TDOT culture sees a shift

Has the culture at the Tennessee Department of Transportation changed?

Insiders say so. Gerry Nicely, the TDOT commissioner appointed by Gov. Phil Bredesen, is no road builder.

The road builders have long had a reputation of having a heavy influence within the $1.4 billion department.

Bredesen, by design, named Nicely, breaking a long line of road builder industry commissioners. Nicely is a hard-nosed, no-nonsense sort of guy and the "change in culture" that Bredesen campaigned on two years ago has appeared to have taken hold.

The latest is an investigation, spurred by Nicely, of alleged bid rigging. The notion is that some in the road building industry have conspired to limit competition in certain areas to take advantage of the state.

Nicely incorporated a study of project bids in the first year of the Bredesen administration. These results, according to the commissioner, raised some questions. These questions were forwarded to the Attorney General and now the TBI.

Whether or not the investigations yield indictments, the point is made that, as Bredesen likes to put it, "we're getting the talk right."

And the conversation is: no funny business.

Building roads in Tennessee has been a longstanding political bargaining chip. A major reason for this is the relatively untouchable source of revenue that funds the state's superior road system.

State gas taxes paid by motorists here are earmarked and go straight into the roads - a user fee it's called.

It is no secret that legislators in the past have been awarded with roads. Generally, the governor presents a project list each year and this list is usually approved by the General Assembly with little change.

In 1999, House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh took on Gov. Don Sundquist, accusing the administration of exchanging roads for votes.

A little later the state comptroller also examined the possibility of road builder bid violations.

Naifeh threatened to try to push a change to put the project-picking process into the hands of the Legislature as opposed to the governor. In the end, the issue fizzled. And soon Naifeh had joined forces with Sundquist to push for an income tax.

That issue stole the public's eye for years.

Then along came Bredesen who, lucky for him, had the income tax fight resolved with a sales tax increase just prior to his election.

In one of his many reforms, he changed the way TDOT worked with the public and in his first year dipped his finger into the formerly untouchable road fund, removing $65 million to spend in other areas.

This time around, eyes are on the industry. Nicely has explicitly mentioned TDOT or its employees aren't in question here.

And most recently Nicely has discontinued public bidding lists that allow those interested to keep tabs on who has bid.

In the 1980s scores of individuals in the industry were convicted of bid-rigging. Whether the practice remains is yet unclear.

But as Bredesen says: "everyone is interested in making sure" the bad apples are thrown out of the barrel.