— by Alex MacLeod —
It is increasingly difficult to remember that the “C” in OPALCO stands for “cooperative.” No one is having a harder time doing so than its management and board of directors.
Remember when the annual meetings allowed for members to stand up and ask questions of management and the board? That ended nearly three years ago, as the board was morphing OPALCO from an electric cooperative to a broadband/Internet business. In response to a question at its meeting on St. Patrick’s Day, the board said questions would be allowed at this year’s annual meeting, but the board said the same thing a year ago — and no questions from the floor were permitted.
Also at the meeting, in the “member comment” period, I asked a direct question of Randy Cornelius, for many years OPALCO’s general manager, now a board member. Board minutes showed he voted “no” on OPALCO’s 2016 budget and “no” on formalizing its new method for raising rates anytime it needs to in order to avoid violating a loan covenant again. Minutes make no mention of anyone’s reasons for taking a minority position, so I asked if he’d explain those two votes.
Before Cornelius could respond, board vice-president Vince Dauciunas, said board members had no obligation to answer questions directed to them by members. Really? In a cooperative? Cornelius, to his credit, chose to answer: too much capital expense in the budget, he said, and no need for the budget “true up” if revenues and expenses were carefully tracked.
Getting answers to simple questions of current general manager Foster Hildreth is like pulling teeth, and Hildreth Thursday put before the board an amendment to the policy that covers member information requests to make it even harder. He proposed changing the policy to give him absolute authority to decide if an information request was being made “in good faith,” is “trivial,” is for “a proper purpose” and if filling it is a “prudent use of member resources.” His decision, based on any of those vague criteria, could not be appealed to the board. If he viewed a request as “harassment,” he wouldn’t even need to respond to the member to tell him or her so.
Hildreth had put the change on the agenda for immediate board action, even though it first surfaced just two days before Thursday’s meeting. For reasons he didn’t explain, Dauciunas said it would not be acted on as scheduled, but might return to the agenda in the future.
The board didn’t hesitate a couple of years ago, though, to approve a new policy effectively gagging directors from publicly expressing any disagreement with board decisions. This was done after two board members had resigned as OPALCO was rushing into the broadband/Internet business. One of them was the object of legal threats made on behalf of OPALCO, warning him against expressing his reasons for resigning. The claim was he would be violating a confidentiality agreement with CenturyLink. When CenturyLink made the document available, it was clear there was no basis for the threatened legal action.
This no longer is the OPALCO we came to trust and even love, where decisions were made in the open, directors answered questions and rates could easily and accurately be explained by the cost of power and of delivering it to our homes and businesses. Now it is a cooperative in name only.
(Alex MacLeod is a longtime OPALCO member who lives on Shaw.)
In order to allow members of OPALCO to have access to all records of the Co-operative, I would ask that the membership approve an amendment to the ByLaws that would state, “The Board of Directors and the Administration of OPALCO shall voluntarily comply with all provisions of the Washington State Open Public Meetings Act, RCW ____.”
As a co-operative, management of OPALCO is not currently required to provide ANY information relevant to its operations and decision making. By contrast, every elected public official must comply with the State Law and every citizen has the right to relevant records. Can you imagine if the School District, the Fire District, or the County were to implement a gag order on its officials as is being requested by Foster Hildreth?
This is not good…and it’s been going too long. Time for a Class Action Suite against OPALCO and the Board of Directors. Or, can we just fire their butts?
We, the members, need to have our voices heard!
Actually, a lot of us love OPALCO/Rock Island more than ever! I’ve never had better internet and phone service and now I’m paying way less than before! Now if we could just keep those pesky trees from falling on the lines and causing power outages!
There is no need to “fire their butts.” When election time rolls around, just vote them off of the board.
If enough of the members are angry at the board’s behavior, let there be a concerted write-in-candidate effort, and replace as many board members as possible with people who will do the right thing.
Sorry ’bout this second post…
Another strategy might be to get as many members as possible to not attend the April 30th meeting, so that the board does not have a quorum, and can neither get its work done nor hold a valid election.
If they are stonewalling you, stonewall ’em right back!
When Foster Hildreth pulls stunts like the above-mentioned on the coop’s own members/stakeholders who have a right to their valid concerns and requests for information, this becomes an untouchable dictatorship. OPALCO changed its bylaws too, last August, to make it far more difficult to recall board members and vote in another in emergency elections.
PS – an aside – I’m very low income. Since last year when this all started, my electric bills have almost doubled – for less KWH used – that’s more like a 100% increase, not the projected amounts OPALCO is touting. If the fixed facility rate goes up to 90 bucks by 2019, my bill will increase by at least 200%. I’m sure there others with similar horror stories, regarding the increases. If we ever have a “real” winter again, it will be more like a 400% increase.
OPALCO publishes all financials, all Board meeting minutes, Construction Work Projects and audit results on our website. Even with that amount of transparency, a small handful of members do ask for information not included there and our Member Service Policy 16 was designed to handle those requests.
Although the number of members making these requests is small, each request for more detailed information take a great deal of staff time and expense. In the case of MacLeod, our staff has fielded hundreds of emails in the past three years.
Leadership must determine when a request (or repeat requester) begins to abuse the cooperative spirit of the policy or prudent use of member resources. The Policy allows for member information requests to be denied when the information is sensitive or can reveal personnel or competitive bidding information.
We run our Co-op in a cooperative manner. In addition to our democratic process for electing the board members who make policy decisions, the Co-op also surveys the membership to gather feedback and preferences. Our survey results of 2013 and 2014 (available in our Resource Library online) influenced the Board’s decision to develop Internet services using our already installed fiber backbone using equity and rates. The 2015 survey resulted in creating the Energy Assist program to help members who are struggling to pay bills.
Rates have changed and bills have gone up, but only an average of about 5%. Check your bill online or call member services to get your actual bill amounts and comparison summaries. If your bill has gone up more than the average, there may be efficiency issues that OPALCO can help with.
Please see for yourselves how our cooperative works. Members are invited to attend a Board meeting, come to one of the Tea Talks that Board member Winnie Adams is hosting on Orcas this week. Attend the Candidate Forums that OPALCO is hosting on four islands in April.
Please participate in our co-op governance and decide for yourselves.
Suzanne:
For the record, I have made just four (4) information requests of OPALCO in the past two years. The two made in 2016 could have been answered bt a single document. My emails to Foster, Jim Lett and Jerry Whitfield, the director from my island, were to seek clarification on things in board minutes or financial that weren’t clear. My goal, unlike yours, is to base what I write on facts, not “fallacies,” to use your word. So I ask questions. Neither you, Foster or the board have been able to rebut my reporting. Instead, you offer weak and often self-contradictory responses that lead the membership to roll their collective eyes and wonder: just how stupid do they think we are. Shame on all of you.
In an earlier life, I was heavily involved in member relations for a billion dollars-plus cooperative. I am sympathetic with the need for a policy that denies members information that is truly sensitive (competitive issues, legal privilege, etc). However, I suggest such a policy will be most in the spirit of a cooperative if the final decisions are made by the elected cooperative directors, rather than by management. My experience was that when this became an issue, the board members supported our management recommendations if we were on sound ground. And as management, I appreciated the board shouldering final responsibility for explaining to their fellow members (their constituents) the reasons why something was sensitive. It was always more credible coming from the directors.
I just returned from the tea and talk with Winnie Adams of OPALCO. I highly recommend if you have a chance to attend the next meeting tomorrow, Thursday, that you take the time to do so. Vince Dauciunas a board member, was also in attendance tonight to help answer any and all questions I posed to them. Very open and informative. John.
I am not aware of any “Tea Talks” being held by Winnie Adams. I read Orcas Issues at least once every day to stay in touch with community happenings, and I do not recall seeing any notice of such a discussion forum.
For many years running The Opalco Board has been changing the by laws to be more secretive. Doug Marshall, when you have a Board that nominates it’s Board candidates you can’t expect to have oversight. Remember when Randy handed down the proposed budget a couple of years ago when he was the General Manager based on the assumption of another cold winter The Board drank the Kool Aid, approved the budget. There was no plan B, hence the 1 cent surcharge for a year.
As for Suzanne, the next time a survey is down it should be 2 surveys. One for the well off and one for the working class, low income etc. We are one island with 2 economic ranges of life. Maybe three.