Different versions of NES bill pass Tennessee House, Senate

Williamson County could soon get a seat on the Nashville Electric Service board after a bill to expand representation passed the Tennessee Senate and House of Representatives this week.

SB2102 passed the Senate in a 21-11 vote and passed the House with amendments in a 66-23-7 vote. The bill headed back to the Senate on Thursday, which did not concur in the amendments, sending the legislation to a conference committee with legislators from both chambers to work out the differences.

This legislation would allow counties with more than 3,500 ratepayers — who are part of a municipally owned electric company, but don’t reside in that municipality — to have a seat on the company’s board.

The county mayor would appoint the member through county commission approval.

This bill also only applies to a municipally owned electric company that services at least 50,000 customers outside its home county and is located in a county with a population of at least 350,000 people. At this point, that means only Nashville Electric Service is impacted. 

Davidson County will retain the majority of seats on the board, and any new members would join the board on July 1 if Gov. Bill Lee signs the bill or allows for 10 days for it to go into law without his signature. 

Several Democrats, especially those representing Nashville, pushed back against the bill with Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) saying, “[We’re] quite literally talking about a power grab here.” 

Sen. Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) declared, “no electrification without representation.” Johnson sponsored a separate NES representation bill that failed in a House committee in March before the effort was revived by House Rep. Clark Boyd (R-Lebanon) and Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) with the current bill.

“This is just pure targeting, and it’s pure targeting for what? Being someone who was affected by the winter storm, I defy you to find any logic that would say that any of those problems were caused by a lack of geographic diversity of the board. There might be arguments to do improvements. There’s actually been a lengthy study on that,” Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) said.

“It frankly makes the governance far less accountable to the actual users, and if you were affected by this type of storm, the last thing you would want, Mr. Speaker, is to make this group less accountable, to undermine sensible governance.”

Boyd represents a portion of Wilson County that would get a seat under this bill, but Rep. Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville), who has voted against the bills throughout the session, said, “you ought to be thankful that we give you electricity.” 

NES services 10,866 customers in Williamson County, which makes up portions of Brentwood.

The Williamson County Commission and Brentwood City Commission both passed resolutions earlier seeking representation, as the City of Brentwood reports that it collected more than 323,000 cubic yards of storm debris. Much of that was tree limbs, which were transported and ground into mulch in a weeks-long operation that closed Granny White Park.