Skip to main content

Stokes a No-Show at TVARS Meeting on Retiree Voting

On Monday November 6, a Special TVARS Board meeting was held to discuss and vote on a proposed rule amendment to improve TVARS governance and provide more accountability to TVA retirees.

Sam DeLay, Jim Hovious and I proposed an amendment which provides for election of the TVA retiree director (the 7th director) by all TVA retiree members of the system. It ensures that the 7th director seat will always be occupied by a TVA retiree. The 7th director is key to ensuring that the TVARS Board follows good governance practices and meets the needs of all TVARS constituents. Our proposed amendment also stipulates that the 7th director must be free of any financial ties or business relationships with TVA, with the exception of receiving a TVARS pension. The actual proposed amendment can be read here.

A roll-call of those in attendance was taken:
  • PRESENT:  Sam DeLay; Jim Hovious: Leonard Muzyn
  • ABSENT:  Brian Child; Allen Stokes; Wilson Taylor; Tammy Wilson
We were unable to conduct business because we lacked a quorum.

Allen Stokes is the TVA retiree member of the TVARS Board. He is paid $10,000 per year in addition to travel expenses for his work on the board. TVA retirees and employees can contact Allen Stokes or other TVARS Board Directors through TVARS. If you send an email, you may want to call for confirmation that your email was received and that it was delivered to the appropriate TVARS Director. Emails from outside TVA can become trapped in spam filters:

Mr. Pat Brackett, TVARS Executive Secretary
865-632-8578

If Allen Stokes realizes how important this is to TVA retirees, the four of us can call for another special meeting to discuss and vote on the proposed amendment. At a time when many companies are off-loading pension liabilities by paying insurance companies to take over the responsibility of making pension payments to retirees, good TVARS governance and stable retiree representation on the TVARS Board may prove crucial.

TVA retirees may want to initiate discussions of this proposed amendment within their various retiree groups and organizations, the links to two of which are provided below:






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Task Assigned to the TVARS Board

The TVARS board is required to recommend a contribution from TVA to be made in fiscal year 2014 prior to the end of the current fiscal year.  (See Section 9B on pages 51-53 of the rules here .)  Since TVA sets its budget months before the end of the fiscal year, it is imperative that this recommended amount be: decided upon by the TVARS board as quickly as possible; sufficient to adequately fund TVARS; and consistent with the amounts charged to ratepayers for pension expense. All seven TVARS board members have an obligation to come together to accomplish this.  (See TVARS board members here .)  I sincerely hope we will be able to accomplish this without further rule changes suspending TVA contributions, or further claims that legitimate accrued benefits are not really vested and must be reduced.  I hope we will be able to put an end to our failure to insure that amounts paid by TVA ratepayers for pension expense are used for their intended purpose.  As a TVARS board member, I

Introduction

This is my personal blog to facilitate communication among TVA employees, retirees and beneficiaries who are members of TVARS and who wish to preserve their retirement benefits. Please join my site and post your comments.  I have been an elected member of the TVA Retirement System (TVARS, or the system) board of directors since 2003. I am not speaking officially for the TVARS board of directors or TVA management. TVARS is an entity legally independent of TVA. Three of the board members are TVA employees (including myself), three are appointed by TVA management (currently all TVA executive managers), and the seventh is generally a retired TVA employee (appointed by the other six). As TVA employees, we all have a duty of loyalty to carry out directives issued by TVA management in our regular TVA jobs. However, each board member has a fiduciary duty to all the members of the system when performing TVARS duties. This fiduciary duty legally supercedes our duty of loyalty to carry out direct

Why do TVARS board meetings remain closed?

Within the next couple of months, the TVARS board must vote on a contribution amount to recommend that TVA make in fiscal year 2014. In conjunction with the contribution amount, it is possible the vote will include amendments to the rules. In conjunction with the contribution amount in 2009, the rules were amended to: suspend contribution requirements and related actuarial valuations for four years (Section 9B9); suspend the requirement that part of the contribution go to the “excess COLA account,” which was designed to accumulate and grow funds to be used for payment of future COLAs (Sections 9B9, 10D1 and 10D2); and reduce legitimate accrued pension benefits (Sections 6I, 7L and 18C3). The vote in 2009 was not open to observation, and unless the TVARS board takes action, neither will the vote this year. Not one of the six other TVARS board members would second the motion I made in December to open TVARS meetings to observation. All that is required to open future boa