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TVA executives will not receive raises, performance bonuses this year
November 23rd, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Top executives at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) have been told not to expect their hefty performance bonuses this year because of lagging electricity sales from a weak economy and the massive coal ash spill that has drained the utility of more than a $1 billion. The utility’s CEO banked more than $1 million in bonuses for fiscal year 2008, and the nine executives who answer to him took home a combined $1.2 million. Those executives and some 3,300 other managers and specialists at the TVA were also told not to expect any raises for fiscal year 2010 unless they are promoted within the company.
TVA CEO Tom Kilgore, however, will continue to receive a $300,000 annual retention bonus for another four years on top of his base salary of $875,000. TVA director Dennis Bottorff said that despite the bonus, Kilgore’s income is about 45 percent lower than the average top executive at other utilities.
Fiscal year 2009 has been difficult for the TVA. Not only has a downturn in the economy resulted in a 7 percent drop in electricity sales in the utility’s seven-state region, but TVA is shelling out an estimated $1 billion to clean up land in east Tennessee after its Kingston, Tenn., coal ash impoundment pond breached, sending a wave of toxic material on to 300 acres of a neighboring community. Not included in that cleanup cost is the millions paid out by TVA to buy homes and land damaged by the spill. The utility is also facing numerous lawsuits from residents who were harmed or lost property in that spill.
The only good news in the TVA’s end-of-year report is that the rest of TVA’s 12,000 employees will be eligible for raises in fiscal year 2010. “You see a lot of really substantial progress being made on many fronts in TVA,” Bottorff told the Associated Press. “It is unfortunate that we see an event which overshadows that performance or an economy that we all live in that detracts from that performance.”
