Chugach Electric Board Meets to Discuss Nominating Committee

(Ed. note—this article has been updated to reflect the following information—Harry Crawford requested that his candidacy be withdrawn on Friday March 24. The spelling of Antony Scott’s name has also been corrected).

By Brian Kassof

Chugach Electric Association’s (CEA) Board of Directors held a special meeting on Friday March 10 to discuss the work of its Nominating Committee. The Committee helps decide who will appear on the ballot in board elections. The nearly two-hour meeting was called after a number of CEA members, including one member of the Nominating Committee, contacted the Board after the committee’s recent decision not to advance two seemingly qualified applicants to the ballot. The Board heard from five of the Nominating Committee’s seven members, as well as several other CEA members, including one of the applicants whose candidacy was not advanced.

This year the Nominating Committee voted to advance nine of the twelve CEA members who applied to run for three seats on the Board. Among the applicants passed over by the Committee were Harry Crawford and Antony Scott. Crawford is a former CEA board member and served in the Alaska Legislature, while Scott is an energy analyst with considerable industry experience. Crawford, along with the third applicant not advanced by the Committee, Scott von Gemmingen, used a petition process to gain a place on the ballot, while Scott did not. (On March 24, Crawford requested that his candidacy be withdrawn).

Discussion at the March 10 meeting centered on a few key issues. The most significant was the committee’s role—should it simply advance all applicants qualified for board service and allow CEA members to decide who would best represent their interests, or should it screen applicants and advance those it believes are best suited to the Board. In the latter case, what criteria should be used to determine who are the best candidates? Another major topic of discussion was what could be done to make the committee’s work more transparent to members.

CEA board members stressed that the meeting’s purpose was not to criticize the Nominating Committee or question its decisions. The Board wanted a clearer understanding of the committee’s process, so they could better support its work and address the concerns raised by members. Committee Chair Ashley Johnson echoed the latter sentiment, saying it was important to increase members’ trust in the committee’s process. While the Board did pledge to consider a number of suggestions raised at the meeting, no final decisions were made.

CEA Rules On Running for the Board of Directors:

CEA is a member-owned cooperative and is governed by a seven-member Board of Directors. Democratic member control is a core principle of the cooperative movement. CEA’s Directors serve four-year terms, meaning one or two seats are elected most years. All board seats are At-Large—they represent the entire membership, not geographic districts. This year there are three seats up for election, after the resignation in January of Director Erin Whitney. This may have contributed to the unusually high number of people interested in running for the Board—the number of applicants this year was about twice the recent average.

CEA’s Bylaws provide two pathways for members to become candidates in board elections. The first is to submit an application to the Nominating Committee. The committee’s role, according to the Bylaws, is to seek “qualified candidates” and “screen potential nominees.” The only criterion listed in the Bylaws to guide the committee’s work is that the candidates should reflect a “geographic distribution.”

The current members of the Nominating Committee are: Wynne Auld, Patti Bogan, Heidi Hansen, Ashley Johnson, Jessica Koloski, Leslie Ridle, and Steve Strait. All but Hansen were in attendance at the March 10 meeting, although Koloski did not speak. Committee members are volunteers who are appointed by the Board of Directors for terms varying from one to three years. There are no limits on how long they can serve.

The second possible path to the ballot is through a petition process, which requires potential candidates to gather the signatures of 50 CEA members. Applicants who are not advanced by the Nominating Committee can choose to run as petition candidates. Would-be candidates can also skip the Nominating Committee and go directly to the petition process. The only requirement to run for the Board is having been a member of CEA for at least a year. Members with potential conflicts of interest (such as employment with CEA or with a business that acts as contractor or supplier to the cooperative) are barred from running for the Board.

Questions About the Committee’s Work: 

Questions about the Nominating Committee’s role and process became public on March 2 when journalist Nat Herz published a story in his Substack blog Northern Journal (republished on March 3 in the Alaska Beacon) about the committee’s decision not to advance two seemingly well-qualified applicants as candidates.

One was Antony Scott, who has a long resume of experience in the Alaska power sector—in addition to having a Ph.D. in Natural Resources, Scott has worked at Anchorage’s Municipal Light and Power (which was bought by CEA in 2019), at the University of Alaska’s Center for Energy and Power (ACEP), and for the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA, which regulates Alaska’s electric utilities), along with serving as an RCA Commissioner from 2018 to 2022. Scott now works for the Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP).

The other was Harry Crawford, who had previously served three terms on CEA’s Board of Directors from 2011 to 2020 (CEA Bylaws require board members to step down after three consecutive terms). Crawford, who also served five terms in the Alaska Legislature, ran unsuccessfully for the CEA Board in 2022.

Both Crawford and Scott told Herz they believed that their support for moving CEA sharply away from its heavy reliance on natural gas towards renewable sources of energy factored heavily in the committee’s decision not to place them on the ballot. CEA currently relies on natural gas for about 85 percent of its power generation. Scott has also spoken critically of some past board decisions and told Herz that if he were elected, he would be “a pain in the ass.”

Statements made at the March 10 board meeting by some members of the Nominating Committee seem to back up Scott and Crawford’s beliefs that their position on renewables influenced the committee’s decision not to advance their candidacy. Committee member Steve Strait said that his decisions were influenced by his perception that some applicants were “opposed to fossil fuels,” which he sees as a reliability issue. Committee member Patti Bogan suggested that she had concerns about applicants who she characterized as wanting to move too rapidly to renewable energy without regard to cost.

Discussion of the Committee’s Role:

In the wake of Herz’s article a number of CEA members contacted the Board to express concern over the decision not to advance such seemingly qualified applicants to the ballot. The Board also received a letter from Leslie Ridle, a member of the Nominating Committee. Two main themes emerged. The first was the committee’s proper role—should it advance all qualified applicants to the ballot, or should it screen them and advance the ones it feels are best suited to serve on the Board. This question seems particularly pressing in years, such as this one, when there are a large number of applicants.

The question of whether or not the Committee should advance all applicants arose during their deliberations this year. Ridle believed they should advance anyone who met the basic qualifications, but other committee members thought they should winnow down the number of applicants and, as Bogan put it, “present the best candidates.” After some discussion the majority voted in favor of the second position.

It is not clear how aggressively the Committee has screened applicants in the past. Strait and Bogan, both long-time members of the Committee, thought that it operated as it had in years past. Crawford, one of the applicants not advanced by the Committee, took an opposing view when he spoke at the March 10 meeting. Crawford has extensive experience with the Nominating Committee—in addition to having applied to run for the Board five times since 2011, he also served as Board Liaison to the Committee for several years during his tenure as a Director. His previous four applications to run for the Board, including in 2022, were advanced by the Committee.

Crawford said he did think the Committee has a role in screening applicants, but that this should focus on their basic qualifications to serve as effective board members. In his experience the Committee had not excluded applicants due to their “stand on different questions”, as he believed it had this year. Crawford said he felt he had been singled out by some committee members who disagreed with his views. According to Crawford, the Board should reflect a diversity of opinions and it was important for CEA voters, not the Committee, to decide who would best serve their interests.

During the meeting, several members of the Committee, including Johnson and Wynne Auld, acknowledged that both interpretations of the Bylaws were reasonable, and they hoped the Board could provide more clarity on two questions. What is the committee’s proper role—should it advance all qualified applicants or should it evaluate them and select those it felt made the best candidates? If the latter, what criteria should it use? Johnson raised this last point during the meeting—while the Committee is independent and makes its own decisions, she thought some guidance from the Board regarding areas of focus in evaluating applicants would be helpful.

While no action was taken during the meeting, Board President Bettina Chastain promised the Board would discuss these questions. During the discussion several board members seemed inclined to the idea that the Nominating Committee should actively screen applicants, especially in years such as this when there are such a large number. They also seemed to agree that some greater level of guidance from the Board about evaluating applicants would be helpful, although it is not clear how specific and binding that guidance might be.

Director Rachel Morse, this year’s Board Liaison to the Nominating Committee, raised the possibility of getting member feedback about the committee’s role. She also touched on a point raised earlier by Ridle—if, it was decided that the Nominating Committee’s proper role was merely to verify that applicants were eligible to run for the Board, was it even necessary to have such a committee? She suggested either surveying members or putting the question before the Member Advisory Council (MAC). Eliminating the Committee or placing binding instructions on how it should operate would require a revision of CEA’s Bylaws.

Calls for Greater Transparency:

A second major theme of discussion was the lack of information for CEA members about how the Committee operates. This was a major point of concern among members who reached out to the Board. At the meeting there was a consensus among members of the Nominating Committee and the Board that greater transparency is needed. A variety of ideas about how to make the committee’s work more accessible were discussed.

There currently is no information about the Committee, its members, or how it operates on the CEA website. The same is true of other CEA member committees, such as the Election and Bylaw Committees. At the meeting CEA spokesperson Julie Hasquet said that the cooperative has been considering providing more information on these committees for some time.

Options discussed at the March 10 meeting started with providing the names of committee members on the CEA website. Information about its work, such as its process and the list of questions it asks applicants each year, could also be shared. Another idea was to share some of the written application materials the Committee receives.

One suggestion mentioned several times was to film the committee’s interviews with applicants and make the videos available on the CEA website. There was a fair amount of enthusiasm for this idea among committee and board members, although a few reservations were raised. Those speaking in favor of the idea believed this would provide maximum transparency—if members were able to see how the interviews were conducted, they would have more faith in the process. The interviews would also provide interested members with more information about board candidates than is currently provided in brief written statements or candidate forums. Committee Chair Johnson did raise one possible objection to filming applicant interviews—some otherwise competent and qualified applicants might be made nervous by being filmed, which could inhibit their ability to answer questions.

Director Morse pointed out that these transparency measures would not require any change to CEA’s Bylaws. While no decision was made during the board meeting, it appeared likely that some action will be taken to make the committee’s work more visible to members in the future.

A Revised Schedule:

A final issue raised during the meeting was the committee’s schedule. The Committee is bound by CEA Bylaws to nominate candidates at least 80 days before the cooperative’s Annual Meeting. The deadline for applications this year gave the Committee roughly three weeks to complete its work. Given the number of applicants and the logistical challenges of scheduling interviews, some committee members said that they felt rushed and would like more time to do their work. Since there is a hard deadline for finishing its work, this would mean moving the deadline for submitting applications earlier (this year’s deadline was February 7).

CEA Bylaws mandate at least a ten-day period between when the Nominating Committee announces its selections and the deadline for petition candidates to turn in their signatures. Crawford spoke about how, because of a planned trip out of state, he almost did not have enough time to gather the signatures he needed to get on the ballot.

How the Committee Operated This Year:

During the meeting Chair Johnson described the committee’s process. It started work by reviewing the written application materials submitted by potential candidates. The Committee then met with CEA staff and the Board Liaison to ask questions. The Committee also received a briefing from staff on a variety of issues facing CEA, including one about likely shortages of Cook Inlet natural gas starting in 2027. Based on this information, the Committee then updated the questions used for applicant interviews.

The Committee then conducted a 20- to 30-minute interview with each of the twelve applicants. After the interviews were complete the Committee met to deliberate. The Board Liaison, who is present during the interviews, left at this point, while a staff member remained to answer any questions from the Committee. It was at this point that the disagreement over the committee’s role arose. The Committee then voted on which applicants to advance as board candidates. Applicants were then informed of their status, so those who were not advanced could take the petition route if they wished.

According to Johnson, the Committee did not apply any set criteria to evaluate applicants during its deliberations. She did, however, identify a number of issues that were raised for not advancing candidates. Johnson stressed that none of these were definitive reasons for not advancing someone, and that some of them were raised for applicants who ultimately were advanced.

Concerns included a lack of knowledge about CEA or insufficient technical skills to act as a board member. Committee members also were also concerned about some applicants’ “abrasive or combative personality,” lack of interpersonal skills, or unwillingness to compromise and maintain good relationships with other board members, utility regulators, or legislators.

The only potential policy issue that was raised against some applicants was a perceived lack of commitment to CEA’s mission of providing “safe, reliable, and affordable” power. While it is impossible to know exactly how the Committee applied this term, issues of cost and reliability are often raised by those critical of the greater integration of renewable energy generation.

 The Election:

One of the nine individuals advanced by the Nominating Committee has since withdrawn from the race, so there will be nine candidates on the Chugach Ballot. Brad Authier, Bettina Chastain, Susanne Fleek-Green, Harold Hollis, Shaina Kilcoyne, Steven Konkel, Jim Nordlund, and James Wileman are the candidates advanced by the Nominating Committee. Chastain and Hollis are current members of the Board. Scott Von Gemmingen is a petition candidate.

Voting in the Chugach Board election will begin on April 19 and run through the CEA Annual Meeting on May 19. AETP will provide coverage of the CEA Board election on our Elections page in the coming weeks. We have sent questionnaires to the candidates and will publish their responses as they are received.