Congress always wants to get into the Act
by Barry Henderson
Sen. Bill Frist's proposal to enlarge and professionalize the TVA Board of Directors by amateurizing it begs serious thought. If the outcome were to depoliticize the agency/utility somewhat, it could be worthwhile, especially if policy decisions were left to the board and put into practice by a chief executive officer with all the authority that the title conveys.
In big business, it would work that way. TVA is a big business, but it's more than that. It benefits, or suffers, from congressional oversight and all of that muddying, meddling stream of politics that drips steadily down such a line of authority.
Would policy decisions be left to a nine-member part-time board of directors chosen for their business, utility and environmental- or consumer-protection backgrounds? Some would. Some would remain political, on a national or regional basis. So the odds are that those decisions, made since TVA's inception by a three-member, full-time board under congressional auspices, would be similarly quasi-political.
Since its formation in the 1930s, TVA has vacillated between good and bad business decisions and good and bad political ones, each taking their turn. When the agency revamped its management chart in the 1990s to rename the general manager and assistant general managers to president, executive vice presidents, and so on, TVA looked more corporate on paper. Maybe it's been more businesslike in practice, too. Maybe not. The presidential appointees who've served on recent boards have constituted a sort of chief executive triumvirate, usually with one leader but needful of two votes to accomplish much.
As a cosmetic matter as much as a practical one, concluding the corporate restructuring with a board restructuring seems appealing. It couldn't hurt if it serves as a stigma to get a tough and knowledgeable leader in place at the top.
It's been said that TVA operates effectively with a strong board chairman or with a strong general manager or president, but not with both and not if both are weak. Would enlarging the board and establishing a CEO enhance the agency's effectiveness? That's a good question, one that hinges as much as anything else on the people chosen to fill all of those positions. Right now it's still a political question, one with considerable backing in the Valley's congressional delegation. As long as TVA is what it is—a governmental agency with a business role—members of Congress are going to exert themselves and interject their aims into both policy and management decisions. Personnel decisions, too.
Changing that would very probably require a lot more than changing the makeup of the board. Which brings us to an old bugaboo. Opening up the TVA Act of 1933 to amendment may be risky business and risky politics as well. It's almost never been done, for fear of upsetting the whole apple cart.
Amendments can be amended. TVA could end up with a privatization deadline in some sort of "sunset" provision. It could end up deprived of the advantage of federally insured financing that allowed it to run up its weighty debt. It could end up with a 21-member board made up entirely of political hacks. It could end up with no mission at all except to produce electricity. Take your pick. Some members of Congress have been chafing for a long time for just such an opportunity to tamper.
One would have to expect that Sen. Frist would not take a TVA Act amendment to a Senate floor he could not control. The Senate majority leader is in a position to influence TVA legislation in ways no member of Congress has since Howard Baker held the same office a couple of decades back. So maybe a simple amendment would fare all right there, and anything untoward that a renegade House might do with the legislation could be stopped at the Senate gate.
Members of the Valley congressional delegation, who caucused here this week as part of an observance of TVA's 70th anniversary, heard arguments in favor of a board restructuring from none other than former Board Chairman Marvin Runyon, a man still interested in the agency and also one who could be appointed to an enlarged board if he wished. He was a strong chairman if ever there was one.
He got things to go his way on the big stuff by giving influential members of Congress their way on the small stuff. It worked for him then, just as it's worked for some past chairmen.
But Congress still has the advantage in that equation, and it still holds TVA detractors, as it always has. Sen. Baker was never tempted to open up the TVA Act to amendment, or if he was, he thought better of it. Tradeoffs in Washington have a way of getting out of hand. The Valley delegation's wishful members had better be careful what they wish for.
July 24, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 30
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
