The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has scheduled a hearing for four of President Donald Trump’s five nominees to the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors, which has operated without a quorum since April.
Senators will question the nominees at 10 a.m. Wednesday in a hearing that will be streamed live online on the committee’s website. The hearing comes more than six months after the board lost its quorum when Trump fired its chair, Joe Ritch of Alabama, without publicly explaining why.
TVA generates and transmits electricity to 10 million customers in Tennessee and parts of six other states. Chattanooga is its largest employee and operations base. Congress has had an oversight role at TVA since it created the company in 1933.
The president has terminated three members of the board since March, leaving three directors nominated by former President Joe Biden on the panel. The board needs at least five out of nine members to vote on new policies and approve major spending for the nation’s largest public power provider.
One of Trump’s nominees, Nashville car businessman and major Republican donor Lee Beaman, will not appear at the hearing, though his nomination remains active. The committee is able to hold the hearing despite an ongoing government shutdown that began Oct. 1.