Leonard Muzyn's TVARS Blog

TVA employee pension costs charged to ratepayers over the last ten years appear to exceed the amounts TVA chose to contribute to the pension fund by $605 million. The yearly amounts obtained from publicly available information are detailed in a January 20, 2013 letter to TVA’s President and CEO from Daniel Pitts , a TVA Retiree. Pension costs can fluctuate from year to year based on current market conditions and assumptions that TVA and its actuary use to estimate pension costs. Accordingly, there is no expectation that the amount of funds collected and contributed annually will closely correspond. However, over a multi-year period, it would be reasonable to expect that the cumulative amounts would be more closely aligned than the results presented in the letter. The following statement about the pension fund appears on page 6 of the 2012 TVA budget proposal submitted to Congress: “TVA’s proposed budget assumes that annual contributions continue in 2011 and 2012 consistent with ...

The Retirement board has not extended the inclusion of lump-sum payments in lieu of base wage or salary increases in pension and 401K matching calculations for fiscal year 2013 (beginning October 1, 2012).  Prior to this year, they had been extended each year since 1999.  Winning Performance lump-sum payments are included and do not have to be extended each year.   From page 6 of the Rules and Regulations of the TVA Retirement System : *Provided, however, that earnable compensation shall include... lump-sum payments of up to 4 percent of regular salary or wages for Fiscal Years 1999 through 2012 , which TVA informs the System were made available, in lieu of a base wage or salary increase , across a represented or non-represented group of employees as agreed to during annual negotiations, in the case of represented groups, or approved by TVA in connection with an annual review of management and excluded compensation. Provided further, that earnable compensation...

This is my personal blog to facilitate communication among TVA employees, retirees and beneficiaries who are members of TVARS and who wish to preserve their retirement benefits. Please join my site and post your comments.  I have been an elected member of the TVA Retirement System (TVARS, or the system) board of directors since 2003. I am not speaking officially for the TVARS board of directors or TVA management. TVARS is an entity legally independent of TVA. Three of the board members are TVA employees (including myself), three are appointed by TVA management (currently all TVA executive managers), and the seventh is generally a retired TVA employee (appointed by the other six). As TVA employees, we all have a duty of loyalty to carry out directives issued by TVA management in our regular TVA jobs. However, each board member has a fiduciary duty to all the members of the system when performing TVARS duties. This fiduciary duty legally supercedes our duty of loyalty to carry out di...