The Trustee’s Office collects and manages more than $1 billion each year in state, federal and local funds used for Knox County government operations. The office also manages the county’s long-term and short-term investments, as well as the county’s cash flow.

Trustee's Office employees' use of county vehicles is at the center of the GOP primary campaign.

And the office has been a magnet for corruption for much of this century.

Former Trustee Mike Lowe, who served in the office for 13 years before county term limits took effect, pleaded guilty to paying “ghost employees” and personally collecting a share of their salaries, defrauding the county of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lowe’s successor, John Duncan III — the son of former Congressman John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr. — served less than three years before pleading guilty to a felony charge of official misconduct over the payment of unearned bonuses to office employees.

Ed Shouse returned stability and fiscal responsibility to the office during his two terms, leaving office in 2022 without accusations of misconduct.

Current Trustee Justin Biggs was investigated for official misconduct because of his misuse of a county vehicle (a widespread practice in the office) and extravagant travel expenses, but a grand jury declined to indict him. 

After surviving that probe, Biggs is running for reelection against current Register of Deeds Nick McBride and Barry Hawkins, a former Trustee’s Office employee who now works in the Property Assessor’s Office.

McBride raised three times more than Biggs and Hawkins combined during the first quarter of the year.

McBride took in $35,945 during the first three months of 2026, with support coming from high-profile Republicans (mayoral candidate Larsen Jay and former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe) and business leaders (Phil Lawson, Pete Claussen and Hank Stowers, for example). He had $36,335 on hand on March 31.

Biggs raised only $6,500 from six donors. He loaned his campaign $100,000, however, and had $108,874 available at the end of the reporting period — nearly three times McBride’s balance.

Hawkins raised $4,750 and had $1,592 remaining as of March 31. 

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Stephen Hood in the general election. We will profile Hood’s campaign during that portion of the election cycle.

Justin Biggs

Biggs said he’s running for a second term to make a difference, to build on the positive impact his office has had on Knox County during the past four years.

“If you look at our numbers, you know we’ve been to more senior centers, churches, we’ve been to over 5,000 residences across Knox County and literally brought government to the people,” he said. 

Biggs said he’s concerned about the effects of the county’s explosive population growth on longtime residents. “I’m thinking of our elderly. I’m thinking of our mobility-limited people, the people that don’t have an opportunity to take advantage of our satellite offices or come to our downtown location,” he said. “I went into office with an emphasis on, what are we going to do to make an impact on Knox County, the people that have lived here for quite some time and actually make government work for them, and we’ve done a really good job of that.”

Biggs’ initiative to take the government to the people ultimately led to a criminal investigation.

He leased six expensive Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks for staff to use for county business, but a state Comptroller’s Office investigation found that employees also used them for personal errands. Overall, Trustee’s Office vehicles were used for personal reasons 43 percent of the time covered by the probe.

Biggs used trucks on county business trips to Nashville, though he also drew an allowance for his personal vehicle, and he and staff stayed at upscale hotels.

Biggs’ director of operations, Jason Dobbins, was indicted for profiting from the purchase and resale of property based on insider information on the owner’s tax situation. He pleaded guilty to one count of official misconduct.

A Knox County grand jury reviewed the case against Biggs and declined to indict him. Biggs paid $3,500 as reimbursement for the amount he estimated he owed the county.

Biggs said he was “blindsided” by the investigation and had no idea he couldn’t drive a county vehicle for county business while receiving a personal-car allowance. “Maybe it was my immaturity or my ignorance,” he said. “It’ll never happen again.”

Biggs said he’s taken steps to make sure employees don’t use the vehicle for personal use, including using sign-in/sign-out sheets, performing random checks on the GPS data, using mobile-visit logs and matching that information with the work that has been assigned. He also said he plans to replace the Silverado pickups with less expensive Ford Explorers.

Biggs defended what he calls the Mobile Operations Program, saying that it has been used to collect $26 million in delinquent tax payments and has helped seniors sign up for tax-relief programs. He said his employees also help seniors access other county services if needed.

“It’s almost like we’ve become the department that just brings government to everybody, and honestly, it’s a beautiful thing. I wish more people could see it,” he said.

Biggs, 42, is the son of former law-enforcement officer Eddie Biggs, who worked for the Knoxville Police Department before becoming chief deputy to former Sheriff Jimmy “J.J.” Jones. He graduated from Karns High School in 2001. Biggs doesn’t have a post-secondary degree but did accumulate 15 years of experience in the Trustee’s Office under both Lowe and Duncan, and he served one term on County Commission before winning the Trustee’s job in 2022. He is single and lives in Halls with his daughter.

In a second term, Biggs said, he wants to increase accessibility through technology, such as putting QR codes on tax bills to make payment easier and to provide residents with the opportunity to have their tax statements emailed to them. He also wants to work with businesses that are closing to clean up the tax rolls and pointed out that the Trustee’s Office has a 99 percent collection rate — among the highest in the state.

Biggs said the county’s investment portfolio has grown to $50 million and his office has earned more than $41 million in interest on the county’s short-term banking accounts.

“Knox County is in good financial shape because of my stewardship,” he said.

Biggs said that the campaign is going well and that he’s primarily self-funding his reelection effort to focus on matters other than fundraising. He said only a few voters have said anything about the investigation, but when they do he tells them he has protocols in place to prevent a recurrence. 

He said, “I have a proven track record of leadership that has not only brought government to the Knox County residents, but the investing and the numbers that we’ve shown are the highest that they’ve ever been, and the Trustee’s Office is actually in the best shape that it’s ever been in.”

Barry Hawkins

Hawkins hasn’t served in elective office before, but he’s no stranger to Knox County government. 

He worked in the Trustee’s Office for 18 years under Lowe as a “utility guy” working in every section of the office. After a stint in commercial real estate, he returned to the City County Building in 2020 to work in the Property Assessor’s Office.

“I enjoy helping people and I worked in that office for 18 years,” he said. “At the last minute, I thought I’d get in it (the race) because I thought I’d do a better job than the other two.”

Hawkins said Biggs has needlessly spent a lot of money. “You do not need trucks,” he said. “The whole time I was in there, when I was serving summonses and going out, calling on people to tell them they were behind (on their property-tax payments), we drove our own car. We either got a gas allowance or gas mileage, and that is all you need. You don’t need these trucks. If we’d asked for a truck or a car, they’d have laughed at us.”

Hawkins said the clerk has satellite offices and the county has services that can transport people to them if necessary. 

He also said he would staff the office appropriately. He said he’s worked in the Trustee’s Office when it had 60 employees and when it had 30 employees. “You know what? With the 30 we had, we collected the same (revenue) and did just as much.”

Hawkins said he would emphasize accountability and integrity. For example, he said, he would closely monitor tax sales to make sure that no employees or their families could benefit from their insider knowledge.

He also doesn’t worry about his 15-year absence from the Trustee’s Office because the job hasn’t changed except for the improved technology.

Hawkins, 60, grew up in Powell and graduated from the University of Tennessee. He and his wife, Anna, a registered nurse, live in Karns and have three children.

Hawkins said McBride is attempting to skirt term limits by running for another office — one in which he has no experience.

“It’s not illegal, but it’s not ethical,” he said.

Hawkins also questioned McBride’s decision to allow an employee to work remotely after moving out of Tennessee. “I don’t understand that at all,” he said. “To me, that’s why we have term limits. They get embedded in these offices (and) feel they can do anything they want without getting caught.”

The response of voters to his campaign has been “overwhelming,” Hawkins said. “They don’t like these people jumping from office to office … and they don’t like what Justin’s doing. They try and defend it, but you can’t.” 

Hawkins said he likes to help people but doesn’t like asking people to donate to his campaign and is realistic about his lack of funding. He’s relying on Facebook to get his message out to a broader pool of voters.

“It’s time for a change,” Hawkins said. “The same people have been circulating through the City County Building for years, just bouncing around. We need new faces, new ideas.”

Nick McBride

McBride couldn’t run for reelection as the register of deeds because of term limits, so when he learned of the investigation into the Trustee’s Office, he said, he thought he could make a difference there. He also had just graduated from a certified financial officers program.

“I thought, well, I think that’s something I’m qualified for,” McBride said. 

He said his knowledge of how the offices of trustee, register of deeds and property assessor work together has prepared him for the job. He also said that the relationships he’s developed in the courts and with city officials would pay dividends.

“I think it’s important to have relationships and be able to get along with other elected officials in the City County Building to make sure that the tax sale is done properly and accurately, and that we can move forward once that sale is approved by the court,” he said.

McBride said he would look at installing kiosks where people can pay their tax bills, using QR codes and emailing tax bills to property owners. “With postage going up as much as it is, we have to look for other ways to communicate with the taxpayer,” he said.

He also said he would emphasize efficiency, starting with eliminating the employees’ use of county-owned vehicles. 

McBride called the investigation into the Trustee’s Office an “unfortunate situation” that can be remedied by making sure employees know the rules.  “You’ve got to train those people. You’ve got to work with them. You can’t just say, ‘Here’s the keys to the pickup truck; go have at it.’ You’ve got to sit down and make sure they understand that when you’re going from the City County Building out to Farragut Town Hall, you can’t stop at the dry cleaners. You can’t stop at Weigel’s to get a Coca-Cola. You’re not supposed to do that.” 

Biggs and Hawkins both question McBride’s decision to allow an employee, Rose Browning, to work remotely after moving to Florida following the death of her husband. McBride defended the decision, saying Browning was a “valuable” employee.

“In that time period she was working remotely, she collected $21,048,554 in taxes and fees for Knox County, she recorded documents that accounted for $3.5 billion in real-estate sales and over $5 billion in lending, and recorded approximately 280,000 images,” he said.

McBride also provided documentation. He said the Comptroller’s Office and the Knox County internal auditor reviewed the records and interviewed Browning. 

“I would have never done this if I couldn’t document that she was working the entire time that she was getting paid for,” he said. “I’ve been in this building way too long to stub my toe on something stupid.”

Browning retired at the end of 2025 after 35 years in the Register of Deeds Office.

McBride, 56, is a Knox County native who grew up in the Cedar Bluff area and graduated from Farragut High School. An initial foray into higher education at Middle Tennessee State University didn’t take, though he later earned a bachelor’s degree from Tusculum University. He initially went into real estate but jumped at the chance to work for then-Register of Deeds Steve Hall. He worked in the office for 28 years until winning election in 2018.

McBride pointed to the digitization of the Register of Deeds Office records as an accomplishment that could shrink the office’s footprint in the City County Building. “All of our records back into the 1700s are now digitized,” he said.

He’s also instituted a free property-fraud alert system, which enables the Register of Deeds Office to alert participating property owners if a deed or other instrument has been filed so that potential fraud can be stopped.

McBride said he feels good about the campaign and is pleased with the support he’s received from donors. 

“As I’m talking to people, they think that we need change,” he said. “They think that the current administration has lost a lot of confidence with the voters, and so I think that they are looking at the other candidates that are running.”

McBride said people should vote for him because he will run an efficient and transparent office.

“I have a servant’s heart, you know? I love what I do. I love serving the public.”

Correction: In the initial version of this article, we reported that the Register of Deeds Office property-fraud alert system was a fee service; it is a free service to property owners who sign up for it.