Tennessee Valley Authority's top attorney to retire

Arkansas-St. John's Live Blog
photo Ralph Rodgers

TVA General Counsel Ralph Rodgers will retire from the federal utility at the end of the year.

Rogers, 60, joined TVA in 1979 and rose to the top legal job as executive vice president and secretary to the TVA board at TVA's headquarters in Knoxville. He is the highest paid attorney in TVA history with a compensation package worth $2.5 million in 2012 and $1.9 million last year.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday, TVA said that Rodgers had informed TVA President Bill Johnson that he plans to retire in December. No successor has been named yet to head TVA's legal department, TVA spokesman Duncan Mansfield said.

Rodgers is TVA's senior litigation attorney and the designated ethics officer for TVA. Under the corporate-like board structure adopted for TVA by Congress in 2006, pay levels for the general counsel and other top officers at TVA have risen significantly over the past decade to more closely align with investor-owned companies rather than the government-level pay grades used by TVA in the past.

But the higher pay for Rodgers drew fire from former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, who claimed that "most East Tennessee attorneys do not make a quarter of that amount (paid to Rodgers) in one year.

"An equally or more competent attorney could be employed for far less and save ratepayers money," Ashe said in a column that appeared in the Knoxville Shopper News. "Most people in East Tennessee have never heard of Rodgers but he has a nice nest egg now at ratepayer expense."

On Monday, Ashe said it is "not clear how generous his pension will be, but count on it being more than most TVA folks about to be laid off."

TVA is leaving vacant or phasing out about 2,000 jobs as part of a three-year effort to trim $500 million from the agency's annual operating budget.

A native of South Florida, Rodgers earned degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.

Upcoming Events