For the first time, the Tennessee Valley Authority board approved its fiscal year budget outside of a public board meeting, adopting the $12.4 billion spending plan July 28 after several private meetings without any public hearings.
Although the board did ultimately discuss the budget plan at its public board meeting last week in Martin, Tennessee, the fiscal 2023 budget was adopted prior to the regular quarterly meeting for fear there wouldn’t be a quorum to legally approve the budget at the Aug. 31 session. With only five of the nine seats on the TVA board filled, the federal utility needs every director to obtain a quorum for major actions.
“Given the importance of the budget and the fact that the board has the minimal number of directors needed for a quorum and the rise of COVID cases at the time, we deemed it was appropriate to adopt the budget through the notational process, and we did that,” TVA Director A.D. Frazier announced last week at the utility’s board meeting.
TVA is supposed to have nine board members, but four of the board posts are vacant, and the terms of another two directors ended in May. They will have to vacate their posts by the end of the year unless their successors are named before then.
But after more than a year of delays and negotiations in Washington, D.C., TVA may be getting some new board members by this fall.
A Senate subcommittee will conduct confirmation hearings Wednesday in Washington for the three most recent nominees President Joe Biden proposed for the federal utility. Such hearings could clear the way for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to vote on three other Biden nominees whose confirmation votes were delayed by GOP appeals to the White House for more geographic diversity in the makeup of the board.
On Wednesday, the Senate subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety will hold a hearing to consider TVA nominees William J. Renick, a county judge executive in Kentucky; Adam “Wade” White, a former mayor in Mississippi, and Joe Ritch, a Huntsville, Alabama, attorney who was on the TVA board previously from 2012 to 2016.
Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, which will be chaired by U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Massachusetts, will hear from each of the nominees, who will be questioned by the Senate panel. The hearing could clear the way for a full committee vote and ultimately a Senate decision on all six of the Biden board nominees made during the past 17 months.
Confirmation delays
Nearly two years after being elected president, Biden has yet to get anyone confirmed as a TVA director. The current TVA board remains comprised entirely of appointees by former President Donald Trump.
The TVA Act was revamped in 2005 to replace the former three-member, full-time management board with a nine-member, part-time policy-setting board.
In April 2021, less than three months after taking office, Biden nominated four new people for the TVA board, including two environmental leaders, the first labor union official to be proposed for the board and the first Black chairman of the Huntsville, Alabama, Chamber of Commerce, who later withdrew her name for the TVA post to run instead for the Alabama state Senate.
Getting the U.S. Senate to confirm the three remaining appointments was delayed while GOP leaders urged the Biden White House to ensure greater geographic diversity in the makeup of the TVA board across the utility’s seven-state region.
The governing board for TVA is currently comprised of individuals from Tennessee and Georgia after the five-year terms of former TVA board members in Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama expired.
In response to the Republican appeals, Biden in June nominated White and Renick, and last month Biden submitted Ritch’s name.
Bipartisan questions
But TVA and its nominees have still come under fire from U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle.
In the May 2022 confirmation hearings for Biden’s original board nominees — Robert P. Klein, Beth Prichard Geer and Michelle Moore — Markey criticized TVA for not doing enough to promote green energy. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chided Geer for her earlier criticisms of Ernst’s GOP response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, while Sen. Shelly Capota, R-West Virginia, questioned Moore’s opposition to fossil fuels.
Despite the ongoing Senate debate over TVA and its nominees, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, said in an interview last month with the Chattanooga Times Free Press she is confident the Senate will ultimately ratify nominees for the TVA board to ensure the utility has a board quorum by the end of the year to make future decisions.
Under the TVA Act, a quorum of the TVA board is five members. The TVA board is responsible for establishing the rates TVA charges for power as well as TVA’s long-term objectives, policies and plans.
“Accordingly, loss of a quorum for an extended period of time would impair TVA’s ability to change rates and to modify these objectives, policies and plans,” TVA said in its most recent financial report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
TVA board nominees
During the past 17 months, President Joe Biden has nominated seven persons to fill vacancies on the TVA board, six of whom are still being considered by the Senate. Kimberly Caudle Lewis, chief executive of Projectxyz Inc., and the first Black chair the Huntsville, Alabama Chamber of Commerce, withdrew her name from consideration last year.
On Wednesday, a Senate subcommittee will conduct hearings on:
— Adam “Wade” White, a county judge executive, of Lyon County, Kentucky,
— William Renick Sr., a former mayor of Pontotoc, Mississippi.
— Joe Ritch, a Huntsville, Alabama, attorney who previously was TVA chairman.
Previously, the Senate conducted confirmation hearings on:
— Robert P. Klein, of Chattanooga, a former international vice president for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union.
— Beth Prichard Geer, of Brentwood, Tennessee, was previously chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore.
— Michelle Moore of Richmond, Virginia, is a former White House official who serves as CEO of the nonprofit organization Groundswell.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow on Twitter at @Dflessner1.