Nearly two years after being elected president, Barack Obama should soon be able to put his imprint on the Tennessee Valley Authority.
After months of delays and secret holds by Republican senators in the Tennessee Valley, the U.S. Senate appears ready to confirm four new TVA members.
"I think we need the four new members on the board, and I expect all four will be confirmed later this month," said U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the TVA Congressional Caucus and the Senate Republican Caucus.
Last year, President Obama nominated three Democrats - Georgia Tech professor Marilyn Brown, of Atlanta; Middle Tennessee State University professor Barbara Haskew, of Chattanooga; and Oak Ridge attorney Neil McBride - and Republican businessman Bill Sansom, of Knoxville, to serve on what is supposed to be a nine-member TVA board.
The nominees were unanimously endorsed in a voice vote in February by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But holds and delays by U.S. senators in Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky have held up the confirmation vote due to disputes over representation from each of TVA's states and unrelated partisan fights over other presidential appointees.
Sam Gomberg, a Tennessee Valley energy policy associate for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said he is tired of "backdoor politics and partisan bickering" holding up the nominees from joining the TVA board.
"The irony is that when the TVA Act was amended in 2005 to change the board from three full-time members to nine part-time members, the primary justification was to remove the politics that had permeated the board," he wrote recently in the newsletter Clean Energy Footprints. "Apparently, the current Senate didn't the message."
The TVA board now is operating with only five directors - the bare minimum for a quorum. The term of retired Huntsville, Ala., businessman Howard Thrailkill expired in May, but he can continue to serve until the end of this year or until his replacement is confirmed.
If the Senate does not confirm new directors by the end of the year, TVA would be unable to move ahead with any significant policy initiatives until it restores a quorum to the part-time panel.
Both of Tennessee's U.S. senators said they expect Senate confirmation after the Senate returns from its summer recess on Monday.
"My understanding is things have been worked out and we should get a confirmation vote shortly," U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said during an interview during the August recess.
Members of the TVA board are appointed by the president, subject to confirmation by the U.S. senate. The part-time board names a chief executive and sets policy for what is the nation's biggest government utility with more than $12 billion a year in electricity sales and oversight of the Tennessee River and its tributaries in parts of seven states.