TVA directors are scheduled today to begin choosing a new chairman for only the second time since the federal agency revamped the way it is governed three years ago.

At a meeting today in Knoxville, the seven-member board will discuss and possibly choose a successor to Bill Sansom, the Knoxville businessman who has headed the part-time board since it replaced TVA’s former three-member full-time board in March 2006. Mr. Sansom, a Republican, said his term as chairman ends in May and he doesn’t anticipate being reappointed to the TVA board by Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think TVA is a great model and our board has worked effectively,” Mr. Sansom said. “I hope that isn’t mesed up because of this tragic accident at the Kingston plant.”

For all the success the part-time TVA board may have had over the past three years in in hiring a new CEO and adopting a strategic plan to cut debt, boost power and encourage conservation, Mr. Sansom concedes that the agency’s image was tainted by the biggest ash spill ever at a coal plant in December just three months after TVA implemented its biggest dollar rate increase in history.

Mr. Obama, who is yet to say much about either TVA or coal ash, will be able to fill two vacant TVA board seats immediately and name replacements for Mr. Sansom and TVA Director Don DePriest by May. But with nearly 3,500 presidential appointments to fill, the Obama administration is unlikely to appoint and gain Senate confirmation of the TVA board positions any time soon.

Critics of the current TVA board want more diversity on the panel, saying President Bush filled the seats primarily with business officials who have contributed to Republican candidates.

“Once board members are selected, the agency is free to act with little oversight,” said Stephen Smith, an executive director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy who has urged the appointment of environmental and land-use experts on the board. “It is critical that the board be staffed with members who have the skill and vision to reposition TVA as leader in this nation’s energy future.”

Mr. Smith said the business focus of TVA — a government corporation which competes with investor-owned power companies — may have caused the utility to not spend more on alternative energy and pollution controls, which ultimately contributed to the biggest ash spill ever at the Kingston Fossil Plant three days before Christmas.

partisan positions

The term of Skila Harris, the lone professed Democrat and last remaining holdover from the full-time TVA board, ended last May.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Sansom both said partisanship rarely entered any discussion at TVA, and the part-time board has worked to bring a more business-like approach to governing the nation’s biggest government utility.

By having a bigger board with representatives from throughout the Tennessee Valley overseeing a professional staff, Mr. Sansom said the new TVA board is less likely to pursue narrow interest projects.

“We’re not trying to run TVA (like the full-time governing board did prior to 2006),” Mr. Sansom said. “We’re trying to give the leadership and long-range, strategic planning to make sure we are ready for the future.”

In the past three years, the TVA board adopted a land-use policy to protect most of its shoreline properties, adopted a strategic plan to increase both conservation and power generation and improved relations with its 158 distributors.

“There is more of a partnership between TVA and its customers,” Tennessee Valley Public Power Association President Jack SImmons said last year.

public and public background

Former TVA Director Susan Richardson Williams pushed for Mr. Sansom to be the first chairman of the part-time board three years ago and believes he helped make the transition possible.

“What I really like about Bill Sansom is that he is nobody’s “Yes” man and is willing to ask the tough questions and make the right choices,” she said.

Dr. Warren Neel, executive director of the University of Tennessee Corporate Governance Center who previously served with Mr. Sansom in the cabinet of then-Gov. Lamar Alexander, said Mr. Sansom had both government and business management and board experience to help lead TVA.

Mr. Alexander, now the senior U.S. senator from Tennessee, said the part-time TVA directors nominated by President Bush were “unusually good” and “not partisan.”

“The new governance structure that the Congress set up has been great for TVA,” he said.