Bottorff re-elected TVA chairman

Nashville banker Dennis Bottorff will remain as chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority even though his term of office is scheduled to end next month.

Bottorff, the 62-year-old head of Council Ventures in Nashville, was re-elected for another year as chairman by the TVA board during its meeting in Chattanooga on Thursday.

TVA Director Barbara Haskew nominated Bottorff for another year as head of the nine-member board and proposed adding a vice chairman position in case a successor to Bottorff is named in the next year and he has to give up his position.

Haskew proposed, and the TVA board approved, the election of Knoxville businessman Bill Sansom as vice chairman.

Sansom, who served as TVA's chairman from 2006 to 2009 and was reappointed to the TVA board last year by President Barack Obama, would become chairman if Bottorff leaves TVA before May 18, 2012.

The five-year term of Bottorff and another former chairman, Mike Duncan, ends May 18.

But under the TVA Act, the two Republicans may continue to serve until Obama appoints and the U.S. Senate confirms their successors or until the end of the year, whichever comes first.

The White House has yet to nominate anyone to replace either Bottorff or Duncan and the Senate is still waiting to confirm the appointment of former Oxford, Miss., Mayor Richard Howorth to the TVA board position vacated last year by the retirement of Howard Thrailkill.

"I am honored and humbled," Bottorff said after the TVA board unanimously approved his re-election as chairman.

TVA is the nation's largest government utility and is governed by a nine-member board appointed by the president.

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