Timeline July 23, 2009
TVA OIG Report
July 23, 2009
“For over 20 years the OIG has been scrutinizing TVA programs and operations, and we have developed a cadre of professionals immersed in the analysis of utility work.” TVA OIG.
I have read much of the OIG’s products, their “independent” analyses. First, their reports must be viewed with some skepticism because they are paid from TVA funds. And that takes away from their claimed independence; every OIG employee knows it too.
The TVA mouths platitudes while executing skullduggery and for the most part has fooled the Office of the Inspector General. That organization seems so conflicted that every report it puts out is questionable like everything the TVA says and does is highly suspect.
Then why the sudden shift from protectorate TVA to very strong condemnation of it? One has to surmise that finally the overwhelming evidence against the TVA for gross negligence and legal fraud is too obvious for the OIG to support it any longer.
The OIG report to Congress on July 28 is damning also to the TVA OIG. “For over 20 years the OIG has been scrutinizing TVA programs and operations…” And they have not detected the root cause of TVA’s failed management and misdirected Board policies? Now that is what is unbelievable.
As rats scramble from a sinking ship, so are many previous TVA apologists scrambling to keep egg off their faces and in a mixed metaphor to not be the last one standing in the game of musical chairs. And as the saga unfolds, there is much scurrying about to be ready to complain about the evil TVA.
But even today TVA supporters such as Rep. John Duncan (D) speaks of “kooks and extremists” as the cause of TVA’s problems. And Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) says there should “be more transparency” in the TVA. Alexander must have just switched his glasses from rose colored to clear, a sudden change in his eye-glass prescription.
To deny that wrongdoings in the TVA exist with knowledge that the do is fraudulent. But a defense is TVA’s intimidation through unwritten policies that thwarted whistleblowers. They know that they will be the subject of further intimidation and ostracizing. I know this exists in the TVA.
So now the OIG says TVA’s financing is “adequate”. Compared with what benchmark? Whose measure?
First of all, the OIG starts with incorrect premises for example, “we reviewed TVA's strategic goals and objectives” and “assessed key performance measures and their alignment with the key strategic objectives.”
Instead of measuring against flawed assumptions, the OIG should have assessed the obviously misdirected beginnings of TVA's latest strategic plan. It was so inadequate as to make any assumptions derived from it meaningless.
The OIG has stuck to this ill formed structure of analysis of TVA’s operations and in this case, its analysis of TVA’s finances.
How can a conclusion be reached that TVA’s finances are “adequate” when there is so much data pointing to TVA’s totally inadequate financial performance?
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net