The Tennessee Valley Authority finally has a full slate of board members after the U.S. Senate at the 11th hour in December confirmed six new directors nominated by President Joe Biden.
The new board members, Beth Geer of Brentwood, Tennessee; Bobby Klein of Chattanooga; Michelle Moore of Midlothian, Virginia; Bill Renick of Ashland, Mississippi; Joe Ritch of Huntsville, Alabama; and Wade White of Eddyville, Kentucky, were sworn in Wednesday in Knoxville.
The confirmations were not without drama — in fact they had months of drama — and TVA’s then-existing board was within days of a threatened loss of quorum to make major business decisions.
Geer, Klein and Moore were initially nominated by President Joe Biden in the spring of 2021 and re-nominated by the president in January 2022. Renick and White were nominated by the president in June 2022 and Ritch was nominated in July 2022.
The holdup — against a backdrop of rising seas and extreme weather events averaging about one a week — was partisan, of course, tinged with climate change deniers and some Congress members more invested in fossil fuels than in Americans’ and Earth’s welfare.