A controversial Kentucky donor. An accelerated road project. But who made it happen?

A $1.1 million state road project benefiting a business run by a major donor supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election was recently moved up to be constructed ahead of schedule.

Officials with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet say the move saves time and money on a necessary project and point to the fact that local GOP lawmakers requested it. Some Republicans in the legislature are raising concerns about what happened.

Construction on new turning lanes into a road in Laurel County serving a business founded by London Mayor Randall Weddle, who has drawn scrutiny for high-dollar donations to pro-Beshear efforts, was initially set for Fiscal Year 2025. According to internal documents obtained by the Herald-Leader, the cabinet moved it up earlier this year, either in February or March, to be completed in Fiscal Year 2023.

The cabinet frames this as a prudent cost-saving measure — less money is projected to be spent than was previously estimated — but Republican legislators involved in the road planning process question why this decision was made on this particular project.

“My colleagues and I prioritized available road fund money to meet as many needs as possible, so I am troubled by the administration using $1.1 million to move a project ahead appearing to benefit someone who made a $200,000 illegal political contribution,” Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, said.

“This type of conflict erodes the confidence taxpayers have in their elected officials,” he added.

The transportation cabinet pushed back hard on this characterization in statements from the cabinet spokesperson, the secretary and the chief district engineer on the turning lane project. Aside from cost savings due to the cabinet discovering that earlier phases leading up to construction were found to be unnecessary, the cabinet also points out that Republican legislator Sen. Brandon Storm, R-London, specifically asked for the project after it was not included in the initial funding bill in 2022.

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary and former Lexington mayor Jim Gray called Higdon’s statement on the intersection project “baseless.”

“The Governor had nothing to do with the decision to advance this project. It was requested by a member of the senator’s own caucus and it was done to improve traffic safety,” Gray said.

Weddle recently drew scrutiny for donations made to Beshear’s campaign and the Kentucky Democratic Party (KDP) totalling more than $200,000, far exceeding the legal limit for individual contributions. In May, Weddle and his wife gave $75,000 to the Democratic Governors Association, the largest outside group supporting Beshear this year in his re-election race against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

The intersection at the crossing of U.S. Route 25 and KY Route 1006 near London leads into the industrial park where WB Transport, the freight and logistics business founded by Weddle, is located. A FedEx warehouse also operates in the industrial park, which is located next to the London-Corbin regional airport.

Sean Southard, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Kentucky and the Cameron campaign, echoed the concerns of Higdon.

“The Beshear administration has prioritized a project that personally benefits the business of a donor who made $200,000 in illegal campaign contributions. It doesn’t get much worse than this,” Southard said in a statement sent after the initial publication of this story.

Did the decision make sense?

Cabinet spokesperson Chuck Wolfe said moving construction ahead was an “incredibly responsible decision to expeditiously address a safety need.”

Wolfe also provided an official request from Storm asking for the project in early 2022 and stating that “increased industrial traffic has created a need for additional storage for traffic turning at the intersection of KY 1006 and US 25.”

Storm has not responded to requests for comment on the matter.

The project was not included in the road plan bill promoted by the governor — the legislature has largely ignored the appropriations bills he proposes in favor of their own — but was added later in the 2022 legislative session after Storm’s request.

Wolfe also mentioned that Rep. Tom O’Dell Smith, R-Corbin, was involved in advocating for the project. Smith, who represents the southern part of Laurel County including the industrial park, confirmed that to the Herald-Leader. He stated that the area’s economic development director, Paula Thompson, was the leading force who brought it to others in Frankfort.

“I have no idea how anything else developed from there, all I know is that it was put in the budget and we put a request in for it to be done. I’ve slept since then, but that’s what I know about that project,” Smith said.

Funding on the intersection project, $1.4 million according to the two-year road plan enacted in 2022, was initially assigned to preliminary expenses for the two years following the legislator-approved road plan passed in 2022. As of May, $1.1 million has been allocated for construction at the intersection, with no money for the preliminary expenses like right of way and utility movement costs according to internal documents obtained by the Herald-Leader. In late July, Wolfe told the Herald-Leader that some utility movement work may now be necessary for the project.

The cabinet said that when those expenses were found to be unneeded at the time, it made the discretionary decision to shift that money toward construction. Chief District Engineer Chris Jones said in a statement that the decision made sense for several reasons.

“I made the recommendation to speed up the project to save money and time and improve safety. The project was advocated by Senator Storm, who obtained a cost estimate for it from our district staff. The Governor was not involved in any of the decision making and I had no knowledge of any political contributions,” Jones said.

Smith said he’s worked with Jones’ office in Manchester and the director has been “great to work with.”

Higdon, who has held his transportation chair position since late 2020, said it’s his understanding that money can’t be ‘moved up’ to construction.

“I have always been told monies cannot be moved to the next phase without being appropriated,” Higdon said.

Higdon stressed that money was not appropriated or assigned to construction so soon in both the final version of 2022’s House Bill 242, which appropriates road funding for the next two years, as well as the enacted highway plan, which mirrors that document and projects funding for the following four years.

He acknowledged that Storm made the official request for the project, but doubled down on the cabinet not following standard practice as he’s known it.

“Senator Storm came to me with his priorities and we gave him part of it. Before it was modified, on this particular project we gave him the design, right of way and utilities… Our job is to appropriate the funds. (The cabinet’s) job is to take what we appropriate and then use it as directed. There was no money appropriated for this job beyond design, right of way and utilities. I’m telling you the way the system is supposed to work, and they didn’t do it the way it was supposed to work,” Higdon said.

Weddle’s office responded to questions about the project stating that it was needed, and that many stakeholders in the community fought for it “way before any building was built or before any company was inside this park.”

Indeed, a Facebook post from the London-Laurel County Economic Development Authority from Dec. 2021 quotes the executive director saying “I’ve been asking for a turning lane for a long time, and now it’s going to become unsafe.”

The London mayor’s office agreed.

“Greer Park has two transportation companies in it, not just one. FedEx and WB Transportation both created enough traffic on 1006 that something needed to be done to address safety concerns for both companies, but primarily the community,” Weddle’s office said in a statement.

Is this normal?

It is not uncommon for changes to be made to the road plan, which is enacted every two years. A six-year plan lays out a vision for projects across the state, whereas a two-year road plan actually allocates funds for projects in the next two years, or the biennium.

Cost overruns and underruns happen frequently, according to multiple copies of the highway plan status update reviewed by the Herald-Leader. It’s also not uncommon for projects slated for funding in later phases to get state funding for an earlier phase, like design, should the need arise.

Additionally, projects not in the enacted plan do get state funding authorized by the cabinet from time to time. Many of those come from buckets of money allocated by the state for the cabinet to use at its discretion. Around $65 million each year in statewide safety and hazard-mitigation funding was allocated to the cabinet. Various projects near schools – many of them low-dollar relative to other highway plan projects have gotten authorization to use those funds. For example, a handful of Lexington school safety signs got funded this way; same goes for a half-million dollar design and construction project for turn lanes into Caldwell County Schools.

However, it is rare for a project to get moved up to the construction phase ahead of schedule, as was the case at the intersection of US 25 and KY 1006.

In a review of more than 3,000 projects in a highway plan status update from May, the Herald-Leader could only find two other projects that had been slated for later completion but whose construction phase was moved up using state funds.

When asked to provide an example of a project similarly getting moved up, cabinet spokesman Wolfe pointed to Republican “Rep. James Tipton’s bridge on the Anderson/Spencer county line.”

“An example of that is Rep. James Tipton’s bridge on the Anderson/Spencer county line. We did the same thing for the KY 1006 project to alleviate a public safety issue that had been discussed for many years.” Wolfe said.

Unlike the Laurel County intersection project, that bridge project was added to the status update without being included in the enacted highway plan.

Higdon pointed out that the legislature appropriates pools of money to be doled out at the secretary’s discretion – unexpected repairs on roads and bridges, safety, urgent bridge replacement and school turn lanes, among those reasons.

House Budget Review Subcommittee on Transportation Chair Ken Upchurch, R-Monticello, joined Higdon in questioning the move and asked “why have a road plan if you aren’t going to follow it?”

“Any deviation from this plan invites questions about what motivated the governor’s staff and naturally calls into question why they failed to follow the properly enacted and prioritized road budget. I think we are all concerned about a potential erosion in the integrity of a system we’ve worked to bring transparency and credibility to,” Upchurch said in a statement.

Who is Weddle?

Weddle is a business owner new to the political scene statewide and as a figure in the London area.

In a four-year stretch from 2018 to 2021, Weddle and his wife have bought nine properties in Laurel County for a total of roughly $1.7 million. In 2022, he won a hotly contested mayoral race as a political newcomer after raising more than $350,000 for his campaign, most of which he loaned to himself.

Starting in Dec. 2021, a series of donations linked to Weddle – namely through business or family ties – was made to the KDP and Beshear’s campaign. Roughly $690,000 in donations to either group with some ties to Weddle and/or his ‘reverse logistics’ and liquidation industry was flagged by the Kentucky Lantern in the first story on Weddle’s support for Beshear and the KDP. The donations given to Beshear and KDP on Weddle’s credit card were returned once the issue was flagged by Weddle and his wife.

A Republican, Weddle also gave $500 in 2019 to former GOP governor Matt Bevin in his re-election bid against Beshear and $2,000 to Republican candidate for commissioner of agriculture Jonathan Shell early 2022.

Weddle’s ‘reverse logistics’ industry has proven to be lucrative. Reverse logistics is the business of handling customer returns, where items returned often end up being recycled or refurbished and sold to another customer. In an interview, Weddle said his company handles reverse logistics for “some of the largest retailers in the United States and Europe” and owns six companies that operate in that space.

The 200,000 square foot warehouse employing around 200 people was lauded in news reports when it launched as an economic development win. It sits on land owned by JRD London, a company whose sole member is Weddle. The value of the property exceeds $10 million, according to the Laurel County Property Value Administrator’s (PVA) office.

In an April story by the Kentucky Lantern, which probed Weddle’s donations before he self-reported campaign finance violations, Weddle told the outlet that he had sold WB Transport and its “related reverse logistics company” two years ago. However, in a Fall 2022 sworn affidavit provided to KREF while defending against the complaint that initiated the investigation, Weddle said that he owned half of Reverse Logistics Management, LLC, a company based in Kentucky and Missouri, where Weddle has business ties.

Weddle did not respond to a question sent through a spokesperson asking him to square the two statements.

Weddle is currently under investigation by the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance (KREF) for hosting a free gas giveaway during the 2022 campaign season when he first won the mayoral seat in London, among other conduct during that election.

Beshear appointed Weddle to a spot on the advisory board of the Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC), a research hub at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering, on June 10 2022. He had submitted his application to join the board just four days earlier on June 6. That application includes Weddle’s personal information, but is otherwise blank. No information on his education, general qualifications or resume was provided.

Now, Weddle no longer appears as a member on the board’s website. Though no record exists of a resignation at the cabinet or the Governor’s office, KTC Director Doug Kreis told the Herald-Leader that’s because, to his knowledge, Weddle has never showed up to a board meeting in person.

“I don’t think I’ve met the gentleman and certainly he hasn’t had any influence on the way that KTC has been run,” Kreis said.

Herald-Leader Frankfort Bureau Chief Tessa Duvall contributed to this report.