Bill would expand TVA board

Bill would expand TVA board
By Richard Powelson
News-Sentinel Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - Sen. Fred Thompson for the first time has joined fellow Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist to try to pass a bill to triple the size of the Tennessee Valley Authority's board of directors to nine members, change the positions to part-time and have them hire a strong executive to run daily operations.

Frist, the lead sponsor, plans to file the bill today. The two senators also expect to announce in the near future their favored candidate for the vacancy on TVA's current three-member policy board, which has its headquarters in Knoxville.

The proposed board members would be paid $30,000 a year in base compensation plus up to $10,000 more in fees depending on how many days they worked on TVA business. Members now are paid more than $100,000 a year. New members would have five-year terms - rather than the current nine years. Making the board part-time would make one full-time manager - the chief executive - more accountable for daily operations, Frist has said.

"With the recent vacancy of the chairmanship at TVA," Frist said of Chairman Craven Crowell's retirement, "this is an ideal time for us to look at creating a more effective and accountable management structure."

Thompson said: "Because of the problems we've had with the board in the past and the unique and challenging problems that TVA is going to face in the future, I think it's time to restructure TVA into a more business-like organization where you have expertise and accountability."

The bill drew immediate praise from diverse interests, including Knoxville environmental leader Stephen Smith and Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe.

TVA director Glenn McCullough Jr. said the agency defers to Congress on how the federal corporation, created by Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, should be managed. "I respect that process."

"One of the concerns we have with changing the board structure is it would require opening of the TVA Act (of 1933), which would afford TVA critics an opportunity to insert some language which could disadvantage TVA, our distributors and have a negative effect on our ratepayers in a restructured marketplace."

Ashe said of the bill: "It's an excellent proposal. It needs to be thoroughly considered. It avoids us going back to a one-member board again (as happened when there were two vacancies for several months in 1999)."

Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which follows TVA activities closely, said: "We're generally supportive of the concept."

A larger board of diverse interests, he said, could better advise TVA officials.

U.S. Rep. Bob Clement of Nashville formerly served on TVA's board. He is open to changes in the board's structure, perhaps including expanding the number of members to nine, his spokeswoman, Christi Ray, said.

"However, Congressman Clement expressed some reluctance about opening up the TVA Act. He fears that if given the opportunity, TVA's adversaries may try to limit TVA's authority to provide power at the lowest possible price to its seven-state region."