May 28, 2026, 4:53 a.m. ET
The board that sets policy for the nation’s largest public utility will be down two members in January and short a quorum needed to conduct business for the second time in under a year if President Donald Trump and the U.S. Senate don’t secure replacements in the coming months.
Four of the six men appointed to the federal Tennessee Valley Authority’s nine-member governing board are serving terms that end at the earliest May 2027. The terms of TVA directors Art Graham of Florida, appointed to the role by Trump, and Bobby Klein of Chattanooga, picked by former President Joe Biden, expired May 18.
Graham, the only one of TVA’s current directors to live outside of the utility’s seven-state service region, joined the board in January. He served on the Florida Public Service Commission, a utility regulator, for over 15 years. Klein, who joined the board in 2023, has worked as an electrician and former vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
But lacking replacements, both Graham and Klein continue to serve on the TVA board until Jan. 3 when a new congressional term begins.
TVA spokesperson Melissa Greene said in a text that directors like Graham and Klein aren’t asked whether they intend to continue serving after their term expires. The law that created TVA in the 1930s permits them to stay through the current congressional term, which will end in early January.
Full terms on the board last five years. Annual stipends in the last year amounted to $62,300 for directors, with more money allotted to committee chairs and the board chair.
Trump can name new board members for TVA, and he can fire them − a power he and only one other president have ever exercised. The U.S. Senate has to confirm his picks before they can serve.
The president in both terms has taken historic interest in the utility and aim at its leadership. Since returning to the White House in 2025, he’s directed it to lower pay for some of its highest-earning employees and slammed it for since-reversed plans to retire some coal-fired units. Tow of his close allies in the U.S. Senate, Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, both Republicans, also slammed the utility’s leaders for lack of progress on nuclear initiatives.
The president has reshaped the federal utility’s board, which is now dominated by his picks. The departure of Klein would give Trump space to strengthen his appointees’ power on the board with another director as the utility contends with rising energy demand, aging infrastructure and its plans to build small modular nuclear reactors.
Biden appointee off TVA board by January
TVA’s directors almost always stay on the board until a congressional session concludes, according to TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks. Brooks told Knox News the only exceptions in the decades since service on the panel went from a full-time role to part-time were five directors who’ve been fired and four who’ve resigned. One director resigned after the expiration of a service term, he said.
But the expiration of Klein’s term is a moment former TVA board member Susan Richardson Williams said she expected the president to seize.
“I can’t imagine the president would allow that to happen,” she said by phone of the idea Klein stays on the board for an extended period. “I have to believe the president would be working quickly to supply a nominee because of his interest in TVA.”
Klein’s exit would reduce to one the number of appointees on the TVA board made by Biden. Wade White of Kentucky, the other Biden appointee, was confirmed for a term that ends May 18, 2027.
Besides Graham and Klein’s expired terms, there are three vacant seats on the board as of May 27 − two of them opened after Trump fired several directors in 2025 and one from which former Chair Bill Renick of Mississippi resigned in March.
Trump removed three directors − all chosen by Biden − months after returning to the White House, without providing a reason. The firings left TVA without the five-member quorum its board needs to take votes on things like budgets, rate changes and nuclear policy for about nine months, the longest period of gridlock in the federal utility’s modern history.
How does TVA get new directors?
Replacing a TVA director takes time. The Senate has to approve their appointments, and that process can stretch out between committee hearings and votes from all 100 senators.
Trump nominated Graham in July 2025, and he joined the board months later. The Republican-dominated Senate confirmed Graham in December, and he was sworn into his new role in January, along with several Trump appointees. He was renominated to the role earlier this year for a full, five-year term.
But the Senate committee with jurisdiction over appointments to the TVA board has not acted on Graham’s nomination or the nomination of auto magnate Lee Beaman of Nashville to fill a board seat vacated after Trump fired former board Chair Joe Ritch, an Alabamian.
Richardson Williams, the former director, said the replacement process is lengthy for a reason.
“It’s not easy being appointed to the Tennessee Valley Authority board,” she said. Prospective directors undergo federal background checks and security screenings before they’re seated. Those are thorough, she recalled.
Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email: mariah.franklin@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01
