Last month, one of the worst ice storms on record wreaked havoc across parts of Tennessee. Nashvillians got hit particularly hard, not so much with more ice, but by the dereliction of its utility provider. Nashville Electric Service (NES) has been thrust into the spotlight after more than 250,000 customers went without power, some for nearly two entire weeks. NES is being criticized for horrid preparation decisions, mismanagement of the storm recovery, and now for hiring lobbyists to clean up their mess.
Before the storm even hit, trouble was brewing. News reports indicate that NES slashed its tree trimming budget by one-third to “protect the tree canopy.” Even as NES cut back on tree trimming, its own internal auditors warned of the dire consequences of leaving tree limbs dangling precariously over power lines.
Once the storm arrived, the NES failures snowballed. Reports suggest the utility was woefully understaffed with linemen. Neighboring Middle Tennessee Electric prepped 50% more linemen than NES despite serving significantly fewer customers and facing far fewer power outages.
Even with the linemen it did staff, NES was reportedly unable to integrate them into its logistics, leaving many of them sitting idly while customers’ outages extended into a second week. This was not the only logistical failure by NES. Despite spending $250 million on a text alert system designed to notify customers of outages and power restoration, NES scrapped the text messages altogether when customers reported receiving erroneous updates.
Given NES’s rapid-fire failures, it’s no surprise that both city and state leaders are calling for change in how the utility operates. Those calls range from the firing of CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin to rejiggering the NES board of directors. The latter is currently appointed exclusively by Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell even though NES has customers in six other counties.
How has NES responded to the crisis? Not with a mea culpa. Rather, NES is circling the wagons by hiring at least two high-profile lobbying firms to represent it at the state legislature to fend off reforms to its operations or structure. We’ve long called for reform to the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying, whereby local government entities spend millions of dollars hiring private lobbyists to represent them at the state capitol in Nashville. But this NES response is probably the most glaring example of the need for reform.
How much is NES spending on all these lobbyists? We have no idea.
Unlike private companies and nonprofit organizations like our own advocacy partner, Beacon Impact, NES is exempt from public disclosures stating how much it spends on lobbying because it is a government entity. That’s right, private entities must disclose how much of their own money they spend to lobby, yet government bodies don’t have to disclose how much they spend of your money doing the same thing. We believe that all government entities should be required to disclose how much they spend hiring lobbyists to influence legislation, NES included.
Just as the ice storm finally passed and the sun began to shine through the clouds again, it’s now time to shine some sunlight on taxpayer-funded lobbying.