Stockard on the Stump: Tennessee approves no-cost lease for launching Musk tunnel near Capitol

The Tennessee Building Commission approved a no-cost lease for Elon Musk’s Boring Company to use a state-owned parking lot near the Capitol to launch its tunneling project. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

With little discussion, Tennessee’s Building Commission approved a no-cost lease Thursday for state property near the Capitol for Elon Musk’s Boring Company to launch its tunneling project.

A few logistical questions are: Where are they going first, what about the potential environmental impact and who owns all the rock? Will the state give up its mineral rights?

Critics of the project also want to know why the state is giving away property – on top and under the ground – to a billionaire without a public vetting? 

“Why are we rushing this process? What’s the hurry? Why don’t we have an impact study? Because we’re dealing with a billionaire?” D.J. Porter asked the group of state officials.

Despite opposition from a packed room, the Building Commission’s Executive Subcommittee approved the lease of a parking lot on nearly an acre deemed to be surplus property at 637 Rosa Parks Blvd., just down the hill on the southwest side of the State Capitol, where the boring machine could start digging. 

Are they headed next to the Capitol and Music City Center, up and down Broadway and then to the airport? The plan calls for using zero-emissions electric vehicles to ferry people from one station to another, a plan that critics said will only help Musk’s companies transport tourists, not Nashvillians.

Department of General Services Commissioner Jeff Holmes told the panel the state secured a line of credit from Boring in case it abandons the tunneling project. The company also obtained a license to work at the parking lot where it already put up a construction fence. 

State officials are playing it close to the vest, though the lease of the Rosa Parks property makes it pretty clear where the tunnel could start. After all, they’ve got to dig a hole somewhere to go underground.

Committee members didn’t make themselves available for questions or declined to talk to reporters after Thursday’s meeting.

Everything’s running through Gov. Lee, who called it the “coolest” project he’s introduced in his two terms.

The Governor’s Office this week announced the start of a public process to “evaluate potential routes, engage stakeholders and finalize plans for the project’s first 10-mile phase.” With that in mind, it doesn’t appear the first part of the “Music City Loop” will start at the convention center south of Broad and go to the airport, only that it will connect those at some point with an eight-minute transit time using underground tunnels beneath state-owned roads.

State Sen. Becky Massey told the Lookout this week the state will sign a long-term lease with the Boring Company, enabling it to build the tunnel on or under state right of way.

What happens with the extracted rock remains to be seen, since the state holds mineral rights to everything under its above-ground right of way, to the center of the Earth. Will the state require Boring to pay for the limestone it removes, or will it give up those rights as part of a long-term lease? Will the state use the rock to build roads? 

Considering this is being called a public-private partnership, what is the state’s role, other than providing the land, and how does it benefit? Few answers are being supplied as this deal steams down the track. 

Education leader zaps feds

Tennessee’s education commissioner inadvertently gigged the Trump administration’s handling of federal funds for public education this week, saying it’s still getting its “sea legs.”

The U.S. Department of Education initially withheld billions of dollars from states but then reversed course and released the money, giving states some modicum of relief as students return to school in August.

Asked this week if she would like to see more consistent policy from the federal level, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told reporters the state hasn’t gone through a full year yet with the Trump Administration but she expects improvement.

“I think they’re getting their sea legs underneath them and trying to figure out all the landscape. I think once the appointees get confirmed, I think there’ll be a lot more consistency,” Reynolds said. “So I think that’s kind of been a little bit of a holdup. Get the people in there that understand public education and can help support states. Not that they don’t support public education. … That kind of came out wrong.”

We know what she means, since that’s what many people are thinking but afraid to say out loud.

Reynolds spoke to reporters after a meeting of the legislature’s Federal Education Deregulation Cooperation Task Force, possibly one of the longest committee names in state history, which is supposed to figure out how to handle a major reduction.

Tennessee receives $1.3 billion in education funding from the federal government, mainly for nutrition, disadvantaged students, disabled children, extended learning, teacher instruction, career and technical education, English language learnings and rural and low-income schools.

Tennessee’s Republican leaders have wanted to eliminate the federal education department for years. Reynolds and her staff complained in Tuesday’s hearing that the department is inundated with paperwork to satisfy the feds.

Reynolds told lawmakers they’d like to receive the federal money in a block grant, or lump sum, and disburse it to their liking. Yet the department wouldn’t cut staff, only repurpose their work.

Even though many lawmakers have spent months and years blasting the U.S. Education Department, Republican state Sen. Bill Powers of Clarksville told the group he assumed the release of funds was a “breath of fresh air across the state of Tennessee. … It was for my district.”

Later, Powers said the federal Education Department is in “a state of flux,” but he added, “when the edict comes down from on high,” the state is prepared to handle it.

It’s still unclear, though, whether Tennessee would be able to handle the shortfall if the feds pull back the money, possibly next year.  

Asked that question by committee Chair Dawn White of Murfreesboro, education officials said they would have to “get back with you.”

Working on teacher license

Commissioner Reynolds admitted to reporters this week she still doesn’t hold a teacher license, even though state law requires the state’s education leader to be qualified to teach at the highest grade over which she has authority.

“I work on it on weekends, and I do my best,” Reynolds said.

Tennessee education commissioner remains under the microscope

The department’s new spokesperson, Maggie Hannan cut off the conversation, more or less ending Reynolds’ first interview with Capitol press corps members in, well, maybe ever.

Following Reynolds’ appointment by Gov. Lee, Democrats said in early 2024 she was unqualified to hold the job because she wasn’t licensed to teach in K-12 here.

Reynolds enrolled in a teacher education program at UT-Martin and received a tuition waiver before she had been with the state department the required six months, after signing an affidavit stating she was eligible for the money. Reynolds reportedly repaid the money after questions arose.

Reynolds pushed the governor’s private-school vouchers, a new program that gives $7,000 to 20,000 students in its first year to enroll in private schools, regardless of whether they attended public or private schools the previous year.

After going head-to-head in 2024 with critics of the proposal, Reynolds rarely, if ever, visited committee hearings this year. Lawmakers narrowly passed the $146 million program, and the Education Department is continuing to enroll applicants until July 31, less than a week before school starts.

Likewise, Reynolds is running out of time to earn her teaching license. Gov. Lee’s second term will run out in early 2027. Will she get the license before then, or is this an exercise in futility?

Public at last

The Registry of Election Finance released a document this week showing the Professional Board of Responsibility dismissed a complaint against Nashville attorney Cynthia Sherwood. The release came nearly two weeks after the Lookout requested a copy of the letter.

Bill Young, leader of the Registry, which oversees the state’s campaign finances, filed the complaint last fall after Sherwood sent a private investigator to his home to question him. Young declined to speak to the PI because Sherwood’s client, Cade Cothren, has pending cases before the Registry. Young is represented by staff counsel and the state Attorney General’s Office in the case.

Tennessee board clears attorney in ethics complaint from state campaign finance watchdog

Registry board members said the incident was an ethical violation and voted to send a complaint to the Board of Professional Responsibility.

In early July, the board sent the letter to Young stating, “Our inquiry has not revealed sufficient evidence to proceed against the attorney (Sherwood) for violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct.” Dismissal of the case was approved and set to become final in 30 days, absent a written appeal.

During the Registry board’s July meeting, the dismissal letter was considered closed to the public. Registry members asked the AG’s Office for an opinion on whether it should be a public record. 

Sherwood later provided a copy of a letter she received on the case’s dismissal to the Lookout.

By the time the board meets again in September, the question could be moot. But the Registry board probably won’t be happy with the case’s dismissal.

Not so tough

A Nashville Criminal Court judge ordered former state Rep. Jeremy Durham to serve seven days in jail for DUI after suspending most of a year-long sentence, the Tennessee Journal reported.

The attorney for Durham, a Franklin Republican, requested a lighter penalty that would allow him to serve 48 hours at a Rutherford County facility where offenders can pay for better digs than jail.

The former rep hit a car just off Broadway in Nashville late one night, then tried to run from police. He was charged with felony reckless endangerment, DUI, resisting arrest and unlawful use of drug paraphernalia.

Apparently, he tried to get out of the arrest that night by telling police he was an attorney and former legislator. That didn’t help his cause.

Judge Jennifer Smith called the situation “egregious” and questioned whether Durham appreciated the “gravity of it,” according to the report.

Durham must have failed to mention he was expelled from the House in 2016 for not-so-exemplary behavior toward more than 20 women who worked in the legislature. But who’s counting?

“Forty nights to sit and listen to the midnight train to Memphis.” *

*Chris Stapleton, Midnight Train to Memphis