Where TVA stands today; from here to where?
September 19, 2009
TVA not covered well
At first, I couldn’t figure out why there was such a paucity of coverage about the TVA; surely more than a few people understood the inherent flaws in TVA’s organization and management structure. Then I realized after obtaining information about TVA from many sources that local media tend to focus mostly on local matters and that no one has taken the time and effort to put the many pieces of the whole TVA puzzle together. Of course, there is the 800 lb. gorilla factor.
And the cost-cutting reasons for that are plainly understandable in times like these when budgets for news reporting have been and still are being cut to the bone. That is why national news sources such as the Associated Press, if they pick up a story at all about the TVA, are the main feeds locally.
Some local newspapers struggle trying to explain TVA’s arcane explanations of rate changes and they usually come out more confusing than ever. TVA likes it that way.
The kingdom of TVA
Think of the TVA as a kingdom that covers 80,000 square-miles and which covers parts of six southeastern states and all of Tennessee with some 8 million electricity customers. TVA’s territorial “fence”, now estimated to be 2800 miles long, crosses and includes many political jurisdictions; the provinces of seven governors, countless mayors and city councils, state representatives and a couple dozen federal representatives, 14 U.S. senators. They are a disparate group and are impotent to act in unison to fell the king or to tell him anything as a group. TVA likes it that way.
The king’s (eminent) domain is run out of Knoxville, TN but the strings still are pulled from Washington. The king’s subjects take what is given; they cannot overrule the king. As a recompense for the required taxes for the crown, the king enables his subjects to use his electricity. The king encourages greater payments of taxes for an increased use of electricity. The king’s tax income sometimes is higher than in surrounding territories and that causes some discontent among the people.
But the king has spent much more money than he is able to repay and he is fearful of raising taxes too much too quickly lest his subjects revolt. There is much skullduggery going on in the palace but the king demands silence. And the fairy tale continues…
Meanwhile back at the TVA money ranch
Everyone understands that TVA, the rate maker, enforces payment of their own contrived electricity rates. TVA collects about $8 billion yearly from about 8 million electricity users in the seven-state area, down from about $10 billion.
This money goes directly to federal bureaucrats who then decide how and where the money will be spent. Most recently, TVA decided to grant $40 million to Roane County Tennessee without approval from any lower or higher authority. TVA could just as well decide that Perry County Alabama should get more that a tipping fee for the thousands of tons of coal-ash being dumped there from the Kingston disaster. Say, maybe $50 million to polish their dumped on image?
Ridiculous, yes, in both instances but it shows how warped, how misguided the whole TVA operation is. If the Kingston debacle had happened to an investor-owned electric utility (highly unlikely in the first place) I would bet the farm that it would have been handled differently; with professionalism, and with dispatch all the while mollifying those harmed. And likely for a lot less than the billion dollar cleanup up cost TVA bandies about. (Don’t forget the not yet determined legal expenses.)
Why is TVA short of funds?
Meanwhile back at the TVA, the money situation is becoming desperate; TVA’s 30-year bond sale of $1.5 billion is used only to pay down existing debt, not for improvements of any kind. Odd, isn’t it that the Bank of America is assisting in that bond sale? The same bank TVA has short-term financing with? The same bank that received billions in TARP funds from American taxpayers? And of course, there is interest to be paid on those bonds at around 5%. Do the numbers; there goes another wasted $75 million. “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money,” said the late Sen. Everett Dirksen.
And it all adds up to real money the TVA does not have including the billion for the Kingston disaster (likely another billion dollars after litigation), the billion to clean up polluting coal-fired plants near North Carolina and other numbing obligations. All to be borne by TVA ratepayers. Impossible, you might say. You might want to say, “I’m as mad as h…and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
TVA coverups?
It is very difficult to get straight information from the TVA and recently it took the Knoxville News Sentinel a couple of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get a greatly redacted OIG report concerning Rep. Heath Shuler’s TVA dealings. Clearly, even with limited information, someone is lying and it appears the cover-up is on.
That is why a criminal investigation is warranted, an investigation not only into the shady TVA land dealings past and present but other TVA criminality including the accountability of thousands of computers and the illegal use of TVA credit cards.
So as I have studied the mosaic called the TVA, a pattern emerges, a pattern of deceit, obfuscation, dissembling and coverups at the highest levels including the Congress. A culture of corruption around TVA bonuses is at the root cause of TVA’s misdealing, the running out of equipment to cut out maintenance expenses and obligating funds without clear paths of repayment.
It’s all there; TVA’s history is replete with all this and much more. I have amassed a pile of data from which I can connect those dots to make the case for criminality and for the dissolution of TVA’s assets to help pay down some of its $25 billion debt.
It’s past time to rein in the runaway money horse and to make every penny TVA spends transparently accountable. Beginning now.
Next: TVA’s future.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
tva@norsworthyopinion.com
http://norsworthyopinion.com