therefore be at peace - tvppa

WWW.TVPPA.COM | NOV/DEC 2016

“Therefore be at peace . . .”

Let’s face it...sometimes your software systems put up more of a fight than Mike Tyson on a bad day. They’re not functionally robust enough for your needs, they can’t integrate with your other programs, they can’t scale with company growth, you can’t customize anything and you need a Ph.D. to figure out how to use them. From the opening bell of your work day, you know you’re in for a battle trying to meet the needs of your utility.

Since 1938, utilities have relied on Central Service Association to take care of many of the tasks that eat up utility resources and beat up on utility staffs. With CSA, information technology is our business, leaving you the time to concentrate on your business. With ORBITTM, utility personnel take command of their workload, rather than having the workload in control.

CSA’s ORBITTM family is our line of easy-to-use, integrated, expandable and reliable software solutions. Each piece is designed for the way utilities work today - efficiently and effectively. Products in the ORBITTM solution include: Customer Management and Billing Dynamic Financial Management Work Management Meter Data Management and Analysis Business Portal with Mobile Service Orders Customer Portal Cashier Solutions

Combined with CSA’s other products and services, like UtiliSuite - our GIS suite, Internet services, employee benefits, professional services, disaster recovery, backup services, hardware sales and more, Central Service Association is THE choice for IT needs among utilities today. It’s time to knock out the stress and strain of information management. Unlike many of the challengers in the IT business, we know the fight. We’ve been in your corner for over 75 years providing service that is second to none. At CSA, we provide what it takes to win.

Central Service AssociationP.O. Box 3480Tupelo, MS 38803-3480Toll free 877-842-5962

Tired of fighting your IT?

www.csa1.com

We’re in your corner.

November/December 2016 Volume 67 · No. 6www.tvppa.com

FEATURES

14 Forum Audience Challenged: ‘Be The Leaders You’re Supposed To Be’ After all the discussion at the Tennessee Valley Distribution Marketplace Forum

of technology, Millennials and the rapidly changing electric-utility industry, Trenton, TN, L&W General Manager Scott Dahlstrom challenged his colleagues.

18 With OMB, Rate, Other Fights Over, Henson Set To Retire Wayne Henson plans to retire in January after 42 years, including the last dozen

as general manager, from East Mississippi EPA, Meridian, MS, and two (2013–14, 2014–15) as TVPPA chairman.

20 Retiring Sliz: I’ll Miss People, Not Partisanship As she prepares for retirement, Deborah Sliz reflects on her nearly 20 years of

representing TVPPA in Washington, D.C.; who and what she’ll miss (and won’t), what’s next and the future of TVPPA government relations.

24 At Franklin EC, Service ‘Our One Thing To Sell’ History shows that if you go to work at Franklin EC, Russellville, AL, you’re

probably going to be there for a while – and like it. A lot. Two-thirds of cooperative’s employees have been there for more than 20 years, and Manager A.H. Akins has been in charge for 47.

TVPPA News is published bi-monthly by the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, Inc. Member of the Society of National Association Publications. Advertising rates and data are available by contacting Tim Daugherty, TVPPA News, PO Box 6189, Chattanooga, TN 37401-6189; phone: 423.490.7930; or e-mail: [email protected]. Listed in SRDS, Sect. 39—Electrical. ISSN: 1547-5158. Opinions expressed in single articles do not necessarily reflect those of the association. For permission to reprint articles, write or call TVPPA.

Receiving extra issues? Please call and let us know: 423.756.6511 or email to [email protected].

about the cover:At the end of a year during which our business got tougher and Americans rode out perhaps the most tumultuous Presidential election in the nation’s history, let us take a moment to remember what’s good about ourselves, each other and our world.

24

18

14

Let’s face it...sometimes your software systems put up more of a fight than Mike Tyson on a bad day. They’re not functionally robust enough for your needs, they can’t integrate with your other programs, they can’t scale with company growth, you can’t customize anything and you need a Ph.D. to figure out how to use them. From the opening bell of your work day, you know you’re in for a battle trying to meet the needs of your utility.

Since 1938, utilities have relied on Central Service Association to take care of many of the tasks that eat up utility resources and beat up on utility staffs. With CSA, information technology is our business, leaving you the time to concentrate on your business. With ORBITTM, utility personnel take command of their workload, rather than having the workload in control.

CSA’s ORBITTM family is our line of easy-to-use, integrated, expandable and reliable software solutions. Each piece is designed for the way utilities work today - efficiently and effectively. Products in the ORBITTM solution include: Customer Management and Billing Dynamic Financial Management Work Management Meter Data Management and Analysis Business Portal with Mobile Service Orders Customer Portal Cashier Solutions

Combined with CSA’s other products and services, like UtiliSuite - our GIS suite, Internet services, employee benefits, professional services, disaster recovery, backup services, hardware sales and more, Central Service Association is THE choice for IT needs among utilities today. It’s time to knock out the stress and strain of information management. Unlike many of the challengers in the IT business, we know the fight. We’ve been in your corner for over 75 years providing service that is second to none. At CSA, we provide what it takes to win.

Central Service AssociationP.O. Box 3480Tupelo, MS 38803-3480Toll free 877-842-5962

Tired of fighting your IT?

www.csa1.com

We’re in your corner.

e-mail/ēmāl/noun

Electronic mail, correspondence, communication, message(s), mail, memo(s), letter(s)

Did you notice the address label on the cover of this edition of TVPPA News magazine?

We imprinted your email address! That is, IF we have one. With the importance of email, it’s imperative that we have your email address.

If you didn’t see your email on the cover, scan the QR code or visit www.tvppa.com, click “Communications” and follow the link from there. It’s easy and only takes a moment to make sure you’re receiving all the information we are trying to send you.

3TVPPA NEWS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

“ASK TVPPA” is a regular feature TVPPA News magazine. Got a question for TVPPA’s Chattanooga, TN-based staff? Just e-mail TVPPA NEWS Editor Bob Gary Jr. at [email protected]

QUESTION: Word on the street is that this year’s Salary Survey is a lot better than prior versions . . . true?ANSWER: The 2016 Salary Survey is not merely new and improved, according to TVPPA Member Ser-vices Manager Kari Crouse—it’s nothing less than a “game-changer.”

“People will see that when they get a look at it,” she said.

The Salary Survey overhaul began with the TVPPA Board of Directors, which appointed Jerry Collins of Memphis, TN, LG&W to chair an ad hoc oversight committee. Joining Col-lins on that panel were Kendall Bear

of Rockwood, TN, ES; Faron Collins of Weakley Co., TN, MES; Wes Kelley of Columbia, TN, P&W; Michael Watson of Duck River EMC, Shelbyville, TN and Kath-erine West of North Georgia EMC, Dalton, GA.

The project was executed by Washington-based InTandem LLC, whose managing principal, Winston Tan, has spoken at multiple TVPPA Human Resources Management conferences.

“Winston went above and beyond to reach out to [TVPPA] members who’ve had questions, in an effort to make sure that they get the most accurate data in as timely a fashion as possible,” Crouse said.

“In fact,” she added, “we got the survey out Novem-ber 21—a lot more quickly than we have in the past.”

Key differences between the new Salary Survey and its predecessors, Crouse said, include an annual revenue key and a match-code key. The new survey also gives users the most recent payroll increase and proposed payroll increases, by percentage.

“That’s huge,” Crouse said, “and so is the ‘live’ spreadsheet, which will allow you to more easily see how your positions compare to those at utilities of simi-lar sizes and revenues.

“It’s a significantly better product,” Crouse said. “The usability is not even comparable.”

— BOB GARY, JR./EDITOR

Distribution/Transmission | Medium Voltage | Low Voltage

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Crouse


Officers chairman

Gregory D. WilliamsAppalachian EC, New Market, TN

vice chairman

Terry N. KempStarkville, MS, ES

secretary-treasurer

Jerry Collins, Jr.Memphis, TN, LG&W

immediate past chairman

Wayne HensonEast Mississippi EPA, Meridian, MS

Directors Mike AllmandRipley, TN, Power & Light R. Michael BrowderBristol Tennessee Essential ServicesElden ChumleyAlbertville, AL, MUB James B. CoodeCumberland EMC, Clarksville, TN Mark O. IversonBowling Green, KY, MUMarty IvyMayfield, KY, E&WSChris JonesMiddle Tennessee EMCMurfreesboro, TN Wes KelleyColumbia, TN, P&WSLynn MillsLoudon, TN, Utilities Kevin MurphySouthwest TN EMC, Brownsville, TNMike SimpsonSand Mountain EC, Rainsville, ALDavid SmartWest Kentucky RECC, Mayfield, KY Joseph Thacker IIIMountain EC, Mountain City, TNKathryn D. WestNorth Georgia EMC, Dalton, GA

PublisherJack [email protected]

Communications DirectorPhillip [email protected]

Publications/Marketing ManagerTim [email protected]

EditorBob Gary [email protected]

Communications SpecialistCourtney [email protected]

Editor’s NoteA whip-smart friend, with whom I occasionally discuss politics, was nearly undone by the mere prospect of the Democratic Presidential nominee winning the White House.

“Throttle back,” I said. “Whatever happens, whoever wins, the Republic will endure. It’s what the Republic does.”

As were many of you, I was stunned by the election’s out-come (that’s not to say I was leaning one way or the other—I simply thought the Republican nominee had no shot at flip-ping the ‘Blue’ states he needed to flip).

And I trotted out the same line to my left-leaning friends, with all the been-there-done-that reassurance I could muster:

“Be calm. Breathe. The Republic will endure.”So I was heartened in the early morning of Nov. 18, when

I saw reportage on a speech the actor Tom Hanks had deliv-ered the night previous, at an event meant to honor him. With your permission, I’d like to quote some of what the Oscar-winning star of Forrest Gump and Saving Private Ryan was reported to have said to his New York City audience:

“We are going to be all right. America has been in worse places . . . in my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth-and-nail, and every dinner table ended up as close to a fist fight as human families will allow.

“We will take everything that’s been handed to us as Americans and we will turn our nation. We will turn the future and we will turn all the work that we have before us into some grand thing of beauty.”

January 20 will come and go. Power will be transferred in the peaceful, orderly way that has long been a standard for the rest of the world. A new administration will take charge and, with Elizabeth K. Whitney’s expert help, we’ll figure out what that means for us.

We’ll go on serving our customers and members because that’s what we do. And the Republic will endure because that’s what it does.

BoB Gary, Jr. | Editor

Departments4 Ask TVPPA

6 ‘Sheepdog’ Sliz Stands Down After A Job Very Well Done

Comments&Observations

8 Will EPA’s Clean Power Plan Survive Court Challenge?

Washington Report

10 All I Want For Christmas: Guaranteed 203-Pct. Raise

Legal

12 Insurance Premiums, Costs Are Very Different Things

Risk Management

21 TVPPA Members Renew Festive October Tradition

Second Reference

29 1966 – Wheeler Goes West TVPPA Timeline

30 Hopkinsville’s Austin Carroll To Retire

Names&News

34 Advertiser Index

#tvppanews

www.tvppa.com

In the next issue . . .

TVPPA News offers a tip of the hat to Austin Carroll, who plans to retire in January 2017 after 30 years at the helm at Hopkinsville, KY, ES.


I ’m sure many of you recall the movie American Sniper, popular in theaters a couple of years ago.The story was based on the life

of sharpshooter Chris Kyle, who was deployed four times during the Iraq War. One of the early scenes depicted Chris and his younger brother in grade school; the younger brother was physically bullied, and Chris not only came to his rescue, but made sure bully got a dose of his own medicine.

That evening at the dinner table the boys’ father, visibly upset by the black eye of his youngest, shared a lesson that would later shape Chris Kyle’s life and military mission. The father said that there are three kinds of people in the world—sheep, who are innocent, gentle-spirited, and often vulnerable.

Wolves, he said, are ruthless, violent, and prey upon the sheep. And then there are the sheepdogs, who are protectors of the vulnerable and seek to confront or

destroy the wolves.As most of you know, our job at

TVPPA is much like that of a sheep “herder.” We represent 154 individual local power companies in the Tennessee Valley on issues related to your power-supply relationship with TVA (many of you have often described the job as cat-herding, because of the multitude of independent interests and opinions that each of you have).

But a sheepherder is NOT a sheepdog. Deborah Sliz is a sheepdog. She knows where the wolves live, what they look like, and what drives them.

After all, she has encountered many of them during her time in Washington, DC. Deborah has been TVPPA’s “Public Power Protector” in D.C. for nearly two decades. She worked as counsel for prominent members of Congress, later joined the APPA staff, and was ultimately mentored by the late Alex Radin, former head of APPA, in his consulting role sup-porting TVPPA interests in D.C.

‘Just The Right Balance’She was a key player in the development of the TVPPA/TVA Consensus Title in the late 1990s, and was sensitive to attempts by the TVA Watch, a group of investor-owned utilities that constantly lobbied to weaken and dissolve TVA.

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, a former Detroit Tigers pitcher, did not intimidate her in 2003, when he supported legisla-tion to take down the TVA fence for only a few TVPPA members, leaving the rest to pay down TVA’s debt.

When the TVA Board of Directors was restructured in 2004, Deborah went to bat with U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bill Frist of Tennessee to ensure that at least seven of the nine director seats would be filled by Tennessee Valley stakeholders, rather than people outside TVA’s service territory.

In more recent years, she has helped bring clarity and reason to those in D.C. who felt that TVA’s mission was complete, and that a sale or privatization was in the government’s best interest.

And finally, nobody has had a bigger hand in the debate about how to pay for the nearly $1.5 billion worth of dam safety repairs at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wolf Creek and Center Hill dams in the Valley.

It has been said that there’s a little bit of wolf in every sheepdog, but there is NO sheepdog in a wolf. Deborah dem-onstrates just the right balance. She has effectively advocated for us in all these issues without causing rifts in political relationships. She is respected by political players and industry representatives, and has done a great job in balancing various interests and positions.

We hope Deborah will let the gentle side of her sheepdog shine as she moves into retirement. But we also suspect that a second glass of wine will occasionally cause a howl at that shiny full moon over the lake in Vermont.

Deborah, we wish you the best and thank you for your service to the public power family in the Tennessee Valley and across the country.

by Jack simmons | President & CEOCOMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS

TENNESSEE VALLEY PUBLIC POWER ASSOCIATION, INC.The Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, a nonprofit regional service organization with headquarters at 1206 Broad Street, Chattanooga, TN 37402, represents the consumer-owned utilities in the Tennessee Valley Authority service area. These 105 municipal and 50 rural electric cooperatives distribute electricity to 9 million residents in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

‘Sheepdog’ Sliz Stands DownAfter A Job Very Well Done

Consummate pro repped TVPPA in D.C. for nearly 20 years

Deborah Sliz

TVPPA NEWS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

6

WASHINGTON REPORT

When the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Sept. 27 in the

case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, many of the legal questions and concerns that surrounded the plan when it was finalized over a year ago were instantly revived and rehashed.

In the weeks that have passed, one question seems to loom larger than others: is the Clean Power Plan “trans-formative,” or does it merely accelerate trends already underway?

The question was elevated by the judges as a result of another case, Utility Air Resources Group (UARG) v. EPA, a decision penned by the late Justice Anto-nin Scalia in which the Supreme Court took EPA to task for overreaching on a different greenhouse gas program—and overturned a unanimous D.C. Circuit holding in the process.

The lower court appears very inter-ested in getting it right this time, as the absence of a ninth Supreme Court justice

may mean that their word on the rule is conclusive.

Scalia’s UARG opinion featured numerous quotable lines, including the admonition that “when an Agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a signifi-cant portion of the American economy . . . we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism.”

That logic appeared to be aimed at laying the groundwork for challenges to the Clean Power Plan, which was drafted under an obscure and little-used provi-sion of the Clean Air Act.

Although it was clear that Scalia’s opinion intended to serve as a shot across the Clean Power Plan’s bow, the D.C. Circuit may rely heavily on it and a line of cases that form an exception to the court’s customary standard of deference to an agency’s interpretation.

Instead, the court may apply a more rigorous standard of review for regula-tions of “great significance.” That would invite a deeper level of scrutiny into EPA’s decisions to use beyond-the-fence-line measures and other choices in the plan.

And, ironically, it puts EPA in the position of claiming its flagship climate regulation really wouldn’t do much at all.

EPA's Clean Air Act AuthorityDuring the oral arguments, significant discussion was devoted to whether or not the Clean Air Act Section 111(d) gives EPA the authority to develop a regulation that looks like the Clean Power Plan. Typically, the court would defer to the agency to interpret a law—unless the agency is interpreting a

“major question.” The more consequential a new regulation, the more clarity from Congress is expected.

Challengers spoke to the vast eco-nomic consequences of the rule and the

extraordinary use of beyond-the-fence-line measures, saying that Congress would have had to give clearer direction to EPA if it intended to authorize such dramatic requirements. Sec. 111(d) was meant as a “catch-all” provision, not as a source of authority to regulate something as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide, they argued.

EPA’s defenders pointed out that the rule simply accelerates existing trends in the power sector, and that EPA’s interpre-tation was a pragmatic and reasonable reading of the statute. The major-ques-tions doctrine, they said, applies only to whether an agency has the authority to regulate, and has little to say about how it exercises that authority.

'Transformative'? Depends Who You Ask . . . Regardless of whether the court applies the stricter test, both Republican and Democratic-appointed judges appeared concerned about major changes in the energy sector resulting from the Clean Power Plan. Since its issuance, the rule has been decried as “radical” (by then-Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, in 2015) and heralded as “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change” (by President Obama, also in 2015).

On the other hand, the Plan’s approach has been called “incremental” (by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, in 2016) and its impacts on global emis-sions “insignificant” (by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also in 2016). Those perspectives comport with nation-wide data on the declining use of coal even without the Plan and scientific projections of the Plan’s impact on global temperature rise, respectively.

Now that “transformation” is relevant to the outcome of the case, EPA is in the strange position of suddenly changing the way it talks about the rule. However,

Will EPA’s Clean Power Plan Survive Court Challenge?

Whether Plan is considered ‘transformative’ may be key

Elizabeth K. Whitney, Senior VP at Morgan Meguire, LLC, served as senior legislative assistant to former Representative Bart Gordon, D-TN.

by elizaBeth k. Whitney | Washington Representative


WASHINGTON REPORT

it is not simply political expediency causing this disconnect. The idea of generation-shifting as a pollution control mechanism is novel in terms of a regu-latory approach, but not in the energy industry writ large.

The attorneys representing utility companies who intervened on EPA’s behalf appeared to convince a majority of judges that backing down higher-emit-ting sources in favor of lower-emitting ones is “business as usual,” making EPA’s adoption of that approach reasonable.

. . . And WhereThe full story is more complex, however. Shifting to lower-emitting resources is only business as usual if a utility has a business reason to reduce emissions, such as a state regulatory imperative.

In states and regions where emissions reduction has not been encouraged or mandated—and where coal resources provide cheap power and employment opportunities—the impacts of the Clean Power Plan are likely to be disproportion-ately “transformative.”

In the Tennessee Valley, the tradi-tional focus on inexpensive and plentiful coal-fired generation has given way over the last several decades as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has made stra-tegic investments in line with least-cost planning principles. That has included bringing new and incremental nuclear on-line, adding renewables where cost-effective, and focusing on efficiency. And, like other areas of the country, the falling cost of natural gas has been a major factor in emissions reductions.

All of that has meant that TVA has been able to say that it will not only comply with the Clean Power Plan, but that it is well-positioned to do so. But, if the Plan is upheld, it is not utilities that must comply—states are tasked with implementing the rule, and that means seven different political bodies will be making decisions about the various resources within their borders.

That structure alone is transforma-tive for the Valley, where the states have long deferred to TVA to make resource choices, and calls into question whether the state-by-state approach in the Clean Air Act is an appropriate tool to drive those decisions.

What Happens Next?The judges on the D.C. Circuit likely won’t be making their decisions based on a searching inquiry into whether federal environmental policy should trump regional energy operations. If the simple question is whether the rule should be upheld, most think the ruling will follow the ideological leanings of the judges themselves.

Ten judges heard the case (all but Chief Judge Merrick Garland) after decid-ing to skip review by a three-judge panel, which normally would have preceded

review by the entire court—in itself a tes-tament to the gravity of the case.

The move meant that the case would be heard by four Republican-appointed judges and six appointed by Democrats. After oral arguments, it is widely believed that the D.C. Circuit’s ruling will track with those numbers. A decision could be issued as early as this winter or may take until next spring.

The losing party will almost certainly request that the Supreme Court review the case. The stay of the rule issued by the Supreme (Continued on page 33)

ATA’s experience with utility systems is unrivaled in the Tennessee Valley. That experience gives us insight into the challenges you face and answers to the questions you have, and it means we can identify areas of weakness and make recommendations for improvement in a more timely manner.

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All I Want For Christmas:Guaranteed 203-Pct. Raise

Federal Labor Department’s new overtime rule in effect

TVPPA-member systems and their counsel should be aware of recent changes to the U.S. Department

of Labor’s (DOL) final overtime rule (Final Rule) that more than double the minimum guaranteed salary for exempt Executive, Administrative, and Profes-sional employees.

The Dec. 1, 2016, implementation of the Final Rule has arrived, so if member systems have not already audited their classification of employees as exempt or non-exempt and have not already made management and budgetary plans for any required changes, now is the time to do so.

The election of Donald Trump as President did not change the effective date of the Final Rule, though it remains to be seen whether President Trump will make employees return the Final Rule’s

gift sometime in 2017.In May of this year, President Obama

announced the DOL’s Final Rule, which raised the minimum salary basis for certain exemptions from overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act. As of Dec. 1, the mini-mum base salary level for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional exemp-tions has increased from $455 to $923 per week.

Of this amount, up to 10 percent may be met with nondiscretionary incentive compensation. Further, an employer may make a catch-up payment once per quarter if an employee received at least 90 percent of the minimum salary for each pay period during the prior quarter.

In addition, the total compensation requirement for the highly compensated employee exemption also has increased from $100,000 to $134,004 per year. After these initial bumps, additional upward adjustments are set to occur every three years.

Employers with exempt employees who do not meet the new minimum standards under the Final Rule could be subject to potential DOL investigations and private litigation, including potential collective action litigation.

React, Re-evaluateStep 1: Conduct an Audit — The upside to the Final Rule is that it has presented employers with the opportunity to re-evaluate their classification of employees as exempt or non-exempt based on both the duties test (which is not changed by the Final Rule) and the salary test, and to correct any current or future misclassifications.

Because the employer bears the burden of proof for justifying all exemp-tions, it is important for an employer to evaluate each employee’s classifica-tion under both the duties test and the

salary test. The DOL made it clear that it believes many employees who do not meet the new salary test also do not meet the duties test. For example, because of the duties performed, a custodian would be entitled to overtime compensation regardless of how high or low his or her salary might be.

Although the Final Rule does not cover independent contractors, it would be wise to extend the audit to classifi-cation of any workers as independent contractors, since the DOL also recently adopted a new “economic realities” test to restrict the classification of workers on this basis. The Final Rule also applies to any employees who are incorrectly clas-sified as independent contractors, and an audit of workers who are classified as independent contractors would help identify any workers who may be subject to the Final Rule.

Step 2: Decide on Appropriate Changes — The implementation of the Final Rule does not necessarily mean that millions of employees have received raises. There are several changes employers can make to deal with any potential reclassification issues.

First, employers can regulate employ-ees’ hours so that they do not exceed 40 hours in a workweek, and, therefore, would not be entitled to overtime pay, even if they are non-exempt. Any extra work can be assigned either to exempt employees or the employer may choose to hire additional part-time employees.

Second, employers can set the hourly rate for employees who are reclassified as non-exempt to still fall within the employees’ compensation budgets. For instance, a non-exempt employee earn-ing the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and working 40 hours per week would earn only $15,080 per year.

Although

LEGALby Brad harvey and meGan Welton

(Continued on page 33)

Brad Harvey is is a shareholder

and Megan Welton an associate at the Miller & Martin PLLC law firm. They practice

in the labor/employment

group of Miller & Martin and regularly work with Carlos Smith, Larry Cash and Mark Smith on a wide range of labor/employment questions.


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Insurance Premiums, CostsAre Very Different Things

Premium is a component of cost, but not entire cost

RISK MANAGEMENT

Who you’re insured by doesn’t matter . . . until it does.

Insurance buyers often make the mistake of assuming that all insurance companies are alike – similar in terms of the coverages provided, the service rendered, and the quality of their claims handling.

Why is this such a common malady? Probably because it’s difficult to deter-mine how broad or narrow the scope of coverage may be, how extensive or restrictive services may be, or how accommodating or inflexible claim settle-ments may be. If you’re not an insurance specialist, these qualities can be difficult to interpret and understand; oftentimes, even those who hold themselves out to be insurance specialists still don’t quite get it.

Consequently, insurance-purchasing decisions often are made based on premi-ums alone, since premiums generally are clearly presented and easy to understand and compare to one another. However, you should never confuse “premiums” with “cost.”

Premiums are merely what you pay up front for the presumed comfort of knowing that you have a drawer (or, in

more recent times, an electronic file) full of insurance policies that you may or may not have read. In contrast, cost rep-resents the ultimate financial toll on your organization from having an insurance program in place.

A premium is clearly a component of cost, but not the only one. In addition, there is a series of intangibles, including:

■ Not knowing whether the policies you bought are going to respond in the manner you expect or were led to believe. You may know you have a general liability insurance policy, but you might not know whether it will cover claims from utility-specific exposures, such as failure to supply service, denial of service, electromag-netic fields, pollution, and many others.

To the extent such exposures are uninsured or improperly addressed in your policies, your utility will bear an additional cost in the event of a claim.

■ Not knowing the basis of recovery in the event of a claim. You may have coverage for your 10-year-old bucket, but how much will you receive if it’s totaled in a rollover accident? Is recovery based on replacement cost (the amount it will cost you to buy a new bucket) or actual cash value (replacement cost less depreciation)?

The difference between 100-percent recovery on a replacement basis and a potential 20-percent recovery on an actual cash-value basis represents an additional cost to your utility in the event of a claim.

■ Not knowing whether your substation transformers are insured for damage resulting from external perils (such as lightning, windstorm, or vandalism), internal mechanical breakdown, both, or neither. Large trans-formers are subject to loss from internal as well as external perils, and in surpris-ingly equal measure, so you should insure against both.

The difference in recovery from not being insured for both is another addi-tional cost to your utility in the event of a claim.

■ How your insurer responds to a claim that falls in a legal gray area, somewhere between maybe covered and maybe excluded. Years of experience have taught us that com mercial insurers and self-insurance pools often look for reasons not to pay claims.

In contrast, painfully few insurers believe they have a moral obligation to their policyholders that often exceeds the strict legal interpretation of their policy language. Those

by anthony J. salvatore

Anthony J. Salvatore, area senior vice

president for Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., is program manager for TVPPA's Distributors Insurance Co. Visit DIC on the Web at www. distributors-insurance.com.


WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . .In 2008, Rockwood Electric Utility (REU) reported a workers’ compensation claim to the state municipal insurance pool that had insured it for many years.

The utility questioned the validity of the claim, but the pool did nothing to dispute it. What’s more, unbeknownst to REU, the pool entered a six-figure settlement with the injured employee just to make the claim go away—a fact that REU only became aware of at the employee’s retirement party.

The obvious cost is the sense of embarrassment and lack of partnership experienced by REU management since they had been kept out of the information loop on the handling of this claim. The not-so-hidden cost here was the effect this claim payment had on REU’s otherwise stellar loss experience, causing its experience modification factor and its ultimate premiums to increase for several years. ■


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FORUM AUDIENCE CHALLENGED:

‘BE THE LEADERS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE’

FOR THE SECOND HALF of one day and the first half of the next, the second annual Tennessee Valley Distribution Marketplace Forum featured variations on familiar themes:

“We’re competing for energy in a marketplace where we’ve typically had a monopoly,” said TVPPA Chairman

Greg Williams, the event’s co-emcee. “It’s not future tense. It’s here. Now.”

TVA Vice President Laura Campbell, Williams’ co-emcee for the Nov. 1–2 event in Nashville, TN, noted that while the point of last year’s inaugural Forum was to “plant a seed,” this year’s was meant to be a “deeper dive, as we look for ways to work together to find solutions for the Valley as the industry contin-ues to change.”

And there was this, from author, futurist and Forum key-noter Jack Uldrich: “The only way to predict the future is

to create it yourself. The opportunity before you is a big one, and those of you with the courage to embrace it will be successful.”

But as the Forum’s curtain fell, TVPPA-member CEO Scott Dahlstrom reminded attendees that all the talk of the changing industry, Millennial customers and new technologies would simply evaporate if they didn’t take it with them.

“Customers and employees expect us to manage change,”

by BOB GARY, JR. | EDITOR

From left: TVA’s Aaron Melda, TVA Senior Vice President Jay Stowe, Columbia, TN, P&W’s Wes Kelley and TVPPA Chairman Greg Williams talk distributed energy resources at the Tennessee Valley Distribution Marketplace Forum.

D I S T R I B U T I O N M A R K E T P L A C E F O R U M R O U N D U P

From left: APPA President/CEO Sue Kelly, NRECA President/CEO Jim Matheson, Trenton, TN, L & W General Manager Scott Dahlstrom.


14

said Dahlstrom, the general manager at Trenton, TN, L & W. “The key to man-aging change is through engagement, so take this conversation home and engage the people affected by your decisions.

“Be the leaders you’re supposed to be,” Dahlstrom said.

PREGAMEWhat distinguished this year’s Forum from the 2015 inaugural was the addition of post-Forum workshops, making the main agenda the middle of a robust information sandwich.

It all started with pre-Forum roundtables, one of which fea-tured E Source’s Bill LeBlanc and TVPPA Director Wes Kelley talking at length about how electric-utility customers are changing.

“Millennials,” LeBlanc said. “I raised two. I get it. They speak from their hearts and their wallets. They don’t live in an 8-to-5 world. They demand change. They’re green, used to social media and are willing to shop for the best deals.

“You need to understand them, because they’re going to be a lot more of your customers,” he said.

Kelley used a series of “Yesterday/Today” comparisons to illustrate the dramatic change taking place in utilities’ customer bases.

“Yesterday, we’d communicate face to face,” he said. “Today, it’s ‘Words are cheap. Make it easy and tell me I’m valued. I want a relationship with my phone, not you.’

“Yesterday, it was transactional accuracy. Today, it’s fast transactional accuracy,” Kelley said. “And yesterday it was ‘Relationships encourage loyalty.’ Today, it’s ‘I’m loyal to my way of life, my values and what I want to do.’”

The other pre-Forum workshop was a role-playing exercise involving E Source’s Ken Black and Michael Watson, president/CEO at Duck River EMC, Shelbyville, TN, playing the TVA Board of Directors.

Attendees were divided into groups of stakeholders, each of which was charged with selling the “board” on its point of view regarding solar incentives. Jack Suggs of Oak Ridge, TN, DE, representing TVPPA-member utili-ties, said incentives had been well-intentioned, but that the market should now prevail.

“It’s my belief that the time has come for solar panels to stand on their own,” he said.

Representing solar developers, Charlie West of Paris, TN, BPU struck an ominous chord.

“I want the TVA board to realize that there are more than 20,000 people who feed their families based on solar power,” he said. “That’s 20,000 people who’d have to find new ways to support their families [should incen-tives disappear].

“By doing away with incentives, you would force us to go behind the meter. You would force developers and local power companies [LPCs] to become adversaries. Don’t force LPCs to be the bad guys,” West said.

Representing end users, TVPPA Vice President Danette Scudder assumed the guise of a young adult still living with her parents—and she brought the snark as well.

“I’m not a customer yet, because I’m still living in my par-ents’ basement,” she said, “but I will be a customer one day. We want options and flexibility, and if you continue to ignore us, I’m sure Google would be very interested to have us as customers.”

Katie McKee, who registered for the Forum as an “energy analyst” and represented environmentalists in the workshop exercise, said solar shouldn’t be thought of as just a “cost,” but as “an investment in our future.”

And how did the “TVA board” rule?“Can we delay this by three or four years?” LeBlanc quipped.

“Awesome.”Moderator Phillip Burgess, TVPPA’s Communications/Gov-

ernment Relations director, made these points in summarizing the exercise:

■ “There are generational differences regarding renewable energy, and those must be addressed . . . Millennials will soon make up the majority of LPC customers, and to ignore this growing population would be futile.”

■ “Surveys show that our customers aren’t convinced that we’re there to help them.”

■ “What about low-income customers who want to buy solar? That question needs to be answered.”

■ “There’s a belief, held by some, that solar is free energy . . . it’s an emotional issue vs. an exercise in reality.”

WHAT’S NEXT: DISTRIBUTED ENERGY RESOURCESTVPPA Chairman Greg Williams led off a panel discussion including TVA’s Aaron Melda, TVA Senior Vice President Jay Stowe and Wes Kelley, executive director at Columbia, TN, P&W.

E Source’s Bill LeBlanc holds forth during a Pre-Forum Roundtable session.

AUTHOR, FUTURIST and Forum keynoter Jack Uldrich challenged Forum attendees to be humble enough to accept that “what worked yesterday might not work going for-ward.” Uldrich compared community solar to Uber in the sense that “you don’t have to own it . . . you just have to be able to access it” and encour-aged attendees to get “reverse mentors” who are younger and tech-savvier. He also sounded this note of warning: “You’ve developed extraor-dinary relationships with your customers, but if you’re not helping them lower their energy bills, they will go elsewhere.”


15

In ticking off a list of things that have happened and are happening in the Valley, Williams set a tone—a trip to Bentonville, AR, for talks with Walmart about the retail giant’s desire to go green sooner than later, a mandate

from the federal government to make military installations more energy independent.

“And in Knox County [TN],” Williams said, “a solar devel-oper convinced the school system to install solar panels behind the meter. [Knoxville UB] lost five megawatts.

“We’ve got to do a better job of understanding what the marketplace is doing. Some have taken bold steps—developing community solar, for instance—but what will it take to keep that ball rolling?” Williams said.

To the question of how LPCs need to be looking differently at the marketplace, Stowe reminded the audience that “we have something pretty valuable . . . [customers] still want you. How we change the value proposition is what’s harder.”

Williams said he needed to take keynoter Jack Uldrich’s sug-gestion and get a “reverse mentor.”

“I’ve got to listen to the younger generation,” Williams said. “They’re making choices that wouldn’t be my choices, but that’s who’s becoming my consumer.”

In terms of next steps on DER, Melda said the first thing is to understand that the conversations were going to be “prickly” at times, but that TVA and LPCs have to remember that they’re both trying to improve the Valley’s standard of living.

CHATTANOOGA EPB’S WADE: RESIST CHANGE OR LEARN HOW TO COMPETE?The Forum’s first day wound up with presentations from E Source’s Ken Black, Brad Smith of Nissan North America and David Wade, the brand-new president/CEO of Chattanooga, TN, EPB.

Wade recalled that when EPB decided to challenge Comcast in 2009, the cable giant had a near-monopoly in Chattanooga. But Comcast’s problem, Wade said, was that it also had old tech-nology and no plans to upgrade.

When EPB made its move, Wade said, Comcast chose not to learn how to compete, but to simply resist change. Seven years later, EPB has cut a 65-percent gash in Comcast’s Chattanooga revenues.

But now, Wade said, electric utilities are in the same position Comcast was in 2009.

“We’re seeing more and more folks enter into our space,” he said. “The competition is real. It’s time to act.

“We’ve got the same choice Comcast did—we can resist change or learn how to compete,” Wade said.

POSTGAMEIt wasn’t time to go home when the Forum proper was over—attendees who’d said in surveys after last year’s Forum that they wanted more content had the option to choose one of three 3-hour post-Forum workshops:

Retail Rate Design One Year Later: Glasgow, KY, EPB Superinten-dent Billy Ray recounted the story of his utility’s “Infotricity” rate, which has garnered national attention—but not in a way Ray wanted or anticipated.

“We’ve been able to reshape our demand and sell more [power] off-peak and less on-peak,” he said. “It’s exactly what the industry’s been trying to do for a century. It works.

“But then,” he said, “politics stepped in.”Ray introduced Infotricity at the beginning of 2016, calling it

a shift from a socialized rate structure—with one customer class subsidizing another—to a free-market rate structure designed to bill more accurately and encourage more off-peak usage.

“Once we have 12 months of data,” Ray said, “we’ll have an even split between those who are paying more and those who are paying less.”

D I S T R I B U T I O N M A R K E T P L A C E F O R U M R O U N D U P

TVA Senior Vice President Jay Stowe and Wes Kelley, executive director at Columbia, TN, P&W, discuss distributed generation challen ges and opportunities.


But a few residential customers’ bills spiked. Unhappy customers vented on social media, and Ray found himself in the middle of a roil-ing controversy in which the Kentucky Attorney General’s office is also entangled.

“None of the complaints centered on the accuracy of the rate design,” he said. “It was all about customers who think we’re part of the social welfare system.”

The Glasgow EPB Board of Directors directed Ray to craft an alternative rate struc-ture. By the time of the Forum, he said, about 350 customers had opted to “go back in time” with that rate.

“We’ve already seen the improvement we’d made in our load factor beginning to slide,” he said. “This could be the end of it—or just the beginning.”

Infrastructure to Better Serve Customers: Raymond Barnes, general manager at Benton Co., TN, ES said having interval data is “the key to doing whatever you want.”

“When you have that data, you can back up anything,” Barnes said. “I can’t overemphasize how important that is for your customer-service representatives and in designing rates—there’s all the good things it can do from an AMR perspective.”

Distributed Energy Resources: For Johnson City, TN, Power Board CEO Jeff Dykes, the question of whether to work with solar developers isn’t really a question at all.

“You don’t need to be afraid of it,” he said. “You need to be a participant in it. Lead the charge. Adapt or become extinct.”

Dykes also touted the advantages await-ing his utility when it becomes an authority; one is that the utility will be able to enter more quickly and easily into partnerships with pri-vate entities.

Another, he said, is that being free of the tra-ditional municipal model will allow the utility to be far more nimble.

“We’ve got to be able to react quickly, or we . . . will . . . die,” he said. “Breaking away from the municipal model allows us to move faster—if we need to do something quickly, I can’t wait for the politics to play out.”

Dykes said community solar is a win-win—strengthening the grid on one hand, and delivering clean energy customers want on the other.

“I need to be taking care of my community, telling my com-munity that we can do anything it wants,” he said. “If we don’t look to diversify, we’ll die—and we deserve to if we don’t.”

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Wayne Henson plans to retire in January after 42 years, including the last dozen as general manager, from East Mississippi EPA, Meridian, MS.

What he’s not planning to do is stop working. Henson has timber and cattle on more than 150 acres near Meridian, and that spread is about to get his undivided attention.

“The farm’s not pitiful, but it’s not in good shape,” he said. “I’m going to start building the herd back, and I’ve got some long-postponed equipment repair to do.

“I’ve ignored [the farm] while I’ve been working on other stuff,” he said, “but my accountant says I have to act like a real farmer.”

That “other stuff” included leading TVPPA, as its chairman, from his mid-2013 election as chairman to mid-2015, when he stood down after two one-year terms. Henson also won the Richard C. Crawford Distinguished Service Award, TVPPA’s highest honor, at the 2015 Annual Conference.

It was on that occasion that TVA President/CEO Bill Johnson lauded Henson as a “gentleman of the old school.”

“Wayne and I have had opportunities to get crossways, but we never have,” Johnson said. “He is respectful of everyone, he’s empathetic and he listens. Wayne is a great example of leader-ship, and a good man.”

First MeetingAs it happened, Henson started his run as TVPPA chairman at roughly the same time Johnson took the wheel at TVA. Henson recalled that his predecessor, Harold DePriest, arranged his first meeting with Johnson.

“Harold calls me one afternoon and asks if I can be in his

office two days later,” Henson said. “It sounded a little strange. He said he couldn’t tell me why, just to trust him.

“So I drive four-plus hours, walked in the door that day and there was Bill Johnson. We took the opportunity to get to know

one another better and found that, while we didn’t always agree, we could discuss any issue.

“And then,” Henson recalled, “right after he showed up and I became chair-man, President Obama decided he wanted to sell TVA.”

The federal Office of Management and Budget had declared in that year’s Federal Budget document that the gov-ernment should look at divesting itself of TVA. The initiative lingered for a couple of years, but never got traction.

“That issue had us on defense for a while, but then we shifted to offense,” Henson recalled. “We made several trips to Washington to tell our story.”

With OMB, Rate, Other FightsOver, Henson Heads To Farm

East Mississippi EPA GM, former TVPPA chairman retires

FEATUREby BOB GARY JR. | Editor

HENSON ON CARROLL: If I didn’t return, no one would noticeThe only thing Wayne Henson has had to do with the selection of his successor is to praise it.

Meeting Oct. 25, the East Mississippi EPA Board of Directors tapped Randy Carroll, a veteran of nearly 40 years at the cooperative, to succeed Henson. EMEPA’s directors named Carroll chief operating officer more than two years ago.

“When the board picked Randy, I was completely out of the picture,” Henson said. “But he’s been [COO] for two years now, and if I didn’t come back to work again, no one would know the difference.”

Henson said Carroll’s early training was as a machinist and welder – “Very talented with his hands,” Henson said. Carroll attended Mississippi State University’s Meridian campus at night, and earned an undergraduate degree in Business and Industry, with an emphasis in data processing.

Carroll also crafted a financial model to which, according to Henson, the cooperative has hewn for 25 years.

“He has overseen the financial management of our association,” Henson said. “When Randy turned in his senior project, his professor told him it was doctoral-level work.” ■


Rates, RegulatoryHenson also used the bully pulpit afforded him by his TVPPA standing to hold forth on rates; specifically, the increasingly thorny proposition of recovering fixed costs through sales in a time of softening demand.

“I had to give up on [solving the problem] and be satisfied with making progress,” he said, “but I’m proud of that progress.

“We had to adjust wholesale rates first, but the next piece—aligning and adjusting retail rate structures—is very difficult. We haven’t yet solved the dilemma of how best to recover fixed cost, but we must. It’s going to require a great deal of discipline for local board members and management to understand the need for achieving that alignment,” he said.

Henson also spent no small amount of time helping TVPPA grapple with the TVA-as-regulator issue. His role in those discussions was unique, as roughly half of his East Mississippi EPA system was in the TVA footprint, with the other half under investor-owned (Mississippi Power) purview.

“We want what we want from TVA and don’t want what we don’t want,” he said. “That’s kind of our model.

“But because I have to operate outside of TVA, as well

FEATURE

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THE HENSON FILE■Wayne Henson earned an undergraduate

degree in electrical engineering from Mis-sissippi State University in 1974.

■He joined East Mississippi EPA, Merid-ian, MS, after graduation; he served as planning engineer, assistant director of engineering and director of system sup-port services prior to being named general manager in 2004.

■ Henson was elected TVPPA secretary/treasurer in 2011 and served two one-year terms in that capacity.

■ In 2013, he was elected TVPPA chairman and served two one-year terms in that capacity.

■ In 2015, at TVPPA’s 69th Annual Confer-ence, Henson was presented the Richard C. Crawford Distinguished Service Award.

■ Henson plans to retire in January 2017; his designated successor is Randy Carroll, a veteran of nearly 40 years at East Missis-sippi EPA (see related story).



Looking for a deal on office furniture? Try Deborah Sliz.

“Everything must go—even if I have to put the furniture on Craig-slist,” said Sliz, who’s closing her Morgan Meguire firm at year’s end and retiring after nearly 20 years of running point for TVPPA in Washington, D.C.

She’s scheduled retiree-type fare—maybe a trip to Poland, joining friends in Tucson, AZ, for a March all-girls hike and, generally, making “no decisions about anything for six months.”

Fun? No question. But easy? Not so much.

“I’m so used to waking up at the bell, rushing to wherever the race is, going until I can’t, and then going home,” she said. “Not doing that will be the hardest part of this for me.”

The races to which Sliz has made a career of rushing have been almost exclu-sively in the nation’s capital; she arrived there in early 1979, got a job in a congres-sional office and never looked back.

“I got to D.C. and just fell in love with the issues,” she said. “Reauthorizing, reallocating power from Hoover Dam—issues I’d never thought about before,

and it opened my mind completely.”

TVPPA President/CEO Jack Simmons, who took office in 2003, said Sliz had more than mastery of those issues going for her.

“She had what I call ‘walking around’ knowledge of how D.C. works, based on her time at APPA and then, later, in the consulting firm she had with [retired APPA CEO] Alex Radin,” Simmons said.

“She not only knew what was important to say, but was sensitive in terms of knowing how to say it as well,” he said.

Simmons said Sliz never served TVPPA better than in 2003, when TVPPA and key U.S. senators were at odds over the restructuring of the TVA Board of Directors. TVA would go from three full-time directors to nine part-timers, and TVPPA wanted all nine to come from the TVA footprint—not just from states touched by that footprint.

“But we got push-back on that,” Sim-mons said, “so Deborah went to work behind the scenes, talking to key staff people in those Senate offices.

“We wound up agreeing on seven of the nine coming from the footprint,” Sim-mons said.

A Father’s QuestionSliz didn’t actually stick in D.C. until her second try; she’d tried, but failed, to find a job there after earning an undergradu-ate degree in Spanish at Atlanta’s Emory University.

So she went to the University of Arizona, earned a master’s degree in linguistics and was teaching English as a second language when her father, a school administrator, pulled her up.

“He asked me, ‘Do you want to do this the rest of your life, or go to law school?’” she said.

Sliz chose the latter course and earned her law degree at Arizona. In her second year of

Retiring Sliz: I’ll MissPeople, Not Partisanship

Longtime TVPPA Washington representative stands down

FEATUREby BOB GARY JR. | Editor


Whitney

WHITNEY: NEW SHERIFF IN TOWNThere’ll be a lot of people starting a lot of new jobs in Washington, D.C., early next year, and Elizabeth Kelsey Whit-ney will be right in there among them.

Whitney, who’s worked alongside longtime TVPPA Wash-ington Representative and Morgan Meguire CEO Deborah Sliz for the past six years, will formally succeed Sliz at TVPPA shortly after the new year begins. Sliz is closing Morgan Meguire, but Whitney’s launching her own firm, Meguire Whitney.

“Elizabeth is smart and learns very

quickly,” Sliz said. “I began by mentoring her on Valley issues, but before very long she became co-lead on those issues, and today I’m really a sounding board.”

Whitney holds a master’s degree in political management from George Wash-ington University and a law degree from Georgetown University. Sliz said Whitney is more than equal to the task at hand.

“Elizabeth doesn’t like to speak or act before she has a full understanding of what’s before her and really likes the deep dive into an issue,” Sliz said. “She’s quite capable of representing TVPPA on its most complex issues.” ■

TVPPA President/CEO Jack Simmons honors Washington Representative Deborah Sliz in May 2016 at the 70th Annual Conference


SECOND REFERENCE

Baseball tradition got turned on its head in October when the Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs, whose World Series championship droughts totaled a staggering 176 years, faced off in the Fall Classic.

Tradition had a better time of it in the Valley, though, as TVPPA members once again marked Cooperative Month and Public Power Week. Here’s just a sample of what utilities across the Valley did to celebrate their customers, members and service:

TVPPA Members RenewFestive October Tradition

Cooperative Month, Public Power Week celebrated

The Greenback High School band struck up some tunes at the annual meeting for Fort Loudoun EC, Vonore, TN.

Lineman Eric Burton enlivens Tullahoma, TN, UA’s Public Power Week festivities with a demonstration from TUA’s electrical-line trailer.

Volunteer EC, Decatur, TN, went big with the Stars and Stripes for its annual meeting.

Laquisha Tyler, right, and her daughter, Ke’Riyah, enjoy sandwiches provided by Gibson EMC, Trenton, TN, at one of its several member-appreciation events.

Jacob Billingsley of Plateau EC shows students how to be safe around electricity at the cooperative’s Powertown Safety Demonstration.

Winchester, TN, Utilities Manager Roger Caldwell welcomed his service area’s first responders to Public Power Week activities. Utilizing the Job Training & Safety trailer, WU linemen conducted demonstrations regarding live power lines and got rave reviews.

In Clarksville, TN, one of the ways CDE Lightband celebrated Public Power Week was an employee appreciation lunch. Among the attendees were, left to right, Ashley Gibbs, Lindsey Pease, Yolanda Davis and Matt Sharp.

A team representing Cumberland EMC, Clarksville, TN, raised $2,200 for Alzheimer’s research in a Walk to End Alzheimer’s. Shown, left to right, are TEAM CEMC


HOLD THE DATE!January 25-26, 2017

for the2017 EAST TENNESSEE UNDERGROUND

DISTRIBUTION ROUNDUPSponsored by the City of Oak Ridge Electric Department and JTS

with additional support from

This will be a major event focused on Underground Power Distribution with classrooms of qualified, experienced teachers on topics such as underground safety, proper installation of cables, cable termination, troubleshooting, fault location and many more.

The event will kick off with an optional bar-b-cue Wednesday night with live music and a campfire. We’ll get down to serious work on Thursday morning and wrap things up in time to allow you to travel home.

We’re inviting local power companies, their contractors and their vendors from across the Tennessee Valley. Come join us and let’s learn together!

Pre-meeting event: January 25, 2017 at 5:30 pm • Main event: January 26, 2017 from 9:00 am - 4:00 pmCivic Center Complex, Oak Ridge, TN

For more information and to get on our mailing list, call (865) 425-1803 or email [email protected]

FEATURE

as inside, I have to look at all the facts and draw my best conclu-sions—not something based on what some board in Knoxville will tell me is appropriate. My primary issue is to do what’s right for my members, at the right times and for the right rea-sons,” he said.

Henson

Touchin' 'Em AllWhen he took office as TVPPA chairman, at Asheville, NC, in 2013, Henson pledged to “do my best” to make district meetings all over the footprint. He logged thousands of miles and wore out a set of tires, but he got it done - the last box he checked, in fact, was in Mississippi, his home district.

“The personal elements were absolutely the best parts of those visits,” Henson told TVPPA News magazine in 2015. “I attended an Appalachian District meeting. After-wards, I met, for the first time, managers of three small systems in that district. They told me they appreciated that I’d come up there to talk about some issues and give them my perspective.

“I’ve wound up with many, many, many good friends, people with whom I’d happily sit down, have a meal and enjoy the company. There’s no community I go to where I don’t know somebody, and that’s a good thing,” Henson said.”

www.tvppa.com

Henson Heads to Farm . . . (Continued from page 19)

law school, she drew the attention of an instructor who even-tually arranged an internship for Sliz with the U.S. House of Representatives Interior Committee.

The internship turned into a full-time job, and it wasn’t long before Sliz was off to APPA. It was there where she met Radin, the Chattanooga, TN, native who was in the midst of a 35-year run running APPA at the time.

“Alex was the greatest,” Sliz said. “He was a journalist, a writer’s writer. When he asked me, many years later, to edit his work, I was hugely proud. I thought, ‘I have arrived.’”

Radin retired from APPA in 1986, then spent another dozen years running his eponymous consulting firm. Sliz said that from his second retirement to his death in April 2014 at the age of 92, his mind never stopped.

“He wanted ideas from others, particularly young people,” she said. “He had a curiosity about everything—theater, music, politics; he was a renaissance man. He could and would con-verse with anyone and seek their opinions and that was a huge part of what impressed me about him.”

‘This’ll Be Fun’Radin’s firm had been representing TVPPA in Washington. Sliz succeeded him in 1999 and was “pleasantly surprised” at how easily and quickly she was accepted in the male-dominated culture.

“As far as I know, no one objected,”

Sliz Retires . . . (Continued from page 20)



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on staff, budgeting, and regulatory requirements.

MEMBERSHIP PROFILE

History shows that if you take a job at Franklin EC, Russellville, AL, you’re probably going to be

there for a while—and like it. A lot.Foreman Mark

Stockton, for instance, has put in 37 years. Executive Secretary Shelia Malone and Car-olyn Cox, who handles member relations, look like they might have a combined 70 years’ experience breathing, but they’ve actually logged nearly that much time at the coop-erative—Cox 35 years, Malone 33.

“Two-thirds of us have been here at least 20 years,” Malone said.

“Once you come here, you don’t want to leave.

“I think we’ve got the greatest orga-nization ever,” she said. “Just one big family.”

That family’s patriarch is A.H. Akins, who’s been at the cooperative for a stag-gering 58 years. He rose to the top job when his predecessor, Grady Webb, died in 1969.

“We’ve got a bunch of great employ-ees,” said Akins, who, at 88, maintains a 5 a.m.-to-4 p.m. schedule through the

work week. “I just like to be with them.“My management philosophy is

this—treat them the way I’d want to be treated,” he said.

Akins’ approach to business is simi-larly straightforward, Cox said.

“What Mr. Akins has always told us is that the one thing we have to sell is ser-vice,” she said. “If someone moves into a home on our system, they’ve got to buy our power, so we try our dead-level best to sell our service.

“If a member needs a tree trimmed,” she said, “we’ll accommodate that

member as best we can.”For example, Cox said, it used

to be that Franklin EC staff would do paperwork for a member who wanted to finance a heat pump through TVA.

When TVA changed that program, Cox said, Akins decided not to go along.

“A lot of our members are very rural, and don’t have Internet service,” Cox

said. “Many are elderly, and just don’t know how to use computers, so Mr. Akins said we’d just keep doing [the heat-pump program] the way we’d been doing it.

“He wanted to take care of our mem-bers. That’s just the way he’s always been,” Cox said.

Cox

‘Streamlined Operation’The old ways haven’t gone out of style at Franklin EC; notebooks full of handwritten, meticulously compiled information probably outnumber computers.

“We do have [mem-bers] come in here occasionally and say that we’re behind the times,” Cox said.

Even so, the cooperative effectively serves a member base that’s grown sub-stantially over the years—particularly in

MEMBERSHIP PROFILE: Franklin EC

At Franklin EC, Service‘Our One Thing To Sell’

Akins in 58th year at cooperative; manager since 1969

by BOB GARY JR. | Editor

Franklin EC lead lineman Chad Warhurst works to upgrade a line.

Stockton

Malone


A View of the Valley from . . .

MEMBERSHIP PROFILE: Franklin EC

MEMBERSHIP PROFILE

FOUR QUESTIONS with A.H.

Akins, manager at Franklin EC, Russellville, AL:1. You’ve been at Franklin EC for 58 years, but you started here at 30; where did you work before joining the cooperative?I worked for a Buick dealer as the service manager. After I’d been [at the cooperative] about 10 years, a federal judge in Birmingham, who’d been an attorney here in Russellville, called me and said, “I want you to bring your tools up here and tune my car.”2. And you’re a minister, so you work a lot of Sundays, too.

I’m at the office five days a week. I’ll usually watch a ballgame on Satur-days, then preach twice on Sundays. I resigned this past August as pastor at Highland Hill Baptist Church, but I still get calls from different churches.3. You’re an Alabama fan going way back . . . do you have an all-time favorite player?[Early 1960s linebacker] Lee Roy Jordan was probably my favorite player, and “Bear” [legendary coach Paul Bryant] said Lee Roy was the best

player he ever coached. I remember what Bear said about him: “If you want to find Lee Roy, he’ll be where the ball is.”4. Why keep going? Why not retire?I lost my wife 11 years ago. I’d thought about retiring to take care of her, but I’m glad now I didn’t. I have no plans to retire. I just love to work and be around people.

terms of non-residential customers in the last couple of decades.

“I believe we had about 4,000 mem-bers when I came here,” Akins said. “We’ve got about 7,700 now, and the busi-ness is a lot different compared to when I started—the outside operation is differ-ent, with a lot better equipment.”

In 2013, Franklin EC spent a $500,000 to automate its residential meters. Akins said remote cut-ons and cutoffs are coming, and is pleased with the results so far.

“It went real well,” he said. “We had one full-time meter reader, and some-body had to help him about half the time. Now he can just drive down the road and read those meters from the truck. It’s really streamlined the operation,” Akins said.

Cox added that the automated meter-ing has also made a significant financial impact on Franklin EC’s operations.

“The meters have paid for them-selves,” she said. “Our write-offs have gone down and we’ve really become much more efficient.

“One of our next goals is to get

[non-residential meters] automated.”

‘Good People Who Take Pride’Franklin EC’s progress isn’t limited to the office; Stockton, the veteran foreman, said right-of-way is a lot easier than it used to be, which is a big deal for a cooperative with so many rural, agricul-tural members.

“We used to use a farm-type tractor with a bush-hog behind it,” Stockton said with a bemused shake of his head. “For the past 10 years, we’ve been using a skid-der with a rotary ax cutter.

“In terms of day-to-day operation, we get a lot more production and a lot less breakdown,” he said. “Right-of-way used

to be an eight-year process, and now it’s about five.”

Stockton said Franklin EC built its first new substation in 1994. In the 20-plus years since, he said, the cooperative’s built two more substations and over-hauled a third.

“The result is that we’ve drastically improved our service,” he said. “We try to be proactive about a lot of things—building substations, increasing our conductor size.

“Our system is pretty good techni-cally, and we’ve got good people who take pride in doing good jobs and in working safe. That goes up and down our entire system,” Stockton said.

Franklin EC Manager A.H. Akins takes justifiable pride in his cooperative’s many safety awards.


she said. “It may well have been because Alex was from the Valley, and he’d rec-ommended me.

“I remember saying to someone, ‘You know, I’m kind of surprised that all these men have accepted me so easily.’ The person I was talking to said, ‘They think you’re one of the guys.’

“I took that, absolutely, as a compli-ment,” she said.

Sliz rushed to and ran a bunch of races for TVPPA over the last 17 years, advocating fiercely at times, and finess-ing back channels at others, on issues ranging from TVA privatization (more than once) to ‘cherry-picking’ to the early 2000s storm roiled by a number of TVPPA-member utilities who’d served notice of their intent to divorce TVA.

But now it’s nearly over—and she’s good with that.

“I’ve been feeling for about a year like this would be the time,” she said. “My husband and I aren’t getting any younger, and this Congress is ending, so that’s a much cleaner way to go out. It just kind of all came together.”

Sliz said that among the things she won’t miss is the “sharp partisanship” that defines national politics these days. And what will she miss?

“All the people,” she said. “[Former TVPPA Chairman] Wayne Henson said once that the difference between chal-lenge and a problem is the people you get to work with and the fun you have along the way. He was absolutely right, and his words have stuck with me.

“I never, ever dreamed I’d get to work with such fun, smart, dedicated people, and on such challenging issues. I’ve never had a day—and I mean this—when I didn’t want to come into the office. I woke up every day thinking, ‘This’ll be fun.’”

AS SHE SUCCEEDED Alex Radin, Sliz will be succeeded by a razor-sharp pro-fessional in Elizabeth Whitney, who’s worked alongside Sliz for the past six years (see related story). In terms of advice for Whitney and her clients, Sliz offered two words—do more.

“When local power companies speak, their elected officials listen,” Sliz said. “TVPPA, acting collectively, has

tremendous influence, but we need to keep elected officials informed and aware of our issues.

“TVPPA needs to go to D.C. more frequently, and as TVPPA—not as part of an APPA or NRECA rally—to speak on its issues and maintain those long-term relationships. I’d have [TVPPA] come up twice a year, in fact, and I think Elizabeth would want that as well,” Sliz said.

www.tvppa.com

Sliz Retires . . . (Continued from page 22)

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that do tend to be specialty companies like Distributors Insurance Company.

The Rockwood EU StoryThis is all well and good, but how do these intangibles manifest themselves? Often, only in real-life examples.

Following an unfavorable claims-handling experience, Rockwood, TN, EU General Manager Kendall Bear decided in the fall of 2008 that he needed to look at options to the municipal self-insurance pool that had insured his utility for many years. So he contacted DIC staff about

the possibility of obtaining a proposal to insure all of REU’s property-casualty insurance exposures.

We were able to respond with a firm proposal within a few weeks, and REU was so impressed with the breadth of coverage and competitiveness of the pre-miums that its board decided to move its insurance to DIC mid-term on Jan. 1, 2009.

For the most part, REU’s claims experience has been quite good. Perhaps because they have had so few claims over the years, the mishandling of one large claim was particularly noteworthy.

Since becoming a DIC insured seven years ago, “REU has felt like we were important to DIC,” Mr. Bear said. “DIC has worked closely with us to get our property-casualty insurance program where it needed to be, and given us a comfort level across the board, whether it be with safety issues, claims handling, or coverage questions.”

In addition, REU Safety Director Marty Hill states that “moving our insur-ance from the pool to DIC was one of the best decisions we’ve made in years . . . we

know up front what’s going on without wondering if there’s anything happening behind the scenes that we’re unaware of.”

REU came to DIC because of dissatis-faction with the assessable pool that had written their property-casualty insurance program for many years. The cost and coverage made the decision to change an easy one. REU has stayed, and been delighted with its decision, because of the ongoing service, responsive claims han-dling, and sense of partnership between the utility and DIC.

Owning your own insurance com-pany does make a difference.

Risk . . . (Continued from page 12)

Send us information on what’s going on at your utility. Contact BOB GARY at 423.490.7921 or [email protected].

FLASH POINTS » One shouldn’t confuse insurance premi-

ums with insurance costs. » A premium is an up-front fee that buys

peace of mind; cost is the total financial toll on an organization resulting from having insurance in place.

» Cost includes not only premium but intangibles, including whether your policies will perform as anticipated and how your insurer responds to a claim that falls somewhere between ‘maybe covered’ and ‘maybe excluded.’


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1966 – Wheeler Goes West50 YEARS AGO – 1966Wheeler Goes WestTVPPA President (Chairman) Tom Wheeler, manager at Marshall-DeKalb EC, Boaz, AL, traveled to Seattle, WA, to address the Washington Public Utilities Districts Association’s annual meeting. Wheeler talked about progress being made by the Valley’s municipal and cooperative utilities and stressed the need for cooperation among public-power providers nationwide.

The Valley MournsTVPPA was rocked late in the year by three deaths, two of which were in the Southwest Tennessee EMC family; R.E. Rooks was board chairman of the Brownsville, TN, cooperative when he died Nov. 28. Dr. C.B. Betts, who passed away in December, had helped organize Southwest Tennessee EMC in 1935 and had sat on its board from that time until his death. At Appalachian EC, Jefferson City, TN, manager Roy Hendrix died Dec. 23 and was succeeded at the cooperative by Charles Balch.

40 YEARS AGO – 1976Nashvillians Pay LessA Federal Power Commission survey of electric bills in 29 cities nationwide showed that Nashville, TN, ranked third from the bottom in level of electric rates. Of 29 cities surveyed, only electric customers in Seattle, WA, and San Francisco paid less than Nashville’s $16 per 500 kwh. Whose customers paid the most? New York City’s, at $47.61 per 500 kwh—just short of 10 cents per kwh.

30 YEARS AGO – 1986TVPPA Board’s Year-End FlurryThe resignation of TVPPA President (Chairman) Roy Palk made December’s TVPPA Board of Directors meeting an unusually active one. Palk was compelled to step down when he left

Upper Cumberland EMC, Carthage, TN, where he’d been general manager, to join NRECA as executive director of operations. Meeting in Chattanooga, TN, TVPPA’s directors elected Robert Lay of Greeneville, TN, L&PS, who’d been

Palk’s second in command, to the top job. The board also elected James Allen, manager of Tombigbee EPA, Tupelo, MS, to succeed Lay as vice president.

Public Power Picks Up GroundTVPPA News observed that public was a big winner in the midterm elections; the magazine took specific note of the ascendance of two “strong public power

advocates”—U.S. Rep. Jim Wright, D-TX, to the speakership of the House of Representatives and U.S. Rep. Tom Foley, D-WA, to the majority leader’s post. Across the Capitol, U.S. Sen. John Stennis, D-MS, took over as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

20 YEARS AGO – 1996TVPPA Board Stocks CommitteesMeeting in Chattanooga, TN, the TVPPA Board of Directors made several committee appointments; Chattanooga, TN, EPB President/CEO Harold DePriest and Memphis, TN, LG&W Vice President Paul Harris were named to represent the Southeastern and Western districts, respectively, on the Power Supply Planning Committee. Phillip Bare, manager at North Alabama EC, Stevenson, AL, and Albertville, AL, MUB General Manager David Scarbrough were tapped to represent the Alabama District on the Operations Coordination Committee.

Two New ManagersMemphis, TN, LG&W President/CEO Bill Crawford retired, closing the book on a public-power career of 39 years. He was succeeded on an interim basis by Herman Morris. Columbia, TN, PS

General Manager Lindsay Boyd also called it a career and was succeeded by his deputy for the past year, Jim Clark.

10 YEARS AGO – 2006Kilgore, Dye Take ChargeNorma Kilgore succeeded the retiring Joe Boehms as general manager at Natchez Trace EPA, Houston, MS. Kilgore, a University of Mississippi graduate, had previously served as the cooperative’s administration/finance manager. In Fayetteville, TN, Britt Dye took over as interim general manager at Fayetteville PU. Dye’s was a classic rise-through-the-ranks story; he started at FPU as a ground man, then became a journeyman lineman, foreman, substation/metering supervisor and engineering/operations director.

www.tvppa.com

TVPPA TIMELINE

U.S. Rep. Jim Wright, D-TX


Hopkinsville ES’ Austin Carroll To Retire

Carroll

Longtime Hopkinsville, KY, ES General Manager Austin Carroll has announced that he plans to retire in January 2017, some eight months after he was presented TVPPA’s highest honor, the

Richard C. Crawford Distinguished Service Award.

Meeting Oct. 25, the Hopkinsville ES Board of Directors named Jeff Hurd, the utility’s Operations/Engineer-ing manager, to succeed Carroll.

Carroll made no formal retirement

announcement when he accepted the Crawford DSA at the 70th Annual Con-ference, but neither did he leave much room for doubt.

“I’ll be 66 in January, so I’ll be looking at it around then,” he said, “but I’m not going to go home and sit down . . . I do want to stay involved in the industry. It’s in my blood.”

Carroll, who hails from Hohenwald, TN, earned an undergraduate degree at Middle Tennessee State University and an MBA at the University of Tennessee. He spent 13 years at the National Aeronau-tics and Space Administration (NASA) and TVA before signing on in 1986 as chief executive at Hopkinsville ES.

Carroll is a former president and board member of his statewide asso-ciation, a former TVPPA director and a former APPA chair-elect. He only recently stepped down after two consecu-tive terms as chairman of Distributors Insurance Co.

Hurd joined Hopkinsville ES in 2007, on the heels of 17 years at neighboring Pennyrile RECC. He was promoted to his present post in 2015.

“We’re fortunate to have the experi-ence, professionalism and talents of Jeff Hurd to step into Austin’s shoes,” said Hopkinsville ES Chairman John Peck.

Hurd holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Univer-sity of Kentucky and TVPPA’s Certified

Power Technician (CPT) designation.

Seven States Elects Leaders, DirectorsIt’s been a busy few weeks for the Seven States Power Corporation (7SPC) membership.

Meeting Sept. 19 in Chattanooga, TN, 7SPC’s Board of Directors elected Rody Blevins of Volunteer EC, Deca-tur, TN, to succeed Jay Stowe of Hunts-ville, AL, Utilities as chairman. Blevins, who’d been 7SPC’s vice chairman, had been acting chairman since Stowe left Huntsville Utilities in September for a position with TVA.

Greg Fay of Clinton, TN, UB, who’d been 7SPC’s secretary/treasurer, was elected vice chairman. Jim Ferrell of Jackson, TN, EA was elected to succeed Fay as secretary/treasurer.

Those officers are set to serve until the scheduled Dec. 13 meeting of the 7SPC board, for which election of 2017 officers is on the agenda.

On Nov. 3, 7SPC conducted its Annual Meeting in Murfreesboro, TN. The cor-poration’s membership returned Blevins (Division 4), Fay (Appalachian District), Greg Williams (Appalachian EC, New Market, TN; Division 7) and Bart Borden (Cleveland, TN, Utilities; Southeastern District) to its board of directors.

The sole contested election was for the District 9 seat previously held by Jim Nanney, the now-retired general manager at Alcorn Co. EPA, Corinth, MS. The initial vote resulted in a tie between Keith Hayward, the general manager/CEO at North East Mississippi EPA, Oxford, MS; and Mark Kimbell, the gen-eral manager at Gallatin, TN, DE. The tie was ultimately broken by a coin flip, with the Division 9 seat going to Hayward.

There were no candidates for the Ken-tucky District board seat held by Austin Carroll of Hopkinsville, KY, who has announced plans to retire in January.

Jackson EA Names Center For Late CEO WilliamsOfficials at Jackson, TN, EA dedicated the John W. Williams Control Center in

an Oct. 27 ceremony at that building.A two-term TVPPA chairman

(2004–2006), Williams was a University of Tennessee at Martin student when he signed on in 1964 at what was then Jackson Utilities Division. He capped his career by serving from 1990 to 2006 as president/CEO of Jackson UD/Jackson EA.

Williams died Sept. 20, 2015, at the age of 70.

“Naming the Control Center in his honor is an appropriate recognition of John’s commitment to JEA customers and employees, and his remarkable ability to anticipate future needs,” said Jackson EA President/CEO Jim Ferrell.

Meek

PES Energize’s Meek Sets RetirementPES Energize President/CEO Mike Meek has announced plans to retire in January 2017.

Meek joined the Pulaski, TN, utility in August 2012. Prior to

making that move, he’d put in nearly 30

NAMES & NEWS

Hurd

Seven States Power Corporation directors elected Nov. 3 in Murfreesboro, TN, are, from left, Keith Hayward of North East Mississippi EPA, Oxford, MS; Greg Williams of Appalachian EC, New Market, TN; Greg Fay of Clinton, TN, UB; Rody Blevins of Volunteer EC, Decatur, TN and Bart Borden of Cleveland, TN, Utilities.


NAMES & NEWS

The staff at Newport, TN, UB celebrated a safety milestone in September—150,000 hours without a lost-time accident. (Photos courtesy Newport UB)

years at Lawrenceburg, TN, US, where he was serving as chief information officer at the time of his departure.

England

England Takes Reins At SpartaH.L. England has taken over as electric system director at Sparta, TN, E&PW.

England, who was hired Sept. 1 by the util-ity’s board of directors

and started Sept. 6, succeeds the late L.R. West, who died Oct. 29, 2015.

A Sparta native, resident and cattle farmer, England followed in his father’s footsteps and became an electrician at just 20 years of age. He worked for resi-dential and commercial contracting firms before going into business for himself in 1974.

England became a full-time contract electrical inspector for the State of Ten-nessee in 1998, then joined the City of Sparta Codes Department in 2015.

Skelton

Tullahoma Now Authority; Johnson City To Follow SuitHaving checked all the necessary boxes, the TVPPA-member utility led by Brian Skelton is now an authority—Tullahoma, TN, UA, to

be precise.And nearly 300 miles to the east, the

Johnson City, TN, PB Board of Directors has voted to follow suit.

Tullahoma UA’s changeover became official in August, with approval of Ten-nessee General Assembly and Gov. Bill Haslam paving the way for the final OK from the city’s mayor and alder-men. Tullahoma UA remains a nonprofit organization, but is now a state entity—disconnected from the City of Tullahoma, with more flexibility to manage its business.

The city will divest itself of all Tulla-homa UA-related debt and assets, which the new authority will assume by July 31, 2018. Tullahoma UA will issue its own revenue-backed bonds to assume debt currently backed by city-issued bonds.

Skelton, who’d been Tullahoma UB’s general manager and is now Tullahoma UA’s president, said the utility’s custom-ers should see no difference in service. Oversight responsibility for Tullahoma UA’s operation will continue to reside in its five-person board of directors.

In Johnson City, the JCPB Board of Directors voted Oct. 25 to begin the pro-cess of becoming an authority. Johnson City PB CEO Jeff Dykes said becom-ing an authority will allow the utility greater latitude to augment its services through private partnerships.

Johnson City

PB’s conversion to an authority could be complete by year’s end.

Rodamaker/Rushing Team Nabs Power Play WinHe may not quite be up there with death and taxes just yet, but Dan Rodamaker’s a pretty solid bet in a TVPPA-related golf tournament.

The president/CEO at Gibson EMC, Trenton, TN, teamed with Columbus, MS, L&W Electric Superintendent Marcus Rushing; TVA’s Aaron Melda and Win-ston Truett of Alexander Thompson Arnold to win the Power Play Scholarship Association’s annual golf tournament, played Oct. 3 at the Gaylord Springs Golf Links in Nashville, TN.

Rodamaker, Rushing, Melda and Truett combined for a select-shot score of 12-under-par 60. They finished one shot

This team came nowhere near winning October’s Power Play Scholarship Fund golf tournament, but it was a slam-dunk pick for Best Dressed. From left are Morristown, TN, US General Manager/CEO Jody Wigington; Johnson City, TN, PB CEO Jeff Dykes; Greeneville, TN, L&PS General Manager Bill Carroll and TVPPA Vice President Danette Scudder.


NAMES & NEWS

clear of Jim McClure of North East Mississippi EPA, Oxford, MS; Will White of Covington, TN, ES and Carl Brandt of Ser-vice Electric. In third place, at 10-under-par 62, were Jimmy Gregory, general manager at Upper Cumberland EMC, Car-thage, TN; Dr. Wayne Fuller, a board member at Cullman, AL, PB; Josh Fawley of Terex and TVA’s Ryan Leister.

The low scorers on the golf course notwithstanding, the event’s big winners are yet to be determined. They are the 30 high-school seniors and dependents of TVPPA-member util-ity employees who’ll win $4,000 Power Play scholarships next spring.

Mark Meigs, TVA’s general manager for Northeast District Customer Delivery and lead on the Power Play committee, noted that, since its 1995 inception, Power Play has awarded 517 scholarships totaling more than $2 million.

Reid Hedden

Murphy PB Bids Reid, Hedden FarewellWith the retirements of Kathy Reid and Terry Hedden, Murphy, NC, PB will lose more than 80 years of institutional knowledge.

Reid was to have retired Nov. 30 after a stagger-

ing 46 years at Murphy PB. She started there part-time, as a high-school student, then signed on as a full-time cashier after graduation. She retired as the utility’s office manager.

Hedden, who plans to retire at year’s end, would do so having logged nearly 38 years at Murphy PB. He joined the util-ity as a meter reader and lineman, and would retire as its line foreman.

Haney-Led Group Buys Bellefonte SiteA company led by Tennessee businessman Franklin Haney has purchased TVA’s unfinished Bellefonte nuclear site.

Nuclear Development LLC prevailed at a Nov. 14 auction with a bid of $111 millio—nearly three times the minimum bid. Nuclear Development LLC bought two unfinished reactors, sev-eral buildings and 1,600 acres of land on the Tennessee River, but plans to spend as much as $13 billion to make the nuclear generator operational.

According to the company, the project is expected to create as many as 4,000 temporary construction jobs and 2,000 perma-nent jobs once the plant is running.

“The Bellefonte Nuclear Station will help transform com-munities across the region—many of which have been hit hard by the forced closure of coal power plants over the last decade,” Haney said in a statement.

Nuclear Development spokesman Bud Cramer, a former congressman from Alabama, said the company still must complete financing for the project and transfer Bellefonte’s operating license from TVA through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

TVPPA-Member Crews Help ‘Matthew’ RecoverySeveral TVPPA-member crews took unscheduled early-October

road trips to Georgia, Florida and South Carolina to help restore power knocked out by Hurricane Matthew.

TVPPA Vice President Danette Scudder, who once again played a pivotal role in coordinating placement of crews from TVPPA-member utilities, thanked those crews for a job very well done.

“Responding to that call for help is one of the things our members do best, and ‘Matthew’ was a textbook example,” said Scudder, who noted that TVPPA coordination of members’ storm-recovery efforts is key to making sure those efforts are reported as fully and accurately as possible to federal agencies, including FEMA.

“As always, we’re extremely proud of the work done by TVPPA-member crews, representing both municipals and coop-eratives, after such a destructive storm,” she added.

Scudder helped coordinate the placement of crews from, in alphabetical order, Bristol, TN, ES; Bristol, VA, UA; Cleveland, TN, Utilities; Decatur, AL, Utilities; Greeneville, TN, L&P; Huntsville, AL, Utilities; Jackson, TN, EA; Pennyrile RECC, Hopkinsville, KY; Scottsboro, AL, Utilities; Sand Mountain EC, Rainsville, AL and Sevier Co., TN, ES.

Other TVPPA-member utilities sent crews to the coast, but outside the scope of TVPPA coordination.

Watts Bar 2 ‘Complete, Commercial’TVA announced in October that the Watts Bar 2 (WB2) nuclear reactor had officially entered commercial operation.

Located near Spring City, TN, WB2 cleared its final hurdles to commercial operation when it successfully completed an extensive series of power ascension tests and reliably operated at full power for more than three weeks.

“TVA’s mission is to make life better in the Valley by pro-viding reliable, low-cost energy, protecting our area’s natural resources and working to attract business and growth—all priorities simultaneously supported by the completion of Watts Bar Unit 2,” said TVA President/CEO Bill Johnson.

The $4.7 billion capital construction project was completed on budget. The unit now moves to working asset status.

TVA’s Johnson Promotes Grimes, SkaggsTVA President/CEO Bill Johnson has promoted Joe Grimes to executive vice president, Generation and Chief Nuclear Officer and Mike Skaggs to executive vice president, Operations.

Grimes assumes leadership of Power Operations along with Generation Construction, Projects and Services in addi-tion to Nuclear, which he has led since joining TVA in 2013. He has more than 30 years of experience in utility operations, maintenance and engineering management, and has supported nuclear and fossil energy generating stations across the country.

As executive vice president, Operations, Skaggs oversees Safety, Transmission and Power Supply, River Management, Natural Resources, Supply Chain, Infrastructure, TVA Police, and Continuous Improvement. He has over 25 years of leader-ship experience in the utility business, 22 of those years at TVA. Skaggs most recently led the team bringing online the Watts Bar 2 nuclear reactor, the nation’s first new nuclear generating unit of the 21st century.


this is an extreme example, an employer clearly can set an hourly rate well above minimum wage and allow a fair amount of overtime before it would have to pay a non-exempt employee $47,446 per year. An employer can also classify employees as salary non-exempt employees, though special considerations are necessary to ensure that the employer cal-culates “regular rates” and overtime rates correctly.

Employers also may choose to raise salaries to meet the new minimum level. This option will likely alleviate the need to worry about overtime compensation for these employees, but will not be feasible for all employees.

As one additional tool not available to private employers, state and local government employers (including municipal and other local government utilities) may arrange for employ-ees to earn “comp time” instead of cash payment for overtime hours. Still, the local government employer must ensure that it follows requirements in terms of an agreement with employ-ees or their representative, notice, calculation of comp time, and caps on accrual of comp time.

After the first year of implementing these changes, employers should reevaluate whether the chosen modifications are both financially beneficial and conducive to the workplace culture sought by the employer.

Step 3: Communicate Changes to Employees — Employers should be considerate of how employees view a reclassification. For example, some employees may place a certain prestige on being considered exempt or salaried, and others will have to punch a time clock for the first time in their careers.

These changes may result in an employee feeling as if he or she is being demoted. Further, employees may think that they were misclassified in the first place and wonder whether they should file a lawsuit to seek overtime pay.

To reduce employee anxiety, employers should develop a message addressing the changes. In doing so, outline the basics and opt for transparency. An employer should explain what changes have been made and that the changes are being made to comply with a new government rule. Employers also should provide employees with a resource to contact if they have any questions.

If employees are reclassified as non-exempt, emphasize any benefits. For example, if the employee will be limited to a 40-hour week, highlight the potential improvement to the employee’s work/life balance. For those employees who still are required to work over 40 hours per week, underscore that they now are able to receive overtime pay.

Step 4 — Train Your Employees: Previous non-exempt employees may not be used to tracking their hours, so consider providing training on timekeeping policies and procedures. Managers and employees also should be trained on company policy regarding after-hours work, including responding to emails and answering phone calls.

Because tracking the overtime hours of employees working from home could lead to a headache for employers, and even

make certain travel time compensable, consider either pro-hibiting employees from taking company phones and laptops home, or outlining the type of work that is authorized outside of normal working hours, how much time is authorized, and the necessity of recording any and all time worked.

The Trump EffectAlthough Mr. Trump has taken an anti-regulation stance, it remains unclear if and how his election will affect the Final Rule. At one point on the campaign trail, he suggested that he might exempt certain small businesses from the Final Rule. On another wage/hour hot-button issue, Mr. Trump at different points opined that the federal minimum wage should be raised or eliminated.

In short, all bets are off for now. To undo the effect of the Final Rule, the Trump administration would have to propose a new set of regulations, which would undergo a notice/com-ment period. Accordingly, TVPPA members should not expect a sudden change to the overtime regulations upon Mr. Trump’s swearing in.

A number of lawsuits also seek to challenge the Final Rule. Legal challenges may stand a stronger chance against the auto-matic upward adjustments of the minimum base salary every three years in the future, but the most prudent approach is to assume that the Final Rule will remain in effect for the time being.

This article is for informa-tional purposes and does not constitute legal advice. TVPPA-member systems are encouraged to consult their primary counsel to discuss the matters addressed in this article.

Legal . . . (Continued from page 10)

Court in February indicates a strong likelihood that it will grant the request, but the makeup of the Court will make a difference, too.

The stay was written by Scalia, in one of his last acts before passing away in February. A new Justice has not yet been seated to replace him, and the next President will likely be the one that determines who will take Scalia’s place—and how dramatically the Court’s ideological leanings will shift.

If the Court is still missing a member, it is highly likely that it would be confronted with a split decision on the Clean Power Plan. And even if a new Justice has been seated by then, Scalia’s presence and perspective will certainly be missed by the remainder of the panel as it wrestles with how to apply his comments in UARG and honor his intentions with respect to the stay.

In those acts, Scalia seemed to realize even then that the Clean Power Plan was going to be one to watch—even, perhaps, transformative.

Washington Report . . . (Continued from page 9)

FLASH POINTS » The federal Labor Department’s

Final Rule on overtime pay makes significant changes to federal over-time rules.

» The Final Rule became effective Dec. 1, 2016, and more than doubles the minimum guaranteed salary for exempt Executive, Administrative, and Professional employees.


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ADVERTISER DIRECTORYThe following companies support TVPPA by ad-vertising in TVPPA News. Their support enables us to provide you with the quality of publication you expect from your association. Please join us in recognizing these companies, and be sure to tell them you saw their ad in TVPPA News!

A.J. Gallagherwww.ajg.com .................................................................... 13

Alexander Publicationswww.alexanderpublications.net .....................................28

Alexander Thompson Arnoldwww.atacpa.net .................................................................9

Central Service Associationwww.csa1.com .................................................Inside Front

Clearwater Paymentswww.clearwaterpay.com ................................................. 11

Compass Auctionswww.soldoncompass.com ..............................................28

Cooperative Response Centerwww.crc.coop ................................................................... 19

Distributors Insurance Companywww.distributors-insurance.com ............................. Back

East Tenn. Underground Distribution Roundup............................................................................................22

Electric Power Systemswww.epsii.com .................................................................28

Fisher Arnoldwww.fisherarnold.com ......................................................4

GDS Associateswww.gdsassociates.com ................................................26

Leidoswww.leidos.com ...............................................................23

National Insurance Solutions Cooperative (NISC)www.nisc.coop ...................................................................7

PowerTech Engineeringwww.pt-eng.com ................................................................4

Service Electric Companywww.serviceelectricco.com ...........................................29

Stanley Consultantswww.stanleyconsultants.com ........................................ 17

TVPPA Business Developmentwww.tvppa.com ...............................................................27

TVPPA Conferenceswww.tvppa.com ............................................... Inside Back

TVPPA eResourcewww.tvppa.com ...............................................................28

Looking for an economical way to reach the entire electric utility industry in the Tennessee Valley? Let TVPPA deliver your message for you. For advertising rates and information, call Tim Daugherty at 423.756.6511 or send e-mail to [email protected].

THE LAST WORD

President/CEO: Jack Simmons423.490.7918 • [email protected]: Judy Hughes423.490.7912 • [email protected]: Judy Hughes423.490.7912 • [email protected]/Membership: Tim Daugherty423.490.7930 • [email protected]: Phillip Burgess423.490.7928 • [email protected]: Tim Daugherty423.490.7930 • [email protected]

Conferences: Diana Bryant423.490.7923 • [email protected] & Training: John Cooke423.490.7927 • [email protected] Relations: Phillip Burgess423.490.7928 • [email protected] Services: Kari Crouse423.490.7918 • [email protected]/Pricing: Jim Sheffield423.490.7925 • [email protected] Services: Doug Peters423.490.7924 • [email protected]

Timely Tech Tip

WITH OUR BUSY SCHEDULES, it is hard to stay abreast of what is happening in our industry

with so many moving parts and pieces—what’s the latest on solar, storage, smart inverters, customer engagement, etc.?

You can always go a quick Google search but you can’t always find what you need and can’t be sure the information has been thor-oughly and rigorously investigated.

Luckily, our research partners such as the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and E Source publish periodic newsletters and updates for their members to fill this need. They provide a wealth of information in a condensed manner that allows us to stay current without a large time commitment and with the knowledge that the information is reliable and accurate.

Some recent examples of these publica-tions and subject matter include:

» EPRI Power Quality Newsletter (status of revisions to IEEE Standard 1547 around flicker and harmonics requirements)

» EPRI Energy Storage/Distributed Gen-eration Strategic Intelligence Update (updating distribution resource planning in California)

» EPRI Solar PV Market Update (updating PV capacity additions and prices)

» E Source Social Media Highlights/Insights/Spotlights (social media key in helping

utilities educate customers about utility drone use and safety)

» E Source Excerpted Results from E Source Multi-Client Study (ways to help residen-tial customers understand their utility bill)

» Esource TechScan: A Resource Center for Emerging Technology (one-stop shop for all the emerging technologies E Source has recently evaluated)

The above are just a few illustrations while additional information is available on most any electric utility topic of interest you might have. Both EPRI’s and E Source’s websites can be searched for these or even better, sign up to have these resources emailed directly to you when they become available.

If you would like additional information, please contact David Smith by phone at 423.751.4785 or via e-mail at [email protected]. Additionally, to sign up for an EPRI or E Source website account, please go to www.epri.com and/or www.esource.com and reg-ister. If you have any trouble, contact TVA’s DeJim Lowe at 423.751.2660 or via e-mail at [email protected].

Brought to you by EPRI Distribution Program advisors John Bowers and Joey Lawson of Pick-wick EC, Selmer, TN; Philip Lim of Murfreesboro, TN, ED; Jack Suggs of Oak Ridge, TN, ED and TVPPA’s Clint Wilson.

TVPPA STAFF QUICK REFERENCE

‘The electro-magnetic issue.’

— Retiring TVPPA Washington Representative Deborah Sliz, asked by

TVPPA News magazine what, if anything, she’d miss about her job

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Competitively Priced Insurance Coverage.Distributors Insurance Company has provided utility-specific property-casualty insurance coverages at com-petitive premiums to more TVPPA members than any other insurer or program since its 1983 inception. What does this mean? It means it costs little more to go first class and have the broadest property-casualty insurance coverages and most professional claims and loss control services available.Owning your own insurance company does make a difference.

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Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, Inc.

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