A U.S. Senate panel has endorsed five new directors for the Tennessee Valley Authority to help reconstitute the utility's board, but one of the White House appointees faces a more uncertain future after coming under fire for a tweet she made seven years ago about one of the senators on the panel.
In a voice vote Thursday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee cleared the way for the full Senate to confirm most of the TVA board nominations, some of which have been stalled in the Senate for nearly a year and a half. The Senate must still confirm the board appointments from the White House, and that vote isn't planned until after the November elections with Congress now entering its October recess for campaigning.
The nominees supported by the Senate panel this week include two of the four nominees that President Joe Biden first nominated in April 2021 -- Michelle Moore, a sustainability team leader in the administration of former President Barack Obama who now heads a nonprofit organization that promotes solar energy and Robert "Bobby" Klein, a retired EPB lineman electrician who was a leader in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union. Three other nominations the White House put forward when GOP senators wanted representatives from their states in the TVA region include former TVA Chairman and Huntsville attorney Joe Ritch; Adam "Wade" White, a county judge in Lyon County, Kentucky; and William Renick Sr., a former mayor of Pontotoc, Mississippi.
But one of the six nominees for the TVA board proposed by Biden is still waiting for a committee vote after one of the lawmakers on the Senate panel said the nominee was unfit for the job based on a tweet the nominee made seven years ago about a Republican response to one of Obama's speeches.
Beth Greer, the former chief of staff to Al Gore who now serves on Nashville's Sustainability Advisory Committee, was not among the nominees sent to the full Senate by the Environment and Public Works Committee because of opposition to her appointment by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, one of the committee members.
Staff Photo / The Tennessee Valley Authority's board of directors meets at TVA Headquarters in 2019 when the board had more members. The board is supposed to have nine members but currently has only five directors, two of whom must leave the board by the end of the year. But a Senate panel this week endorsed the White House nominations for five new directors.During a Senate confirmation hearing in April, Geer was blasted by Ernst for a tweet in 2015 when she posted "hideous" after Ernst's Republican response to the State of the Union address by Obama.
Ernst, a former company commander in Kuwait who is now an Army lieutenant colonel for the Iowa Army National Guard and the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate, delivered her address from the Senate Armed Services Committee room wearing camouflage-print heels and stood in front of four military flags. In her speech, she urged support for the Keystone XL pipeline, which she called the "Keystone jobs bill," even though environmentalists like Geer have questioned such investments.
"I'm not sure if you have made it a habit of calling women that you disagree with hideous," Ernst told Geer at the hearing, "but this is not Iowa nice, and I'm calling you out."
Geer apologized for the tweet, which she said was not a reflection on Ernst's appearance.
But Ernst said she will oppose Geer's nomination because of the lack of civility in Geer's social media post.
"To call my personal views hideous is an affront to half of America," Ernst said.
During confirmation hearings by the Senate panel in both April and September, the federal utility has come under conflicting criticism for going too far in phasing out fossil fuels by some Republicans and for not doing enough to replace its coal and natural gas generation by some Democrats.
During the confirmation hearings, the board nominees pledged to work to balance sometimes competing interests to provide electricity in TVA's seven-state region that is affordable, reliable, clean and resilient.
TVA has already cut its carbon emissions below 2005 levels by more than 60% by closing more than half of the coal plants it once operated, and TVA has pledged to cut carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2035. But Biden wants the electricity sector to be totally carbon free by 2035 to help limit greenhouse gas emissions linked with global warming. The White House is being urged by some environmentalists to try to force TVA, as the nation's biggest public utility, to meet the carbon-free target.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he hopes the nominees endorsed by his committee will soon be confirmed by the Senate to help TVA move forward.
File photo / Beth Greer, one of the TVA board nominees, testifies before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in April. Greer was the only TVA board appointment that did not win a voice vote by the committee this week."As the nation's largest public power system, TVA should be leading the charge in offering affordable rates and transitioning to cleaner energy generation," Carper said in a statement. "I believe that all starts with the right leadership, and fortunately, each of the exemplary nominees we advanced today are proven leaders equipped to successfully serve TVA. I look forward to seeing their swift confirmation."
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. The board members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
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. If no new board members are confirmed before the end of the year, TVA will lack a quorum to make board decisions.
Already with only the bare minimum number of directors for board decisions, TVA's board has taken unprecedented steps this year, including adopting its fiscal 2023 budget outside of a full public meeting.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow on Twitter at @Dflessner1.