For six months the Tennessee Valley Authority Board has not had enough board members for a quorum. Thankfully, President Trump is working with Tennessee’s two U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty to help provide much needed sweeping reform to the TVA to help restore accountability and get the TVA back on track to its core mandate: energy production.
While the process has been slow like any government process, hope is now on the horizon that Trump’s TVA board nominees will be confirmed soon, as the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing recently for four of the five nominees. At least there is clear progress towards getting the nominees out of committee and to the full Senate for hopeful approval.
It’s critical that the U.S. Senate work to confirm all five nominees. It’s worth noting that three of these nominees are Tennesseans: businessman and conservative activist Lee Beaman, Knoxville area lawyer and member of the Sports Authority Board Jeff Hagood and Memphis Light, Gas and Water Commissioner and CEO of West Cancer Center and Research Institute Mitch Graves. It’s vitally important to have Tennessee representation on the TVA board given that while TVA serves more than 10 million Americans across seven states, the vast majority of that number is comprised of the 7 plus million Tennesseans in our state.
Back to the board nominees – TVA cannot vote on and implement President Trump’s vision until at least some of these board members are confirmed.
TVA’s mission is simple: provide affordable, reliable energy. It should not be wasting time or taxpayer resources chasing political and partisan ideas like green energy initiatives or ESG metrics – even going so far as to publish a yearly ESG report.
Tennesseans are feeling TVA’s mistakes in their pocketbook through almost double-digit energy prices increases over the last two years, anticipated rolling blackouts and even limiting Tennessee’s economic development projects and business growth and expansion across our state.
And, let’s not forget that TVA has pushed government owned broadband networks in communities across Tennessee and beyond. Our elected officials here in Tennessee need to work with our federal delegation and the Trump administration to ensure that we limit runaway government by keeping TVA’s broadband expansion push in check. It’s wrong for a government entity like TVA to tip the scales for their regulated utilities as they seek to compete in the private broadband market. Especially as satellite services like Starlink and other wireless technology promise to make these government owned and taxpayer funded networks potentially obsolete.
That is the exact opposite of what Tennessee needs – just look to our neighboring Kentucky to see how disastrous their government internet expansion went.
The good news? Tennessee can choose a better direction that stewards taxpayer resources. Our state should use these federal funds to strengthen what already works – private providers with proven track records. Encourage competition, cut red tape and let the market drive innovation. Above all, protect taxpayers from being saddled with endless bailouts of failed government experiments.
The choice could not be clearer, embrace reform and free market principles or continue to support bloated bureaucracies.
The U.S. Senate must work quickly to confirm President Trump’s TVA board nominees and put the Tennessee Valley Authority back on the right path to prosperity.
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Aaron Gulbransen is CEO of The Tennessee Conservative Coalition.
Background Photo “Tennessee Valley Authority Facility” by Tennessee Valley Authority.
