Board Elections Have Begun for MEA
Voting in Matanuska Electric Association’s 2022 Board election began on Friday March 25. MEA members are selecting two Directors, one representing the Eagle River District and one for an At-Large Seat. MEA members are also being asked to vote on whether or not to approve a restatement of the cooperative’s Bylaws. Paper ballots are being mailed to MEA members, who can also vote on-line through their SmartHub accounts. Voting will close at 5 p.m. on Monday April 25, the day before MEA’s Annual Meeting.
There are four candidates running for a four-year term representing the Eagle River District. Incumbent Mark Hamm, who was elected to a one-year term in 2021, works as the Chief Financial Officer of the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. Challenging Hamm are three candidates. Lee Cruise is a financial analyst for a local oil company. Paul Park works as a maintenance manager for the Chugach Electric Association. Robert Seitz has worked for a variety of Alaskan companies as an electrical engineer. Only members within the Eagle River District can vote in this race.
All MEA voters can cast ballots for the At-Large Seat, which will have a three-year term (term lengths for the MEA Board currently vary in length, due to adjustments made after a 2020 change in the coop’s Bylaws). There are two candidates for this seat. Christian Hartley is the Fire Chief for the City of Houston. Arthur Keyes is the founder of Glacier Valley Farm in Palmer and served as Alaska State Director of Agriculture from 2016 to 2019. The current holder of the seat, Catherine “Kit” Jones, is not running for re-election.
Complete biographies and “Why I Wish to Serve” statements by each candidate can be found on the MEA Election website: https://www.mea.coop/2022elections. AETP has sent out questionnaires asking candidates their positions on a variety of issues relating to MEA’s work, and will publish the results as they are received.
MEA is also asking its members to approve a restatement of its Bylaws. The restatement involves over 100 changes to the existing Bylaws, the majority of which are technical changes, simplifications, or clarifications of the current language. There are, however, a number of substantive changes also included in the restatement. A copy of the restated Bylaws showing all the proposed changes can be found on the MEA elections page.
A few of the proposed changes could impact the transparency with which the MEA Board operates. The current Bylaws require the Board to preserve “Minutes, audio recordings, and other pertinent communications among Board members in meetings of the Board” for five years. The restated Bylaws eliminate this requirement, calling only for the preservation of meeting minutes. While MEA members still have the right to request copies of the minutes of Board meetings, the restated Bylaws drop the requirement that they be allowed to order (at their own cost) transcripts of the meetings. The MEA Board currently makes audio recordings of the public portions of its meetings available on the cooperative’s website, but this practice is not required by the Bylaws and is done at the Board’s discretion. The restated Bylaws also eliminate language explaining the rationale for requiring Board meetings to be open to members, although the requirement that meetings be open (outside of executive session) remains.
During the Board’s discussion of the restated Bylaws at their January 2022 meeting, Director Mark Masteller made a proposal that would increase the transparency with which the Board operates. He proposed that the restated Bylaws be amended to require the Board to make sections of its official policies (the Board’s self-imposed rules covering practices not addressed in the bylaws) available to members upon request. Director Masteller’s motion covered the sections of Board Policies governing “the Board of Directors and Management, and Members and Public Relations.” Masteller’s motion failed for lack of a second, and the amendment was not included in the restated Bylaws.
Other substantive changes include the method for replacing directors removed by a recall vote by members, and the number of votes required for the Board to remove a director for cause (this is raised from a simple majority to two-thirds--Article IV, Section 11). One addition is a clause stating that write-in ballots for Board elections will not be counted.
The overwhelming majority of changes proposed to the existing MEA Bylaws are technical. A few address questions not covered in the current Bylaws, such as language explicitly granting the Board the right to use teleconferencing technology to allow members to participate in the coop’s Annual Meeting. Other changes define the rules of electronic voting. One section (Article III, Section 8, part d) addresses potential disagreements between the Board and the Election Commission over the conduct of elections or election challenges (the Board is given precedence in such situations). The procedure for replacing directors who are unable to finish their term is also spelled out in much greater detail than in the current Bylaws. (Section IV, Article 6).
MEA members voted in 2020 to recommend a comprehensive review of the cooperative’s Bylaws. According to the MEA election site, the goal of the restatement is “to review MEA’s Bylaws, to ensure they are current with new laws, and revise them so the bylaws are understandable and accessible all co-op members.” The Board voted to accept the restated Bylaws at their January 2022 meeting, sending them to MEA voters for final approval. No statements supporting or opposing the restated Bylaws were submitted by MEA members.
The MEA Election page: https://www.mea.coop/2022elections
