–by Alex MacLeod–
If you were paying attention, you might recall that the last OPALCO election was fraught with controversy, miscues and mismanagement.
It began in January when Gerry Lawlor, the No. 2 guy at OPALCO’s subsidiary, Rock Island Communications, posted notes encouraging members to sign petitions to change the make-up of the OPALCO board.
As Lawlor put it: “I believe..this is important for the long term stability and management of critical infrastructure (electric and communications) to continue to provide the services we have today and the expansion of much needed infrastructure in the future.”
When asked, neither Foster Hildreth, Lawlor’s boss, nor Jim Lett, then OPALCO’s board president, expressed any concern about Lawlor’s involvement, nor any curiosity about why he felt changing the board make-up was critical. His concern hardly made sense on the face of it, since the OPALCO board had done nothing but funnel huge sums of member money — upwards of $20 million — to support the Rock Island venture.
Be that as it may, Lawlor went even further later in the campaign, sending out an email on behalf of Rock Island encouraging its customers to support three candidates up for election.
Again, Hildreth brushed off any concern until it became clear enough members — including the other board candidates — were really angry at management’s brazen attempt to put its thumb on the scale of the election. Hildreth belatedly apologized for the action, but he and the board resisted calls to have the election postponed until the playing field could be leveled. The three candidates Rock Island boosted were elected.
To top it all off, OPALCO’s election overseer announced at the co-op’s annual meeting that the by-law change Lawlor had pushed had been approved, when in fact it had been soundly rejected. It took OPALCO two days to correct the record.
Along the way, the board’s nominating committee for the Lopez district disqualified an interested candidate because he is a part-time resident. Never mind that the board itself earlier had appointed a part-time Shaw resident to fill a board vacancy.
In the wake of all this, the board belatedly cleaned up the eligibility language in the by-laws (now you just need to be a co-op member) and made policy changes prohibiting OPALCO and Rock Island employees from engaging in the cooperative’s election process beyond voting. Then, in June, Hildreth called for the creation of a member committee to review remaining election processes. He identified five: “nominating committee; election details and candidate outreach; balloting materials; candidate forums protocol, and voting process.”
Almost from the start. the committee — four members from Orcas and one each from Lopez, San Juan and Shaw — rewrote its charge and moved to restructure the co-op’s districts and the make-up of the board, a move the membership had just rejected. That shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise since one of the committee’s members is the same member who put forward the by-law proposal rejected last April. And it wasn’t like this was happening without Hildreth’s knowledge, since one of his employees was staffing the committee.
The committee now proposes eliminating the Shaw/Crane district and reducing Lopez’ representation to one board member from two. Rather than being elected countywide as now, candidates would be elected solely by members in their respective districts. The final two members would be from any district and elected by all members.
How this addresses the problems that arose in the last election, or how it comports with the committee’s direction from Hildreth and the board, is a mystery. What is not is Hildreth’s and the board’s apparent eagerness to make these changes.
Even before the committee’s recommendations went to the board, Hildreth scheduled a series of “open house” meetings on each island to present the committee’s recommendations. And even before those meetings are held, the board has called a special meeting for this Thursday to move the committee’s recommendations forward. Unlike the member-proposed change roundly rejected last April, these changes could occur by simple vote of the board, just as it changed the mission of the cooperative three years ago to that of a telecommunications company, along with its historic role as an electric cooperative.
Change of this significance should not occur without a vote of the membership. The question is whether this board can be trusted to recognize that. The record would indicate the answer to that is a resounding ‘no.’ I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but this one reeks of management self-dealing and, at best, continued passiveness of the board, a co-op in name only.
I suggest you send a quick email to OPALCO’s board president, Vince Daucauinas (vdauciunas@gmail.com) to see if he can explain how this went from cleaning up last year’s election messes to restructuring the makeup of the board. I have asked, but Vince hasn’t answered.
Alex MacLeod is a longtime OPALCO member who lives on Shaw.
**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**
As one co-chair of the Election Review Committee, I want to ensure that everyone understands that Opalco’s Board and Management are the wrong ones to ask why our Committee recommended what it did. Our Committee was not influenced in any way by Opalco’s Board or Management. At no time did the Board or Management offer any ideas, critiques, suggestions, or anything else that influenced our Report.
Our Report was the work of the committee, alone, and we explained in detail in the 20 page document the Committee’s rationale behind each recommendation. Please go to the Opalco web site, read it, and then in the Open Houses we can discuss our rationale and any opposing rationale so members can determine which makes more sense to them.
We don’t expect everyone to automatically agree with everything. However, we do hope that members will offer constructive commentary that supports fairness, transparency and good representation of the membership by the Board.
We were asked to review the elections process, and we did. Opalco’s election process is based on districts, so we felt obliged to review the current district system. I was surprised to find that one of the four districts includes only 2% of Opalco’s11,200 members. I invite those commentors who oppose our Recommendation for three districts to explain why they think it is “fair” that the other 11,000 of us can vote for any director candidate we want, as long as it is one of the 231 people in that district.
The Committee measured each Recommendation by three standards: fairness, transparency, and promoting good representation of the membership by the Board. I invite those who comment on our Report to offer constructive suggestions which further those same objectives.
Part of the Committee’s charge was member outreach, and the upcoming Opalco Open Houses are part of that process. Read the report in detail and attend the Open Houses prepared to have a constructive discussion. The Orcas meeting is October 11th, 5 PM at the Senior Center.
Speaking as one committee member, I want to add our 11,000 member cooperative simply can not assume that the 231 members in the Shaw/Crane district (many of whom are part timers) will always be able to offer two candidates to choose from, who are both well qualified and willing to endure the election process.
The cooperative will be best served if the nominating process can draw from a larger pool of candidates, and that is the sort of thing our Committee was asked to point out. The next step is to thoughtfully discuss it.