TVA fooling customers, critic says

TVA fooling customers, critic says
By Jerry Dean
News-Sentinel staff writer

TVA ratepayers are being
"kept in the dark like mush-
rooms" about the regional power
giant's competitiveness and its
$27.2 billion debt, a TVA critic
charged Monday.

"Valley ratepayers are ill-
served by this lack of oversight,"
said Stephen A. Smith, executive
director of the Tennessee Valley
Energy Reform Coalition, at a
Candy Factory news conference.

"If congressional oversight of
TVA is not soon exercised," he
said, policies of "TVA manage-
ment may destroy the agency" as
utility deregulation forces are un-
leashed.

Smith, considering a race for
Congress, called April Fools' Day
an ideal time to discuss TVA be-
cause its board has misled the
ratepayers about who bears the
brunt for the $27 billion debt if
TVA fails in a coming deregulated
environment.

TVA Chairman Craven Cro-
well predicts TVA will fare well
with private utilities, once the
figurative "fence" dividing TVA
turf from that of private utilities
is removed.

Smith said the Tennessee Val-
ley economy will suffer unless
TVA reveals inner workings,
such as costly private lobbying
contracts and specifics of a recent
Tennessee Valley Power Produc-
ers Association (TVPPA) study.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis
on Monday said TVA is "one of
the most open agencies around."
He said TVPPA gave TVA its re-
cent study only as a courtesy.
TVA experts disagreed with
methods by which its conclusions
on capital costs were reached.

TVPPA's study confirms a
General Accouting Office report
that says TVA kept rates artifi-
cially low despite massive debt,
Smith said.

Smith urged forming a "stake-
holders" panel to study, among
other things, TVA lobbying con-
tracts and TVA's "reinterpreta-
tion" of the TVA Act.