Industries spent $38,000 to wine and dine TVA employees

Industries spent $38,000 to wine and dine TVA employees

By ANDY SHER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — Coal industry and transportation contractors spent more than $38,000 to wine, dine and provide free golf trips and other entertainment to Tennessee Valley Authority employees over a 3½ year period, a federal watchdog agency found.

In one case, the government utility's Office of Inspector General found a company provided select employees with free tickets to a luxury suite complete with bar and lcitc:bcn at Tennessee Titans' pro football games in Nashville.

Anne Ferrell, a spokeswoman for TVA Inspector General Richard Moore, indicated some employees have worked in procurement. However, she said, "we found no direct influence" between the gratuities and contracts.

Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an environmental group, voiced concerns Thursday about the interplay of employees, vendors and coal contracts worth millions of dollars.

"I think that ratepayers should be very concerned about this," Mr. Smith said. "I think there should be a congressional inquiry to make sure that both the ratepayers' interests and the companies themselves have been looked into more thoroughly. I have yet to be impressed with any internal action that TVA itself, in sort of self disciplinary mode, accomplishes."

TVA spokesman Gil Francis said "the entire matter has been dealt with by TVA management and actions were taken to make sure this is not going to happen again."

He said TVA coal contracts are competitively bid, and there was no indication of problems with contracts. Mr. Francis said the employees involved were not directly involved in awarding contracts.

Vendors also provided gifts of hams, turkeys and gift certificates to some employees around holidays. In one case, an employee admitted to receiving a guided fishing trip on a lake in Kentucky, investigators found. The trip was valued at $200.

MANAGERS OK TRIPS

Watchdogs also questioned top TVA managers' approval of private company-funded travel to conferences where on at least one occasion the main event was golf and fishing.

A heavily censored copy of investigation was provided to the Times Free Press by TVA more than five months after the newspaper requested the report. The request was prompted by a 2003 semiannual inspec-tor general activity. It showed ethical issues had been raised at the federal utility and eight employees were disciplined for ethical violations that occurred between Jan. 1, 1999 and mid-2002.

Names of employees and companies were deleted from the report.

Mr. Francis said TVA "does not condone employees' acceptance of improper gratuities and has taken steps to ensure employee awareness and compliance with ethics guidelines." He said coal vendors and transportation companies were sent letters detailing TVA ethics guidelines.

WORKERS PUNISHED

Mr. Francis said TVA actions with regard to employees "ranged from verbal warnings to suspensions without pay. All employees reimbursed the coal companies for improper gratuities they received."

BY THE NUMBERS

• Vendors Involved: 33
• Money spent on TVA employees: More than $38,000
• Who benefttld: 90 percent of expenditures were for 23 current or former employees in TVA's Coal Acquisition and Supply section
• Top recipient: Received $5,117.17 in golf, meals, refreshments and gifts
• Example: Four Tennessee Titans tickets valued at $840

The report takes to task for approving some trips paid for by private companies.

"Our investigation raised questions about the approval process for acceptance of travel expenses from nonfederal sources," the report said. "The current process does not seem to include consideration of whether acceptance would appear improper to a reasonable member of the public with knowledge of the facts, as required by the regulations."

Investigators said TVA's internal watchdog, the Designated Agency Ethics Official, "generally provided an opinion on whether TVA legally could accept, but deferred to the HR (Human Resources) manager or other manager on the reasonable person determination. The HR manager in turn did not seem to be considering the reasonable person test."

found 42 TVA Fossil Power Group employees — including 23 from the utility's Coal Acquisition and Supply group — accepted gratuities or gifts from companies either doing business or seeking to do business with TVA.

Many of the gifts were under $20 per occurrence and also fell below an overall $50 cap. As a result, they were not considered violations of federal ethics policy, according to the inspector general's office.

But other expenditures did appear to violate guidelines, the report said.

For example, an unnamed company provide box scat tick-ets to Tennessee Titans football games. The games. The cost of each ticket to the exclusive area that contained a kitchen, bar and "lounging area" was estimated at $638.88. That doesn't count the value of catered food, the investigation found.

In some cases, employees traveled at vendors' expenses to exotic locales with top TVA officials' permission.

The report cites one unnamed employee who received rounds of golf, meals, refreshments and gifts from 15 vendors totaling $5,117.17 over the period examined. Two other employees received more than $4,000 in similar freebies while thirteen others received between $1,000 and $3,000.

FREE GOLF

Contractor records showed about 30 instances of contractor-paid golfing fees for TVA employees.

Watchdogs said one vendor records showed it routinely treated eight to 12 TVA employees to holiday fare at the Southside Grill in Chattanooga. A December 2000 dinner, which listed 12 TVA employees out of 16 people attending, cost $1,063 or $66.44 per attendee, the report said.

Spokespersons for U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who is chairman of the TVA Congressional Caucus, and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said the lawmakers had not seen the report and were not in a position to comment.