For years, communities across the Tennessee Valley have been calling on the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power provider in the country, to be more transparent in its planning and decision-making processes — and now even a TVA board member has expressed concerns. 

As a not-for-profit utility beholden to its ratepayers, TVA’s decision-making should be publicly accessible but has, in reality, been less transparent than procedures followed by private, for-profit utilities. For instance, several recent TVA board decisions have been made without any prior notice to residents directly impacted by these decisions. Those include the TVA board delegating its decision-making completely to CEO Jeff Lyash on several proposed gas plants, and approving two rate increases in two years totaling nearly 10%. 

Unlike TVA, private utilities are required to submit plans for new power plants, rate increases and other concerns to a state utilities commission for negotiation and approval. This process allows for consumer advocates to submit relevant information and concerns on behalf of the residents who foot the bills. In the Tennessee Valley, the TVA board is the only governing body that can provide this oversight and look out for the pocketbooks and wellbeing of people. Unfortunately, major decisions at TVA have become less transparent under Lyash. 

The issue with transparency at TVA has been so severe that a bipartisan bill has also been brought before Congress by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., to require greater transparency and accountability in the TVA’s 25-year planning process, known as the Integrated Resource Plan. 

At the People’s Voice on TVA’s Energy Plan event organized by advocates in January, Cohen said, “Transparency is critical in making public policy and, for too long, TVA’s decision-making has been obscure and opaque, such as their current IRP process where organizations had to be hand-selected to participate in their working group.” 

Cohen and Burchett’s bill, H.R. 7595, is currently awaiting a hearing in the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. 

At the listening session for the August board meeting in Florence, Alabama, Daniel Tait of Energy Alabama, a partner in CleanUpTVA, told the board that advocates like him would love to be able to tell TVA that issues such as the approved rate increase were reasonable and justified, but without TVA sharing access to the information needed to evaluate those decisions, advocates have to assume it is not operating in good faith.

Fortunately, there has been a small ray of hope that members of the TVA board are also concerned about the opaqueness of TVA’s procedures. At the August board meeting, board member Michelle Moore abstained from the vote to approve TVA’s budget resolution, which included additional delegation of decision-making authority to Lyash. 

During discussion about the budget resolution, Moore said: 

“At our last board meeting and during yesterday’s listening session, multiple stakeholders raised questions, concerns and recommendations about continuing to improve the transparency and accessibility of the board’s governance processes, including around the board’s historic practices regarding delegations and specifically delegations of final decision-making authority around capital projects. And while again, you know, I’m deeply appreciative of the board’s ongoing deliberations to improve transparency and access, because any such have not been adopted and the budget resolution once again includes a delegation, I’m not able to support the board resolution.” 

We want to thank Michelle Moore for hearing our continued requests for information and elevating it to this level. We strongly encourage the rest of the board to examine their responsibilities to the people of the Tennessee Valley and make TVA’s decision-making processes more accessible, truly embracing public participation in public power. 

If you would like to support our demands that TVA embrace being a utility for all people, please join us on Sept. 21 at Centennial Park in Nashville for the Rally for the Valley.