‘Assault on local government’: Nashville leaders lament latest legislative session

Nashville and Tennessee leaders are at odds — again.

When Tennessee’s General Assembly concluded the legislative session in April, the work for local leaders was only beginning. Metro’s legal team began their annual legislative review, identifying new laws that, they feel, are adversarial to Nashville — and assessing the potential for legal challenges.

More: Special session full coverage

Tension between left-leaning Nashville and the statehouse’s Republican supermajority isn’t new, but Metro leaders said the level of preemption bills they saw this year was noteworthy.

“In all my years of being around the General Assembly, as a former member, I’ve never seen an assault on local government that I did this past session,” said Darren Jernigan, Metro’s manager of legislative affairs and a former state representative.

“Unprecedented,” is how Metro Law Director Wally Dietz described the session.

“This year was a dramatically different year,” he said. “The legislature this year, in my opinion, was on a power grab that is unprecedented in Tennessee history … It became clear the overarching theme of this legislature was they didn’t want any local governments to have any authority.”

Which laws concern Metro?

Many of the new preemption laws focus on the makeup of various boards.

One that Metro is most concerned by is a new law to move control of airport boards to the state. It’s the latest step in a years-long debate over who would control the Nashville International Airport. A 2023 law replaced Nashville’s existing airport board (where all seats were appointed by Nashville’s mayor) with a majority-state-appointed board. Metro sued on the basis that it targeted Nashville specifically, and arguments were heard by the Tennessee Supreme Court earlier this year. However, the latest law — which will vacate and reconstitute the boards of metropolitan and regional airport authorities statewide — likely renders that case moot.

The legislature also approved a law that changes the makeup of utility boards. Under that legislation — which was proposed after the mass outages faced by Nashville Electric Service customers after the January ice storm — NES will have to add board representatives from surrounding counties.

A different law created a new state-appointed board to oversee the Boring Company’s Music City Loop. The “Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority,” will be made up of nine voting members appointed by the governor, House speaker and Senate leader.

The legislature also approved a law that makes “subsurface passenger transit” companies report their assets subject to property taxes to the state comptroller instead of a county assessor. Typically, infrastructure projects are only required to report to the state when crossing county lines. The Boring Company project, which is only planned within Davidson County, will now report to the state.

While the Boring Company tunnel project has been hailed by state leaders, some of Nashville’s local leaders have expressed opposition. In March, the city’s Metro Council passed a resolution opposing the project, “objecting to the company’s lack of transparency, inadequate community and Metropolitan Council engagement, and troubling labor and safety practices.”

The major focus of this year’s session — immigration — has also concerned the city. The legislature piloted an agenda crafted by the White House, including a new law that requires local law enforcement to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the 287(g) program.

Earlier this month, Metro released a statement saying that the new law does not apply to the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, because of the way the bill was written. Jernigan anticipates that this technicality will be corrected in future sessions.

2023 vs. 2026

While the number of new laws that concern city leaders is high, the possibility for legal action may be lower than in recent years.

After 2023’s legislative session, Metro filed four lawsuits over laws that overhauled the sports and airport authorities, reduced the size of the Metro Council and undoing a 2011 charter referendum. Some of these are still playing out in court.

The basis of Metro’s legal arguments in those cases centered on the legislature singling-out Nashville. Tennessee’s Constitution includes a clause that says when legislation targets one local government, it must be approved by that government’s voters or council.

The preemption laws passed in the 2026 legislative session don’t target Nashville in the same way. Rather, they impact local control on a broader level.

“In some ways, we taught them a lesson,” Dietz said. “That will result in more statewide regulatory efforts by the legislature because they know they cannot focus on one or two [localities] and prevail.”

Following the 2023 lawsuits, Metro hasn’t sued the state in two years. Dietz said the city has been seeking to improve the historically-tense relationship.

“It was really disappointing to me, to the mayor, to other people here in the metropolitan government because we had been working really hard to develop a constructive working relationship with the state,” Dietz said. “The legislature this year told us they didn’t care. ”

Republican response

Regarding laws affecting airport and utility boards, bill sponsors often cited the need to fix efficiencies or improve representation.

In a statement to WPLN News, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally rejected the characterization of any laws as an  “assault on government.”

“I frequently work with local governments and respect their role in governing,” McNally said. “But when the state has a compelling interest, such as in the case of growing regional airports, the state has an obligation to step in a careful and deliberative fashion. I believe that’s what we have done.”

Metro’s ‘successes’

Metro leaders did cite some minor successes on bills they lobbied for.

These included a law making it possible to ticket autonomous vehicles, which the city was looking to pass as self-driving Waymos are introduced in Nashville.

Nashville was also able to secure approval at the state level to move forward with its construction of dedicated bus lanes along Nolensville and Gallatin pikes. The city needed approval from the state on this section of its ‘Choose How You Move’ initiative, because the Tennessee Department of Transportation controls most of Nashville’s key pikes.

There was also a law that allowed metros to reduce the local option grocery tax. An existing law permitted cities and counties to lower their grocery taxes, but excluded metropolitan governments. Nashville lobbied for a tweak to that law, and Mayor Freddie O’Connell has since announced his intention to reduce the grocery tax by a half-cent.

“Even the bills that were not favorable to Metro, we were able to make them a little better by just pointing out to the sponsor or to leadership that ‘Hey, maybe you didn’t consider this,’ ” Jernigan said. “But some things we just can’t stop.”