Sponsors (2)
The bill strengthens GAO's audit authority and provides aggregate transparency about senior TVA staffing, but at the cost of withholding individual salary identities from public disclosure, trading broader oversight access for limited privacy/insulation of executive pay.
Taxpayers will get an annual TVA report showing how many management-level TVA employees earn at or above the GS-15 max and what their duties are, improving high-level staffing transparency.
Taxpayers and federal employees benefit from clarified and modernized GAO audit language that gives clearer authority and personnel-selection rules for TVA audits, which should improve oversight quality and audit effectiveness.
Taxpayers, journalists, and watchdogs lose access to individual TVA employee names and salary details (removed from FOIA/mandated reports), reducing the public's ability to detect pay irregularities or favoritism and weakening external scrutiny.
Federal employees named in the report will have reduced public visibility into their compensation, shifting more control over disclosure to the Corporation and thereby eroding accountability over spending and executive pay decisions.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires TVA to list names, salaries, and duties of management paid at or above GS‑15 annually and exempts that list from certain public‑access laws.
Official title: Amend the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 to provide that the Federal Reports Elimination and Sunset Act of 1995 does not apply to certain reports required to be submitted by the Tennessee Valley Authority, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Marsha Blackburn · Last progress April 8, 2025
Rewrites TVA law to change what the Tennessee Valley Authority must report about high-paid managers and board members: it requires an annual list of management-level employees earning at or above the maximum GS‑15 rate and their names, salaries, and duties, but it also creates a new statutory exemption preventing that listed salary information from being disclosed under certain public‑access laws. The bill also modernizes language and updates audit and procurement references without changing those authorities' substance.