No new road projects will come to come to Southeast Tennessee counties other than Hamilton this year and some local officials wonder whether politics played a role.

“When you have a process that is supposed to remove politics and you have a region that has no new projects, that’s very troubling,” said Athens City Manager Mitchell Moore. “Especially when one area has seven.”

The Tennessee Department of Transportation said last week that no three-year work programs were awarded to either the Southeast Tennessee Rural Planning Organization or the Cleveland Metropolitan Planning Organization. Such programs are awarded annually and implemented within three years.

The Northwest region of the state was given seven projects, three more than the highest number awarded to any of the 11 other regions. The Northwest region includes the district of Rep. Phillip Pinion, D-Union City, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Rep. Pinion announced last week that he is not running for re-election this year.

Records show three projects were awarded to the Chattanooga-Hamilton County-North Georgia MPO, which is separate from the Southeast RPO. Two of the local projects are property buying and road construction between Interstate 75 and Apison Pike for Enterprise South. The third is the purchase of right-of-way for a Chattanooga project, records show.

Kim Harpe, coordinator of the Southeast Rural Planning Organization, said she was shocked that Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, Marion, Meigs, McMinn, Polk, Sequatchie and Rhea counties received no new projects.

“We didn’t even get a crumb,” Ms. Harpe said.

When Rural Planning Organizations were formed almost two years ago, state officials said the goal was to take politics out of the process of setting transportation spending priorities.

Dayton Mayor Bob Vincent said he also was surprised that no new projects were coming and called it “the same old politics.”

“It doesn’t speak very highly of our political clout with as much as we’ve put into this process,” he said and two of those are federal earmarks.

Athens Mayor John Proffitt said he doesn’t understand why Southeast Tennessee didn’t get at least one project.

“They need to at least give us a bone to chew on,” he said.

Gregg Ridley, chairman of the Southeast Tennessee RPO, said growing pains are to be expected in a relatively new planning organization and that members should work harder

Without money, several projects in the Southeastern RPO must placed on hold, including widening state Route 30 between Etowah and Athens and between Decatur and the Tennessee River, Ms. Harpe said. An environmental-impact study of Route 30 between Dayton and the Tennessee River also is on hold, she said.

TDOT spokeswoman Julie Oaks said Friday the current allocations don’t mean no new projects could be awarded next year. She noted that more than $60 million in projects will be worked on this year in Southeast Tennessee.

State officials had to try to balance the needs of the entire state with reduced funding, she said.

“This is especially true now that the department is facing lower-than-projected federal revenues and virtually flat state revenues,” Ms. Oaks said.

Ms. Harpe said she will tell RPO members to lobby TDOT to get projects already in the works completed. There are 20 projects under development, records show.

“Dragging their feet on these is just not acceptable,” she said. “I’m hoping that the reason we didn’t get anything is because we do have so many projects under development.”

Although seven projects were awarded to the Northwest region, Ms. Oaks said only three projects actually lie in the district of Rep. Pinion, to make sure they get projects in the future. “There’s always politics,” Mr. Ridley said.