Congressmen Cohen and Burchett Reintroduce Measure to Require TVA Salary Disclosure

WASHINGTON -- Congressmen Steve Cohen (TN-9) and Tim Burchett (TN-2) today reintroduced a measure ensuring the public has access to information about the salaries of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) employees making more than $123,041 annually, or the maximum basic pay rate of a General Schedule Grade 15 (GS-15) Federal employee. At a 2023 oversight hearing before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, TVA CEO Jeff Lyash, who earned $10.5 million in 2023, making him the highest-paid federal government employee, testified that TVA has repeatedly declined requests to provide salary information, citing  a 1995 federal law (the Federal Reports Elimination and Sunset Act), which eliminated a previous requirement in the TVA Act mandating annual salary disclosures to Congress.

The bill introduced today would restore that disclosure requirement for employees over the GS-15 pay threshold. A similar measure passed the House in March of last year but was not taken up by the Senate before the 118^th Congress adjourned last month.

Congressmen Cohen and Burchett introduced a bill in 2022 to amend the Ethics in Government Act to require certain TVA employees to include compensation in annual disclosure reports. 

Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

“I have been asking for transparency on TVA salaries for years. There is certainly no good reason to keep the public in the dark. Our bill will remove the secrecy. Justice Louis Brandeis told us long ago that sunlight is a great disinfectant. More transparency will prevent salary abuses.”

Congressman Burchett made the following statement:

“There’s no such thing as too much transparency. If we don’t have trust from the people we represent, what do we have? I’m glad TN-09 and TN-02 could reintroduce this bill to provide much-needed transparency to the folks who elected us.”

# # #