Trump puts utility in crosshairs over foreign labor, CEO pay

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When he joined the Tennessee Valley Authority as CEO last year, Jeff Lyash offered up a lighthearted goal in an interview: to never be "on either end, good or bad, of a presidential tweet.”

Turns out, that was too much to ask for.

Thanks to President Donald Trump, Lyash has had a head-spinning August as the head of the nation's largest public utility, created in 1933 under the New Deal to provide electricity, flood control and economic development to Tennessee and parts of surrounding states.

Trump had already been complaining about a vote to close a TVA Kentucky coal plant, which predated Lyash. Trump grumbled again in April about Lyash's compensation for running the independent agency, which makes him the highest-paid federal employee. Then an advocacy group's TV ad — aimed at an audience of one — hit its target.

The ad in July, which criticized a TVA plan to outsource 20% of its technology jobs to companies based in foreign countries — produced a Trump tweet, and soon thereafter, a White House meeting, where Trump met with some of the in-house IT workers who were set to be replaced, fired the TVA's chairman and another board member, and called for Lyash to be replaced by a new CEO whose salary would be capped at $500,000.

During that Aug. 3 meeting, Trump received a note from chief of staff Mark Meadows that said Lyash had called the White House promising to address the labor concerns. Lyash then had his own White House meeting three days later, reversing course on the IT layoffs.

“We were wrong in not fully understanding the impact on our employees, especially during the pandemic,” Lyash said in a statement after he and interim board chairman John Ryder met with White House officials. “We are taking immediate actions to address this situation. TVA fully understands and...