Congress poised to pass Frist plan to expand TVA board

The Senate majority leader is eyeing an omnibus spending measure that combines hundreds of billions of dollars in appropriations for his TVA amendment, aides said Wednesday.

Frist believes a new TVA board structure “would be beneficial for its management, and we continue to look for opportunities” to advance the bill before Congress adjourns for the year on Saturday, Frist spokesman Nick Smith said.

The Tennessee Republican would expand the board overseeing the $7 billion agency from three full-time members to nine part-time members and create a corporate-style chief executive officer.

Frist began pushing the legislation in 1997 after TVA raised electric rates for the first time in a decade. Last year he attached it to an energy bill that never passed.

U.S. Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican who represents TVA’s headquarters city in Knoxville, said he won’t oppose the measure but he isn’t convinced it’s “the magic bullet some people think it is.”

He said TVA’s current board has done a credible job.

“It sounds good to say make it more businesslike, but you can look at Enron and a lot of these other (corporate scandals),” Duncan said. “You’re seeing just a lot of totally ridiculous … things out of these corporations today.”

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Chattanooga Republican with significant TVA power operations in his hometown, said TVA must prepare for industry competition. “If this leads to a more corporate model of leadership with increased accountability, then it will be a successful mission,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. and chairman of the TVA congressional caucus, said he supports the measure.

TVA, the nation’s largest public utility, provides electricity to 8.3 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina.

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Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, http://www.timesfreepress.com