Living in TN on a river, we deal with the TVA often. Their bureaucracy is 5X worse than anything in federal, state, or local governments. (I know that TVA technically is fed, but they’re pretty independent.) The arrogance and inaccessibility is stunning. I don’t know if that attitude trickles down from this guy, but if he leaves I hope things change.
TVA is probably the most independent of the fed entities. It keeps getting picked for the chopping block, but that never seems to quite happen.
They justify the CEO’s wages as being “competitive” in the power industry. Not quite sure why it has to be that freakin competitive, but there it is.
Yeah, a monolith of sorts, you don’t want to do something “unauthorized” to or in the river.
Not sure if his leaving will change things a lot - his predecessor, the Big Johnson - desecrated the pension system, cutting in half, the amount that was put in my retirement account every pay period in order to save money. He did up the TVA match to the 401K, but my personal approach to retirement included more pension, less personal risk. Also, any new employees in the last 8 years or so is offered NO pension, unlike the rest of the electric utility industry.
His predecessor was also responsible for most (but not all) of the coal plant decommissioning, a good portion of which was not replaced (which was a huge factor in the rolling blackouts on 12/23/2023 and 12/24/2023, the first time in TVA’s history). The entire Widows Creek plant was decommissioned and not replaced, and the Paradise Fossil plant was decommissioned, replacing about 2100 megawatts of coal with 1100 megawatts of gas generation. They’re playing catchup now, and have made a lot of inroads but not sufficient to keep up with the increased demand as half of California moves to Tennessee to escape communism.