— by Chom Graecen —

To: OPALCO Board of Directors and General Manager Foster Hildreth,

Firstly I would like to commend the board for engaging members to provide inputs and recommendations to OPALCO on important matters such as the elections. The Member Review Committee on Elections and the planned Open Houses on different islands are a welcome part of the process by the board and management to gather input from the membership at large. Such endeavors take time and resources on OPALCO’s part but are crucial in building member trust and buy-in on decisions that are crucial for the governance and operations of OPALCO.

I would also like to acknowledge the considerable time and efforts that the members of the committee has put in to come up with the recommendations. That said, the limited reach of OPALCO’s announcement about the committee application process and limited time frame for members to apply to serve on the committee made it inevitable that only a handful of members were aware of the process and able to apply to be on the committee. Though members of the committee happen to come from four different districts, their views and demographic mix are by no means representative of the OPALCO membership and should thus be treated as such.

Given that the work of the committee represents personal views of the committee members, not that of the OPALCO membership, I am therefore writing this letter to present another voice as an OPALCO member. I have serious concerns and comments in reaction to the proposed recommendations of the committee as detailed below.

Dilution of OPALCO members’ power and the board’s accountability

The most serious concern I have regarding the committee’s recommendations is the dilution of the members’ authority over the board. As a co-op, OPALCO is accountable to and regulated by no one but its members (Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission regulates all utilities but co-ops). The only mechanism by which members exert control over the board is through direct election of all the directors.

The power of members to hold the OPALCO board accountable will be significantly diluted if the three following changes recommended by the committee were to be implemented:

1)      Of the total 7 (or more) director positions, two (or more) directors of the OPALCO board are to be appointed by OPALCO directors, instead of being directly elected by members.

2)      These two (or more) appointed “at large” directors are to be appointed from outsider non-members, instead of residents of San Juan County.

3)      Instead of the current county-wide election where all members elect all 7 directors, the proposed change of “election by district” will limit Orcas and San Juan residents to elect only 2 directors each, and Lopez & Shaw residents combined to elect only 1 director, out of the total seven (or more) positions.

I fail to see how such proposed dilution of members’ power to directly elect the board of directors will lead to improved representation or accountability. Given that the mission of the committee is to “to support a transparent election process that enables members to feel fairly and well-represented,” the three recommended changes, mentioned above, are unequivocally counter-productive and should be dropped entirely.

On the issue of “election by district” vs. county-wide representation, the current system at OPALCO is consistent with the way the San Juan County Commissioners are elected. In 2012, the SJC voters voted to abandon the short-lived “elect by district” system in favor of returning to “county wide” representation, for very good reasons: accountability to the entire county and fairness of ”one person one vote”.

The current system at OPALCO where members get to elect all director positions is working fine. Each director is directly accountable to every member in OPALCO territory and unify the membership as a whole. All seven directors make decisions for the whole county based on the approval of the whole membership. When each member votes for all of directors, not just a portion of the board, and each voting member, as an individual, regardless of where he or she resides, has equal influence over the outcome of each election. This system preserves the one-member-one-vote rule.

In contrast, election by district gives unequal right to votes from different districts as a result of the difference in ratios of director positions to the total number of members in each district. The proposed change to “election by district” (2 SJ positions elected by 5000 members, 2 Orcas positions elected by 3700 members, 1 Lopez & Shaw position elected by 2500 members, and 2 “at large”) will mean that while votes of members living in San Juan and Lopez & Shaw districts have roughly equal weight, votes of members living in Orcas district will be counted 1.35 times the weight of votes from other districts. This “elect by district” proposal is therefore neither fair nor consistent with the one-member-one-vote principle.

As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In this case, the proposed changes will likely break, rather than fix, the current fair and well-represented election system.

Disrespect of members’ majority vote

At the 2016 Annual Meeting at the end of April, the member-initiated bylaw amendment by Rob Thesman to “reapportion the number of directors’ seats attributable to each of the Districts” was struck down by the majority vote (60%). Despite the election results, the Member Review Committee on Elections, which included Rob Thesman, chose to ignore the majority opinions of the members and proposed a reduction of the director positions for Lopez and Shaw Districts from 2 and 1 respectively to one combined. It is possible that members’ opinion can change over time, but to disregard the majority vote that just happened less than five months ago is disrespectful to the majority of the voting members. This particular point reinforces my view that the committee is by no means representative or aligned with the majority of the members, and should therefore be treated by the board accordingly.

Thank you for your consideration.

Chom Greacen is an OPALCO member who lives on Lopez Island

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