Ice storm exposed NES transparency failures. Delays continue.

• Nashville Electric Service is facing scrutiny for its response to Winter Storm Fern and a lack of transparency regarding its operations.
• The utility has taken days or weeks to provide basic information like detailed budgets and salaries, which are public records.
• Following the storm, NES hired multiple new communications and government-relations firms, despite already having a multi-million dollar contract with a PR agency.
• Open-government advocates and public officials have criticized NES for hindering access to information and for poor communication during the power outages.

Ken Smith kept checking the outage map. His house wasn’t there.

The resident of Joelton, 15 miles north of downtown Nashville, had lost power for roughly five days during Winter Storm Fern, and unsure when it would return, he and his wife went to a hotel. He said he refreshed Nashville Electric Service’s outage tracker again and again, but his home “wasn’t even on the map of outages so we really had no idea.”

He didn’t learn power had returned from NES at all. He found out by checking his security cameras.

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell later described what many residents felt in those days: the “fear of not knowing what’s happening and how long it will take to simply return home.”

Weeks after the storm, that same uncertainty has reappeared in a different form.

As the publicly owned Nashville Electric Service remains under scrutiny for its storm response, the utility has taken days or weeks to readily provide some basic operational details about how it runs, including salaries, precise staffing levels and detailed budgets, raising new questions about transparency at the city’s sole energy provider. Meanwhile, the utility has beefed up its political consultants, government-relations advisers and crisis communications firms.

Open‑government advocates said access to budgets and other operations information is required under public records law and is essential for public oversight, with the law setting expectations for timely access.

“The idea behind the public records laws, putting that right into code, is that basically people have a right to know what their government is doing because frankly it is the public’s records,” said Tennessee Coalition for Open Government Director Deborah Fisher. “The public, to be able to make informed decisions in a democratic government, needs to be able to have access to information.”

The Nashville Electric Service provides annual reports since 2020 on its website. The reports include audited financial totals but do not show detailed, line‑item spending or identify specific vendors and contracts. They explain how much money was spent overall but don’t clearly connect those spending decisions to customer rates or bill impacts.

“The basic financial statements are designed to provide readers with a broad overview of NES’s finances in a manner similar to that of a private-sector business and report on the non-fiduciary activities of NES,” NES’ 2025 Annual report states.

What public records is NES required to provide ratepayers?

NES is a quasi-governmental entity subject to Tennessee’s Public Records Act, which gives Tennessee citizens the right to inspect public records.

The law requires records custodians to promptly make non-exempt records available. If that isn’t practicable, the custodian must, within seven business days, provide the records, deny the request with a stated basis, or provide the time “reasonably necessary” to produce them.

Fisher said the statute is meant to ensure public agencies don’t turn access into a moving target because access to this information is a basic democratic right.

“The government is owned by the people and so the people should have access to information about the people’s business,” she said. “There are other forms of government, such as in China, where you don’t have a right but in our form of government there is a very specific right to information. A right to proactively access it.”

Records requests: Days, weeks of waiting for basic operational details

While NES posts high-level budget information on its website, such as how much was spent on power, operating costs and revenues by major accounting categories, details like the number of employees, major capital projects like technology investments, and salaries are not included.

On Feb. 18, The Tennessean filed a public records request to view NES’ detailed annual budgets for the past 10 years.

On Feb. 27, NES responded, notifying The Tennessean that the electronic records would cost $70. The fee was attributed to the hours required to find and review the budgets before sending, an NES representative wrote.

“I consulted with NES’s Accounting Department as they assisted me in producing your records request,” NES Certified Paralegal Audria Patterson wrote, in response to questions about the cost and time spent gathering the records. “While the budget documents exist in finalized form, they are not maintained in a single, ready-to-produce location. Accounting was required to locate the records across internal systems, convert certain files, compile related board materials, and review the documents to ensure they were complete, accurate, and responsive to your request. Lastly, a final review was conducted before production to avoid providing incomplete or incorrect records.”

The $70 bill for these electronic records was only payable via mail or in person, Patterson said.

For comparison, the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority website includes detailed budgets and financial documents going back to 2004, allowing the public to review spending details, including outside contracts, without filing a public records request.

State guidance on public-records access cautions that excessive fees and procedures should not be used to hinder access to non-exempt public information.

When asked why NES does not publicly publish certain financial data, John Dunn, director of communications at the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, said those materials should be made available upon request.

“Certainly, their budget document is a public record and would be available for any Tennessee citizen that makes a request,” Dunn said in a Feb. 12 statement.

Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury provides a document explaining “Best Practices and Guidelines” on public records requests for state departments.

“Any practices and procedures, including charging fees, should not be used to hinder the exercise of rights granted to citizens under the TPRA,” the Comptroller’s document states.

On Feb. 9, The Tennessean filed a records request for the salaries of the utility’s top executives, which was not publicly available in the utility’s limited budget information posted on its website.

The request asked for base salary, bonuses or incentive pay, deferred compensation, retirement or pension contributions and other benefits or allowances. NES provided information on Feb. 25 showing overall compensation for executives, but other details like bonuses or incentive pay were not provided.

The Tennessean is also seeking more information on basic operational details, including additional crew requests and lineman contracts in relation to the ice storm.

On Feb. 2, a Tennessean reporter filed a public records request for this information including intergovernmental and NES communications connected to ice storm preparation. NES has yet to provide the information, asking for more time due to the extensiveness of the request.

NES bolsters communications staff

The public-records friction comes as NES continues to face questions about its public communications during the storm itself.

During Winter Storm Fern’s immediate aftermath, transparency concerns surfaced in inconsistent outage information and limited explanations.

Roughly one week into the storm, O’Connell criticized NES, saying it was “unequipped to communicate about a crisis,” after a Feb. 2 meeting with the utility company.

Despite those criticisms, public records show the utility has spent millions of dollars on communications.

NES has contracted with Finn Partners, Nashville’s largest public relations firm, for 15 years. From Jan. 1, 2018, through Jan. 15 of this year, NES paid Finn more than $15.4 million for services, public records show. The contracts covered a “full spectrum” of services including marketing, advertising, media relations and outage support.

NES said Finn provided Winter Storm Fern-related communications support pro bono.

NES in the wake of the storm has brought on four other communications consulting firms for local government and community relations, including Benchmark Communications, BHA Strategy, Hall Strategies and Stones River Group.

The utility hired Benchmark Communications for emergency communications support during the early recovery period and expects to pay the firm on an invoice basis.

BHA Strategy, led by Gov. Bill Lee’s former Chief of Staff Blake Harris, was hired to assist with disaster operations and crisis communications; NES said that work is being provided pro bono.

In February, NES hired Hall Strategies for six months of consulting support to its primary Metro government liaison at a cost of $30,000, and Stones River Group, led by Gov. Bill Haslam’s former Chief of Staff Mark Cate, for a four‑month strategic consulting contract valued at $110,000.

NES said it plans to commission an independent review of its storm response to assess the causes of prolonged outages and identify improvements ahead of future severe weather events.

Still, NES CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said the utility fell short in communicating to the media and public officials.

“One thing that we’ve realized through this storm is that internally we don’t have nearly the communications personnel we need to,” Broyles-Aplin said during a recent Electric Power Board meeting. “We especially don’t have ones that can be responsive to media inquiries and public official inquiries. We have very limited staff in that area.”

Broyles-Aplin said NES aims to hire an in-house public information officer: “Having someone integrated into the organization that already knows the operations and can sit in on some of the operational meetings and then report out and provide information to the public.”

At a Feb. 7 press conference, Broyles-Aplin also acknowledged the public’s expectations. “Accountability is important, I understand that everyone can agree our customers deserve the absolute best service,” she said.

For residents like Smith, the debate over information access is about more than process. It’s about what people can know, and when.

Smith said he didn’t receive notifications from the utility that indicated his power was turned on. Some customers received false restoration notifications, an issue that drew the attention of U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN.

In an open letter addressed to NES, Blackburn cited reports raising “concerns with the Nashville Electric Service’s handling of Winter Storm Fern,” including claims of falsified restoration announcements.

“You owe your customers transparency, accountability, and a clear explanation of how this breakdown occurred and how you will prevent this from happening in the future,” Blackburn wrote.

For Fisher, the stakes extend beyond any single storm — or any single request.

“If a government entity is doing things the public doesn’t know they’re doing, or making mistakes, the public can’t petition their governments for change. That information is contained in records,” Fisher said. “(Public agencies) should abide by the public records law and if they’re not abiding by it in terms of how they’re responding to the request, that right there is a big trouble spot.”