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This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the “Rural Electric and Community Services Cooperative Act.”
The general assembly finds that rural electric cooperatives, since their inception fifty (50) years ago, have proved to be ideal business organizations in providing adequate and reliable electric services at reasonable rates throughout the rural communities of Tennessee. There are growing needs and demands for other comparable utility services in Tennessee's rural communities, including the need for television reception and programming services which are already available, for the most part, in the state's urban areas. As proved to be the case in providing electric service in rural communities, it is vital that the area coverage principle be applied in providing other utility services in the more sparsely settled areas of the state. It is, therefore, in the public's best interest that rural electric cooperatives be empowered to provide such services and that new cooperatives may be organized for such purposes.
The general assembly finds that unfair and unwelcomed efforts may be made in Tennessee, as they recently have in other states, whereby absentee-owned profit power companies will attempt the acquisition of properties and the take-over of the businesses of rural electric cooperatives, and thereby disrupt Tennessee's long-standing and successful policy of providing rural electric services through nonprofit, cooperative organizations. It is, therefore, in the public's best interest that laws affecting such efforts will provide fair and equitable due process procedures and standards so as to ensure that such acquisitions will not be accomplished if inimical to the best interests of the rural citizens who will be affected.
The general assembly further finds that Tennessee statutes currently governing electric cooperatives have not been comprehensively revised since their initial enactment. It is, therefore, in the public interest that cooperative business organizations, their respective members and the rural communities of the state would be better served by updating such statutes to make them more compatible with changed conditions and to appropriately reconcile such statutes with the new Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act, compiled in title 48, chapters 51-68.