Metro Council pressure intensifies to remove Nashville Electric Service CEO after Winter Storm Fern outages

Escalating scrutiny of NES leadership after prolonged outages

Pressure is mounting at Metro Nashville’s City Hall over whether Nashville Electric Service (NES) President and CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin should remain in her role following the utility’s performance during Winter Storm Fern in late January 2026. The storm triggered widespread outages across the NES service area, with restoration stretching across multiple days and drawing sustained complaints from residents, elected officials, and business groups.

In recent public statements and meetings, multiple Metro Council members have called for leadership accountability at NES, arguing that shortcomings in emergency communication and restoration planning exacerbated hardship for households and medically vulnerable residents who relied on electricity for critical equipment.

What happened during Winter Storm Fern

Winter Storm Fern brought significant ice damage to Nashville’s electric distribution system. At the peak of the event, more than 230,000 NES customers were without power. By January 31, 2026, NES released a projected timeline for full restoration that extended into early February, prompting sharp criticism from Metro leaders about both the pace of restoration and the quality of public communication.

Metro leadership described the response as falling short on two fronts: how quickly electricity returned and how clearly residents could learn when it would return.

Metro Council: oversight power and limits

Metro Council’s authority over NES is indirect. NES is governed by an Electric Power Board whose members are appointed by the mayor. Metro officials have publicly discussed that the council can remove board members only under a high voting threshold, a constraint that has shaped the current debate: some council members are pushing for board-level consequences, while others are seeking formal hearings and documentation that could support structural reforms.

In early February, council activity included proposals calling for hearings with NES leadership and requests for an independent, third-party after-action review on preparedness, mutual aid decisions, staffing, communications tools, and restoration prioritization—particularly for customers with critical-care needs.

NES leadership response and stated next steps

At a February 11 Metro Council session that ran for hours, NES leaders acknowledged that expectations were not met. Broyles-Aplin described the storm as the most costly event in NES history, estimating damage in the range of $110 million to $140 million. NES also outlined areas targeted for improvement, including emergency management leadership, outage communications and mapping tools, how estimated restoration times are generated and shared, and longer-term grid resiliency measures such as vegetation management and evaluating the feasibility of burying lines.

• Emergency management leadership changes and clearer incident command structure
• Improvements to outage maps and public communications during crises
• Revisions to restoration estimates and how they are communicated
• Resiliency assessments tied to tree-trimming and potential undergrounding

Broader political fallout

The controversy has moved beyond local government. Tennessee state leaders have publicly discussed possible state-level action affecting NES governance, while federal officials have demanded written answers about preparedness and decision-making during the storm. Meanwhile, the mayor has stated he does not have unilateral legal authority to remove NES leadership, even as the administration created a commission to review storm response.

The combined effect has left NES facing parallel tracks of accountability: immediate calls for leadership change and a longer-running debate over how the utility should be governed and audited after a major disaster.