Tennessee House Bill HB1321

Tennessee 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 2/6/25
• Refer: 2/12/25
• Refer: 3/4/25
• Refer: 3/26/25
• Refer: 4/2/25
• Refer: 4/8/25
• Engrossed: 4/21/25
• Enrolled: 4/24/25
• Passed: 5/21/25
• Chaptered: 5/27/25

Caption

AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 4, Chapter 3, Part 22, relative to tourism.

Summary

HB1321 reorganizes parts of Tennessee’s Department of Tourist Development by formally creating a marketing division and a welcome centers division within the department. It gives the commissioner of tourist development authority to appoint division heads and directs those divisions to carry out tourism promotion, support existing tourism businesses, distribute informational materials, and oversee the state’s welcome centers. The bill also clarifies operational responsibility for welcome centers. The Department of Tourist Development is made the primary administrator and maintainer of the centers, while the Department of Transportation is assigned a supporting role for facility maintenance as agreed between the agencies. The welcome centers division is tasked with promoting Tennessee’s heritage and attractions, training staff, staffing centers according to department guidelines, and maintaining clean, safe, and functional facilities. In addition, the bill provides a funding mechanism for welcome center operations by requiring the commissioner of finance and administration to transfer sufficient money from highway user taxes allocated to the highway fund to support the annual appropriation for implementation and administration of all welcome centers. This links welcome center funding to existing transportation-related revenue streams rather than creating a new tax. The bill appears to have been broadly noncontroversial. It advanced unanimously through subcommittee and committee votes and passed the House on the consent calendar with 86 yeas and 0 nays. The lack of recorded opposition suggests general agreement with the administrative reorganization and tourism-promotion focus. No major points of contention are reflected in the available record. The only likely policy considerations are the division of responsibilities between the tourism and transportation departments and the use of highway user tax revenue to support welcome centers, but the bill’s unanimous votes indicate those issues did not generate visible disagreement in committee or on the floor.

Impact

HB1321 amends Tennessee Code Annotated Title 4, Chapter 3, Part 22 to restructure the Department of Tourist Development’s internal organization and duties. It creates a marketing division and a welcome centers division, updates terminology from “director” to “division head,” and assigns the department primary responsibility for welcome centers while preserving a supporting maintenance role for the Department of Transportation. It also directs the transfer of highway user tax revenue from the highway fund to support welcome center appropriations, affecting state budgeting and the allocation of transportation-related funds.

Sentiment

The bill was received very positively throughout the legislative process. It passed each committee stage unanimously and cleared the House on consent calendar passage with no recorded opposition. That voting pattern indicates broad bipartisan support and little apparent controversy over the bill’s tourism-promotion and administrative changes.

Contention

No formal opposition or substantive controversy appears in the available committee or floor record. The main issues implicit in the bill are whether welcome centers should be managed primarily by the tourism department versus transportation, and whether highway user tax revenue should help fund them. However, the unanimous votes suggest those questions were not contentious among legislators.