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.