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BY SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public utility, is on track to add two excellent Tennesseans to their board of directors — Beth Harwell and Brian Noland — who were nominated by President Trump to serve on the TVA board.
TVA is a big and important institution. It’s a $10 billion a year business. It serves the residents of seven states by providing reliable electricity, and a majority of those residents are in Tennessee. In my opinion, the TVA has been on a good track for the last few years.
The scoreboard for TVA is in rates, and according to TVA, their residential rates are in the cheapest 25 percent of residential rates and their business rates are in the cheapest 10 percent of business rates in the country.
This week, I was delighted to introduce Beth Harwell and Brian Noland at a Senate committee hearing to consider their nominations.
I have admired Beth Harwell’s leadership and style of leadership ever since she was first elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1988. Her constituents liked what she did, and so did her colleagues, because they eventually appointed her Speaker of the House — the first female speaker in the history of our state. She taught at Belmont University, has been active in a variety of enterprises in Nashville, which is her hometown, and she knows Tennessee from Memphis to Mountain City, which is where 70 percent of TVA ratepayers live.
Brian Noland is distinguished in a different way. He lives in the part of the state we call Upper East Tennessee. He’s the president of East Tennessee State University — one of the five largest universities in our state. He has been the chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education System, and he formerly was elected by his peers to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education. So he has a much-admired career in academic administration and will be a valuable asset on the board of such a large entity.
These nominees are both accomplished individuals, who understand TVA’s mission is to continue to provide cheap, clean and reliable electricity throughout the Tennessee Valley. I hope they are quickly considered and confirmed by the full Senate so they can get to work representing the nation’s largest public utility.