NASHVILLE—State Representative John Ray Clemmons is calling on Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and his office to investigate the bidding and awarding process for the state’s newly-awarded contract to build Governor Bill Lee’s toll lanes on I-24 from Rutherford County to downtown Nashville (see attached). Earlier this month, the state’s Transportation Modernization Board awarded a six-company consortium doing business as “DriveTN” a $9.2 billion toll lane construction project on I-24 in Rutherford and Davidson Counties from which the private companies will profit for the next 50 years. While the project will be completed as a public-private partnership, the publicly funded Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) has executed all related tasks to date and will provide project oversight and other related roles in the future, as instructed by Governor Lee. In its bid, Drive TN alleged that the state would receive approximately $28 billion in “cost value” over the next 50 years.
According to reports, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) recommended DriveTN saying it presented the “best value” and saying its “cost value” of less than $1.8 billion per year over 50 years would somehow help the state overcome its current $58 billion backlog in road maintenance and construction projects. In spite of a history of bankruptcies and price-gouging complaints, TDOT curiously said the consortium presented no “red flags” that concerned them. Today, published reports document how a temporary hire by the Lee administration who served as TDOT Chief of Staff in 2022 promptly departed the state to work for one of the companies, Ferrovial Cintra, just months before it submitted its winning bid.
Rep. Clemmons, the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said there are too many unanswered questions surrounding the awarding of the contract:…