Oh, dear readers, do you remember the good ole days back in October when, on the heels of a large rate hike, the TVA gave its CEO a half a million dollar pay raise?
Congressman Jimmy Duncan sent a letter to TVA Board Chairman Bill Sansom, saying he feels, “The raise is excessive and very unnecessary.”
Duncan goes on to say, “The timing of this raise could not be worse when people are already struggling to make ends meet.”
Poor Jimmy Duncan. Little did he know that the timing could be worse.
Not only could the TVA Board voted to give Bill Sansom a half a million dollar pay raise right after raising electric rates during such tough economic times, they could have voted to give Bill Sansom a pay raise two months before it became obvious that something incredibly wrong was going on with the TVA. First they pollute our state on a scale never before seen in the history of the country. And then on the heels of that, they on purpose pollute the Ocoee.
And today there’s a leak at a gypsum pond at the Widow Creek plant in northeastern Alabama, which went into Widows Creek.
Maybe I’m naive, but aren’t you under the impression that if someone gets a half a million dollar pay raise, they must just be doing one firecracker of a job? I mean, seriously, is this all the better business we purchased with that rate hike?
(h/t Nashvillest)
Edited to add: Christian has more.
Filed under: The State of Tennessee
Am I the only one who feels the consumer ought to be the one paying for the Kingston ash pond spill? Let me explain.
The consumer of coal-powered electricity isn’t paying the full cost of coal-powered electricity. They aren’t paying for the costs of all the waste that’s produced. The cost of managing all this waste has been piling up in ponds for half a century so TVA can charge very low rates. Now that bill is due, and consumers are angry.
IF CONSUMERS were to pay for proper management of the wastes produced by their consumption of coal-powered electricity, that cost might have very well made Solar, wind and hydro power a much cheaper alternative.
How much will the bill be for putting off dealing with all the wastes produced by our consumption of dirty sources of power? Putting off that cost paid dividends for the coal industry. Now that burden is ours. It should have always been ours, but then the coal industry would have seen America shift from coal to solar, and they didn’t want that.
It’s time coal-powered electricity rates reflect the TRUE costs and not the costs the coal industry wants it to be while they avoid properly managing the wastes our consumption produces.
You and the folks who run the TVA, I think. Listen, the TVA has a monopoly on providing power to the South (well, the parts of it I’m in). As long as that’s the case, raising the price of electricity doesn’t teach anyone anything about “true costs” of coal; it continues to teach us that, when powerful people fart, it’s our bathrooms that stink (or something).
The burden is and always has been ours. And they know it. That’s why they have the audacity to raise our rates and give themselves pay raises and then turn around and poison us.
What are we going to do? Switch power providers? To whom?
They wouldn’t have a monopoly if they charged the full price for power. The full price is only now being seen as that cost is in terms of people’s health and cost to the environment. If TVA had factored waste management costs into the price, coal would have been out of business 40 years ago and we’d have way more competition as alternative sources compete with accurately priced coal power. The artificial market created by TVA and the coal industry made alternative sources more expensive by contraxst and kept them out of the market.
And if farts were fairies, we’d live in a world alive with magic. That’s how monopolies work, Christian. They create artificial markets by price manipulation and they can sustain their own monopoly because they can make the costs of competing with them so prohibitively high as to in effect close off entry.
I concede that it would be nice, in Utopiaville, if everyone wised up. I don’t see this as a likely outcome.
But Christian, they would to have a monopoly. Their federal charter gives them the mandate to provide power (among other things) to the Tennessee Valley. The mandate doesn’t say coal power. It just says power. Other power sources cannot come into the area and compete with the TVA, no matter how high our power bills are.
It’s not a private company, exactly. It’s also a huge government entity.
What? I thought Monopoly was a game.
OK! I’ve learned my lesson about trying to be funny here. It doesn’t work cause y’all always think I’m some kind of snooty know it all.
Monopolies are private companies. As AuntB pointed out, this is a federal entity. As such, they answer to the American people. As long as you don’t demand TVA fairly price, they won’t. That’s the HUGE difference here, bridgett.
TVA customers, however, are some of the most ignorant in the nation. I’m not saying that as an insult. I’m saying that as a matter of fact. The region they cover are the most uneducated people who fear government instead of view it for what it is. The feel TVA is some private entity that answers to know one but the board like some private company.
FALSE. TVA answers to you and me through Sen. Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker and our elected Representatives in the U.S. House. They answer to the Governor and the state legislature IF we demand both put in place the regulations necessary to hold them accountable. Real Monopolies don’t have to answer to anyone.
I go through this same conversation about NES all the time. People feel powerless and call the media to complain and when I ask them if they’ve called the Mayor’s office, the guy they hired to CONTROLL NES, they make it sound like I’m handling them when the fact is I’m telling them to call the man who works for them and who is there to do whatever residents in Davidson County want them to do with NES. You can guess how well that works with people that don’t even know who the mayor is.
I’ll add this. I find that in general people who have not lived in states other than TN and the southeast tend to view the state like it’s an unaccountable business. Tennessee is in for a rude awakening with the influx of people cashing out of overpriced realestate in areas where government answers to intelligent and demanding people. YOU are the boss. Elected officials work for you. When you pick up the phone and your employee doesn’t call you back, remind them who they work for and watch the difference you start to make.
I am currently in New York. I’ve lived in Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. I’ve worked in politics at the state and fed level since you were in short pants, so I’ve got a few things figured out about how politics actually (not theoretically) work. Governmental institutions are particularly adept at sustaining monopolies and have no particular incentive to drop prices. Who are you going to pressure, Christian, at TVA? And how? Pardon me if I don’t think that a hard-hitting local leaflet campaign is going to get appointed federal bureaucrats shaking in their shoes. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander are sure as shit not going to go to voters and say “hey, I’ve got this great idea that will raise your energy costs during a depression…oh, and by the way, we’re also going to put coal miners and everyone who works in coal towns out of work.” For some odd reason, I bet that’s not going to sound good to their constituents at the moment.
For god’s sake. Y’all can’t even get national news coverage of this, much less lead a quixotic campaign to make consumers pay more for services at a time they can’t pay their rent.
And as I said, I agree with your basic premise. But as B points out, they would just expand the number of types of power over which they had a monopoly.
Well, unfortunately,, TVA didn’t want to build coal plants, they wanted to build nuclear ones like they did at Browns Ferry and Savannah River and they wanted to build one near here in Hartsville.
Unfortunately, they didn’t want to pay the full cost of building safe facilities (wait – that strikes a responsive chord or three somewhere in my mind) so they hired contractors who badgered and threatened safety inspectors with their lives until safety standards were so corrupted that they had to stop building and leave the cooling towers behind.
The entire history of TVA is a history filled with stupid short-sighted decisions made with the idea of cheap firmly fixed in their minds.
Bridgett, one day I will be as smart as you and not dare so much to change things. I have another good 20 years before I’m that smart, though ;)
It’s good to have goals, Christian.