The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet awarded $150 million of asphalt contracts that only one company bid for in the first half of this year, according to a free market think tank that has routinely criticized such single-bid contracts.
Andrew McNeill, the president of the Kentucky Forum for Rights, Economics & Education (KYFREE), estimated that these 118 single-bid road paving contracts inflated costs for the projects by more than $12 million, compared to scenarios where there would have been competitive bidding.
“The Transportation Cabinet continues to fail Kentucky’s taxpayers,” McNeill stated in the KYFREE release announcing its research. “Every dollar wasted on these excessive awards means less money for transportation priorities that would build safer roads and promote economic development across the state.”
Single-bid asphalt contracts have been scrutinized in Kentucky for decades. A Courier Journal investigation in 1994 on “blacktop monopolies” found that county lines often served as an “iron curtain” for contract bids. The newspaper found a large majority of asphalt contracts in many counties had only one specific company bidding on that work, showing at least the appearance of collusion between companies to allow inflated bids, at the cost of taxpayers.
Amid increased scrutiny, a legislative committee in Frankfort released a report last year that found more than half of asphalt-related contracts awarded by the cabinet from 2018 to 2023 went to companies who submitted the only bid, a significantly higher percentage than three neighboring states. Projects with a single bid were typically awarded at a higher cost relative to the cabinet engineer’s estimates, while projects with multiple bidders were awarded at a lower cost.
The Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee report also found that while asphalt bidding was more competitive in the Louisville and northern Kentucky regions, it was much less so elsewhere in the state, with a half dozen companies amassing most of the single-bid contracts.
The KYFREE report for the first half of 2025 also shows the same small number of companies gobbling up 87% of the single-bid contracts, noting several are connected through common ownership and joint ventures, or are subsidiaries of multinational conglomerates.
“It’s the same six companies that have historically benefited from the cabinet’s lackadaisical approach to this, and the same six that (Courier Journal reporter) Tom Loftus identified many years ago,” McNeill said.
A Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokesperson responded to the KYFREE report with a statement saying it requests competitive bids and works with industry representatives to encourage competition, “but sometimes only one bid is received.”
“The Transportation Cabinet communicates with the General Assembly when there is only one bid for a project,” said spokesperson Naitore Djigbenou. “The choice is either move forward or not do a project, as the agency complies with provisions set by state law regarding construction project awards, and follows rigorous procurement standards and procedures.”
The KYFREE estimate that single-bid contracts inflated costs by $12.7 million so far this year is based on a 2015 study and the legislative report last year that showed how much lower competitive bids in Kentucky averaged than asphalt contracts with a single bid. Though the $150.4 million total of single-bid contracts was slightly lower than the $152.9 million engineer estimates for them, the group believes they would have been even lower if there was more competitive bidding.
The conservative organization found $270 million of single-bid asphalt contracts in 2024, which it estimated was $20.4 million higher than it would have been in competitive bidding scenarios.
A massive new single-bid road contract
Just an hour before the KYFREE press release was sent Tuesday morning, the GOP majority caucus of the Kentucky Senate issued a press release touting the awarding of a $147 million road contract to widen Interstate 75 near the Tennessee border in eastern Kentucky, through Laurel and Whitley counties.
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet records show there was only one bid on the project, which came from L-M Asphalt Partners, doing business as ATS Construction and Kay & Kay Contracting.
L-M Asphalt Partners has been one of the top recipients of single-bid asphalt contracts in recent years. The legislative report found they won 130 single-bid contracts from 2018 to 2023 — out of their total 169 contracts — while KYFREE showed they won $16.7 million in single-bid contracts through the first half of 2025.
However, records show the L-M Asphalt bid on the massive I-75 project was still significantly below the cabinet’s engineer estimate of $176 million.
McNeill of KYFREE says it is good that this contract was below the engineer estimate, but is still not a reason to applaud the single bidder or the cabinet.
“The question of why a second bidder wouldn't bid on such an enormous contract needs to be answered,” McNeill said. “There may be a reasonable and legitimate answer to that question, but there is also a strong possibility — given that this type of bidding pattern occurs over and over in Laurel County and other nearby counties — that there are some serious questions of violations of consumer protection laws in the state.”
McNeill said there are still concerns about tacit collusion “not only in the case of this contract, but in other parts of the state where we see this bidding behavior that is defined by county lines over and over and over.”
Asked about the KYFREE report on single-bid asphalt contracts, a spokesperson for the Senate GOP majority leadership said they would “defer to the Transportation Cabinet” on its conclusions. A spokesperson for Republican House majority leadership did not respond to an email.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
