much time on, it was a learning exercise for them, and to have helped them get to a point where they felt like, Okay, now we understand what's happening here, and we can make more informed decisions. Like that is precisely why we exist.
Spencer Patton 25:30
What type of people work inside of Sycamore? Because I kind of imagine, like, like, what's your holiday party? Like, I imagine very like, professorial individuals with monocle?
Carli Patton 25:43
Is it Professor McGonagall everywhere?
Brian Straessle 25:47
Yeah, we you have to have intellectual curiosity. This is not really intentional, but we don't tend to be boring people. I don't quite know why. And we have, we have a wonderful internal culture. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the boss. I think and hope they would say that too. I didn't know I wasn't always the boss. I believe that before, you know people who are curious about the world, who care about wanting to feel like the work that you do has an impact on improving the world and your community and your state. You know I, I spent eight years in Washington, DC after college, and it was a wonderful experience. And anybody who's interested in policy, I would encourage to go do that, if they are at all inclined. But you can have so much more impact at the state and local level. Like, if you anybody listening is, if you want to change the world, stay home, right? Stay in Tennessee, because you can be a much bigger fish in a much smaller or more medium sized pond, and have so much more impact and not have to uproot yourself from your community. And so I think that we attract people who feel that you know who I mean, someone we hired recently, like, moved back to his hometown specifically because he cared so much about making his hometown even better than it was, you know, and it's place that he loves, and he wants to see it be better, and helping Tennessee be, you know, the most thriving state that we possibly can as part of it.
Spencer Patton 27:38
When you think About the literal career track of some of the people that work with you. Is it where they're serving extensive time in academia and then they would transition to have more independence of their research inside of Sycamore? Does it go the other way, where people come out of college or a PhD track, and then start at Sycamore with the hopes of getting on board at a university. How does that flow?
Brian Straessle 28:08
It's been a little bit of both, you know, at that kind of analyst position, we have both kind of rescued people from academia who, you know, they got their PhD and then said, Oh, man, this is not what I wanted to do, and the idea of working on something that is published a month from now, rather than three years from now, is really appealing to them. And then we've had folks go back into academia afterwards, after having built up a much greater resume than they had before. We've got folks who have come from other nonprofits. There's, you know, folks like myself who have worked in government at some capacity in the past. And you know, once you get that bug for caring about public policy, it is a really hard thing to get rid of. I tried for about a year and a half when I first moved to Nashville and felt that pull back to this kind of work. The we're mission driven people.
Carli Patton 29:09
I want to know your why behind it. So, yes, you want to change the world one city at a time, yes, curiosity and intellect, but you're also a father. You're also living real life while trying to inform these really big issues. So tell me a little bit about how being a dad, living your life impacts your charge, because you see the passion when you talk about what you do. I'm sure it comes from a deep place. Yeah.
Brian Straessle 29:40
I mean, it's, it changes your whole perspective. Obviously, having kids, you all know this, and as this is not groundbreaking, like but I always cared about policy. I mean, that's why I went into the field after college. And. Um, it really brings it much closer to home, right when you see, okay, let's talk about education policy, academically, you know, but now I have kids in school and like, how does this play out practically? You know healthcare, young ones are sick all the time, right? And you can be in the doctor's office and you're worried about them, but then some part of you is sort of like, oh, this thing that I just noticed, like, I know why that's happening, but like, other people wouldn't know that I Yeah. I mean, I, I could ask you guys, like, what about your work drives you, you know, to do it for for your kids and family. I think for anyone who is, who is lucky enough to be a parent, it is this, like motivating factor in anything that you do. You know, we talk at Sycamore about something we call the roots of a thriving Tennessee, which is basically our attempt to boil down, what are the things we all want, like we disagree on so much, but we all want good health. We all want social and financial well being, and we all want to feel like we have a chance to make a meaningful impact on the world around us. And we all operationalize those in different ways, but if you have those four things like you're going to be pretty well off, you know, mentally, physically, financially, socially, and, you know, part of that is feeling like you can pass that along to the next generation too. Like this isn't just about now, it's about the future. You know, one of my favorite things to do is in my off time, is plant trees, right? Most of those trees are going to outlive me. They will not provide the shade I wish I had anytime soon, but I do it because it will make that little corner of the world a little bit better.
Carli Patton 32:26
I think our families and our where we come from, our communities, our families, impact every moment, and certainly it does for us. I mean, with our four kids at home, we wouldn't do any of what we're doing right now if we weren't worried about leaving Tennessee better for them. I've been really alarmed. The Surgeon General came out, and it was like the most duh moment of research ever. It was like being a parent is bad for your stress levels, like warning if you're a parent, your mental health might be suffering. And I look in all of the research we've been doing here about how disproportionately affected caregivers are, and a lot of them are women. I do think that's changing. There's a lot of stay at home dads and right on, but it's disproportionately affecting women and caregivers for children. And so I wonder in your research, as you're looking into all of these issues, these roots of Tennessee, are you seeing those threads the way that we are.
Brian Straessle 33:21
Yeah, you know, we've we did a lot of work over the last year on children's mental health. We have also done some work in years past looking at that topic more broadly. We haven't really dug deep, particularly into like parents. I've seen that that same thing you mentioned, and I have felt it.
Carli Patton 33:43
Anecdotally. We know
Brian Straessle 33:46
That checks out. You know, I think one of the things that and we are, you know, full disclosure, we're getting more into the world of anecdote, as far as what I'm saying here, one of the challenges that I think we face today is it is really hard to do the sort of things like raising a family Without a community around you, and we just aren't as rooted in communities as we used to be, you know, years and years ago. You know, I moved away from home, didn't move back. And then once we started to have decided we wanted to have a third child, like, oh, we see if we can move in, in law here to be around and, you know, we can help her, she can help us. And that sort of thing just infuses your whole life, right? The you know, do you have time to go to the grocery store? Can you take your kid with you? I've had. My kids being sick recently, the last couple of weeks, and so now your routine has to change. You stay home with them, but also still trying to work. Yeah, if I could snap my fingers and sort of make change one thing, it would be probably that we we designed our lives and communities more around rooting people, you know, in a community, so that there is a net to catch you when you trip and fall, whether that is friends and family, your neighbors, whatever it is, you know, we all, we all trip and fall sometimes, and you know, there's a role in policy for that. You know, there's tons and tons of programs agencies that seek to do that. But I think the that civil society aspect of it, too is just incredibly important and often not as appreciated as it should be.
Carli Patton 36:01
Is that a big pillar of your research into Youth Mental Health? That's a topic that's super close to Spencer and I that we're particularly passionate about for personal reasons. So is it based on that community development piece, or what are you finding? Because everyone's talking about social media, everyone's wondering if it's chemical situational we have the covenant shooting, which there's been a huge spike in the Nashville area of mental health challenges amongst youth just after that. What is your research focusing on?
Brian Straessle 36:34
So we have not done a lot of work trying to sort of quantify the what is the reason for all of this, but more documenting like yep, all of those numbers are trending in the wrong direction, and have been for quite a while. And then what are all of the kind of efforts that exist within state government to try to alleviate some of those challenges, to address them, to treat them or prevent them. And then what else might we do? Right? What are things that are working in other states? What I mean? One of, honestly, the biggest kind of pieces in that last report we did on the topic that's sort of laid out, here's some options to think about going forward was, let's, let's step back a minute and assess because there have been dozens and dozens of pilot projects within the state that are very targeted at, you know, a particular county or particular subset of a population, and it does not seem like there has really been A concerted effort yet to take a step back and evaluate what is working and what isn't, and put more resources towards what's working. So I think that that is something we have heard from some some lawmakers and some other folks in state government, is that they they hear that that resonates with them, and so I think in the next couple of years, hopefully you'll start to see some more steps in that direction.
Carli Patton 38:07
Yeah, I'd be hungry to read that research. I truly would.
Spencer Patton 38:13
Maybe just as you talk about the intellectual curiosity that exists inside of Sycamore, if you are speaking to an audience that has never read anything from Sycamore and doesn't spend a lot of time reading academic papers pointing to data sets, maybe if you could just spend a minute or two to speak to your average Tennessean to say, here's a topic that we've either recently done some work on or working on that might be something that showcases something that Sycamore does particularly well, and maybe it might be a little more accessible or just impactful for where you see Tennessee today, is there something that comes to mind where you'd say, this is a great representation of the types of work that Sycamore does.
Brian Straessle 39:04
Man, to some degree, I think that's going to depend on what people are interested in, because we have done work kind of across the issue spectrum, from health, public finance, criminal justice, you know, housing now, all sorts of things. You know, one of the things that we do every year is year is an analysis of the state budget that the governor proposes. And if you're just looking for like an entry point into understanding, you know, what's happening at the state that that's not a bad place to start. We've also we publish, every few years, updated a kind of primer on the state budget, the process, how it works, where the money comes from, and where it goes again. That state budget primer is a really good entry point for understanding like grounding yourself in if I'm going to start caring about what's happening at the state level.
Spencer Patton 39:58
And that's publicly accessible for everybody. To be able to get?
Brian Straessle 40:00
Yeah, so I believe to get the that state budget primer, all we ask for is your email address. And then if you we have, actually, one of the few things that we have, like printed, bound copies of it's like 60 pages or something. It's a bit longer, and we'll sell those for 25 bucks and mail it to you. The vast majority of the work that we do is available on our website for free, no no email gate, nothing like that. It's it's all there, but that's kind of one of those signature pieces that we figured put a lot of work into it, and want to make sure that it is seen as being valuable, and, you know, we get a little bit of appreciation and the ability to stay in touch with folks, you know, and engage with them more going forward.
Spencer Patton 40:45
Yeah, I imagine that's an amazing place to start, even for those that aren't especially financially minded. You know, Tennessee's budget is what, like, $56 billion I mean, it's a it's a big number, 10s of billions of dollars of spend. How detailed does it go? I guess, with 60 pages, it's like, pretty detailed about where is it obvious in reviewing it that, man, these are some areas that maybe don't look great like do you all opine on that to say this is not great? Or is it just like, hey, we're gonna spend $200 million on savings salamanders and the Cumberland River? And, you know, you just leave it at that or,
Brian Straessle 41:22
So we, we typically don't get quite that level of detail with it. It's, it's somewhere in between, you know, if you were to, like, look at the actual budget document, I mean, it is hundreds and hundreds of pages. And so we are somewhere in between that and the, like, two page summary of all that kind of stuff. We don't opine, and I think that's one of the things that people across the political spectrum value about our work is, again, there. It is not going to be tinged with judgment.
Spencer Patton 41:51
Would you like to opine today?
Carli Patton 41:54
Can we just use opine in as many sentences? For the listener, please use opine.
Brian Straessle 42:01
But you know, sometimes in the work that we do, not all that often, but sometimes, like it, is pretty obvious that something doesn't seem to be going quite the way you would want it to, or pretty obvious that maybe there's a gap that it might make sense to fill. I think back to a few years ago. This was before the pandemic in the budget work, you know, some of what we did was looking at the state's rainy day fund and kind of putting it in the context. Because everybody was talking about, oh, it's a billion dollars, the biggest we've ever had. And we're like, Well, yes, but the state budget has also grown, and so if you looked at it in context of like, how many days of just operations could it fund? We had less cushion in the state budget at that point than we did going into the great recession. And I think that caught some people's attention, and they we are in a far different place now, years on, where the Rainy Day Fund is quite full. And, you know, there's a lot of times the work that we will do, it's a bit of a Rorschach test, you know, we'll do. We did a piece on firearm related deaths last year, and had both Republican and Democratic members of the legislature reached out and thank us for having done it. Because, to some degree, I think sometimes people saw what they wanted to see in it, because it was there. It is a complicated story that kind of defies the very black and white, like this is the answer to how we fix this problem, but yeah, we don't really opine.
Carli Patton 43:48
So it sounds like you're you guys are the ones that are doing what other people won't do, yeah or can't do, because of where they are, maybe politically or in the legislature, if you had a magic wand, you fundraise, you're running this organization. What if somebody handed you, like a grant or left you all of their possessions in their will? Let's say, what would you go for?
Spencer Patton 44:12
It was a big will.
Carli Patton 44:13
It was a big will. Yeah, it was like, Uncle Henry left you the farm.
Spencer Patton 44:18
Yeah, Brian's loaded. Now.
Carli Patton 44:20
What would you do next? Like, what is kind of your dreaming into vision for Sycamore?
Brian Straessle 44:26
Well, the first thing I'm going to do is ask you for Uncle Henry's contact information.
Carli Patton 44:31
Yeah, leave some flowers.
Brian Straessle 44:33
So this may sound boring, but the first thing on my to do list is scale. You know, we have been a team of about five for several years, and we punch well above our weight, but it just limits our ability to work on as many topics as we want to. We are now at six and. Hopefully soon growing to seven, which I guess means things are going well financially. But I could kind of map out what a team of 10 looks like. And, you know, there we are just constantly getting requests to work on topics or answer questions or grapple with things that we just can't get to or, you know, to call back to earlier in the conversation, ideas for things that we would love to work on, but the grant proposal just doesn't get funded, right? And so, yeah, if, if none of that was a concern, we would have more people on the team doing more of the work that is very highly valued by the people who consume it and making making a bigger impact.
Carli Patton 45:47
Okay, I have to ask a buzzy question. I won't say like synergy and cultivate, or anything like that, but right now, everyone's talking about AI, and you have the camp that it's like, oh, it's gonna ruin all scholarly efforts, hence, like we're headed towards doom. And then you have the other camp that thinks, oh my gosh, think about the innovation and the speed with which we can do things. If that's the spectrum, where do you, maybe not Sycamore, but where do you, Brian, sit on that?
Brian Straessle 46:18
Well, one I'm a firm believer that institutions should not outlive their usefulness. I do not think that we are anywhere near that with the sycamore Institute. But if we ever were, then like great, like you have a mission for a reason, and once you achieve it, go do something else in terms of AI, you know. Well, I say policy making is a very human endeavor, right? And there's always going to be the human elephant element of relationships and trust that you're just not going to have with a computer algorithm. And if you can look someone in the eye, you know, and they believe that you really have tried to do your level best to present the facts as they are. I think that that is much more compelling than whatever is going to be spat out by chatgpt.
Spencer Patton 47:13
It's a great way to summarize Sycamore, summarize your heart posture of what you're trying to do for the state of Tennessee. And I think as I just take a step back and think about the discussion from the day, the fact that you're focused on Tennessee is a really special thing. There are definitely a number of states that do not have that resource. There's no one there that cares about that state, to the exclusion of others, and so I think that's a really important part in the fact that you all are data focused and willing to operate in a place to say, You know what? This may not be the best thing for our fundraising, to release this piece, or for our non partisan position this moment. Because it may look like that we're saying one thing when we're just trying to show that, yes, if you stick your finger in a light socket, that does result in electrocution. And for some they're gonna tell you that, well, what do you have against light sockets? You know it's like. So I can appreciate that you all do it with excellence, though, and that I've read your stuff, I've been to your events, and I do come away educated, and that is what I would encourage people that haven't ever had the chance to interface with Sycamore, to say, do some of the reading? Have the chance to just explore it a little bit, and you'll learn something. And I'm going to take the budget primer thing. I think that's a really interesting aspect of going through and really getting your perspective on it, because it's one thing to look at it in other contexts, but to have it through your all's lens will be something that I'm looking forward to learning. So thank you for being here today and teaching us about Sycamore and what you're doing for the state and and your role. So it's good to give you a message
Multiple Speakers 49:01
go opine the day. Yeah, that's right.
Spencer Patton 49:04
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Brian Straessle 49:05
Thank you for having me and giving me the chance to come chat.
Spencer Patton 49:13
Brian Straessle of the sycamore Institute, it was good to have him today he was speaking to real data that matters to Tennessee, and that is not something that you can find when you just pull up the news. Sure you're gonna find data. Maybe you can believe it, maybe you can't, and it's definitely not related specifically to Tennessee. And I think the work that he's doing is getting noticed by legislatures and decision makers. And it's interesting to see that.
Carli Patton 49:44
I really appreciated him talking about the roots of what it means to be a Tennessean, and how they really focus on flourishing, and what that looks like regardless of where you are, socioeconomically, regardless of your race, regardless of what part of the state you're in. You guys were just talking on the way out the door. Or about the training our team went to with Sycamore. You should talk about that a little bit.
Spencer Patton 50:05
Yeah, the annual event that they did, they had a specialist about the migration trends of how our country was founded, and they had this color coded map, and there were probably 15 different colors, and it shows how people settled the United States and the people that we now know as Louisianans today, right? Swamp people a different dialect, totally different culture, why? And he went and spent about 10 minutes on each of these different groups, the audience was most interested in the ones that swept across Tennessee. But even across Tennessee, there are three different types of Tennesseans, and it depends upon the immigration patterns of where they originated from, the dialects and in some cases, the terrain of what skills they had to have. And so it kind of connected a light bulb to say, okay, yeah, I understand why that part of the state, or that part of the country talks the way they do, values the things that they value, has political beliefs that they do, and in almost every case, they were traceable to where that group of people originated from a couple 100 years ago.
Carli Patton 51:27
I think the key word of all of this was not opine, it was context. Context, context. So what you're talking about that our team went to, versus what he's trying to do for housing. He's trying to provide context for things that we all perceive, but we can't quite put our finger on he's giving the back story so that we can be more educated about things that are truly impacting our bottom line, on our family budgets, our day to day lives today. And you know, it's kind of thankless work, and I'm so grateful he's doing it.
Spencer Patton 52:02
Yeah, if you present data alone, you're really not presenting what's necessary to get people's attention. You have to connect a story with the data, and I picked that up today, and their research has that same connection to tell a little bit of a narrative, not in a partisan way, but to help put some muscle around the basic data that if you're not told how to read through it, you might look at a chart and say, Okay, there's nothing I can grab from that. But even how they do infographics is really worth seeing. Okay, I know that as I read it, but upon seeing it, it makes it like so much more clear of okay. This is a problem that we need to know more about.
Carli Patton 52:55
I'm curious for you. Spence, so former debater, and I say with great love debate nerd, because I think nerd is a compliment, not an insult. But does your inner debate nerd as he's sitting there saying we're truly bipartisan. We're not fighting for one side or the other. We're trying to give you the context and then a way out. Does your former debate self think, would you ever do something like that? Or do you feel much more like, no, I'd have to, I'd have to fight for a side.
Spencer Patton 53:24
I think the biggest challenge in the answers that I heard from him on that is, how do you know that you're winning? How do you know that you're making an impact? And he, I think, adjusted himself in the seat as he was trying to think through the real way to articulate say we wrestle with that, because it's not as though they can point to a single bill and say, we got this done, and that would be tough for me, is that I believe in everything that I've known in the business world, is that when you do these things, either you're measuring it in profitability, or you're measuring it in impact or scale, but there's something that you're measuring and you are evaluated based upon that, and you either hit the mark or you didn't, but everyone knows it, and I would struggle with that. And I think underlying academia is also something that would be more challenging for me, because there isn't that clear connection that you produced X or your team did y, and this was the outcome, for better or worse.
Carli Patton 54:35
Think it's a interesting thought about leadership in different ways that one can lead. So he's leading through storytelling, through data analysis. And I think you're, you're much more of a change agent.
Spencer Patton 54:49
That's right, yeah. And I think there's that's, that's why there's different battle positions, right? Is that you don't need archers on the front lines. You need archers, you need artillery. You need. Your guard. You need all sorts of things in order to have the whole thing work. But I know for me, I would have a hard time in understanding the narrative of the data, to not get out there and champion it so that way everybody understood what the right answer was, at least in the world, according to Spencer Patton,
Carli Patton 55:25
yeah. Well, it was really fun. It was a fun podcast to be on with you today. I feel like he's so knowledgeable, and he just oozes depth in detail, and makes me want to go read every thing on their website until it probably goes over my head.
Spencer Patton 55:40
It's almost like we should invite him to our speaker series.
Carli Patton 55:44
But, um, bunch. I think a lot of how people react to this podcast today, we're gonna pick a specific topic with him, because they do so much interesting research. It'll be really fun to see what comments we get here so that we can drive that narrative for what people might want more of.
