TVA’s Bellefonte nuclear plant can be seen from Highway 72.In the first Senate roll call vote on a TVA nominee in nearly 25 years, the U.S. Senate tonight voted 86-12 to confirm Democrats Ron Walter and Virginia Lodge to the Tennessee Valley Authority board.
Walter, general manager of the Memphis CBS television affiliate WREG-TV, and Lodge, a Nashville business consultant who was previously commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services, won 5-year terms on the 9-member, part-time board that oversees TVA.
They will succeed Barbara Haskew of Chattanooga and Bill Sansom on Knoxville as TVA directors.
TVA nominations are typically approved on voice votes in the U.S. Senate, but Republicans have objected to what they claim is a lack of involvement in the GOP-dominated Tennessee Valley by the Democratic Obama White House in picking nominees.
Both of Tennessee’s Republican senators voted for the confirmation of Walter and Lodge after the pair signed a letter Monday indicating that they would recuse themselves from involvement in deciding on the Bellefone Nuclear Plant financial plan being pushed by former Chattanooga developer Franlin Haney, who talked with the two about his plans before their confirmation.
Both Corker and Alexander also have vowed to have more Congressional oversight of what will now be an entirely Democratic board governing TVA next year when the Senate is controlled by Republicans.
“I voted for Virginia Lodge and Ronald Walter to serve on the TVA board because they are two well-respected Tennessee citizens,” Alexander said in a statement tonight. “But I have expressed before my displeasure with this White House’s process for nominating TVA board members. It has regularly ignored the Senate’s responsibility to advise and consent on presidential nominations, one of the Constitution’s most important checks on executive power. Next year, when there is a Republican Senate majority, this will change.”
Read more in tomorrow’s Times Free Press.