By Chom Greacen

As a co-op, OPALCO is accountable to and regulated by no one but its members. The main mechanism by which members exert control over the board is by voting out directors who do a poor job of representing us. OPALCO board set up a Member Review Committee on Elections to review the election process. Some of the committee’s recommendations threaten to reduce the board’s accountability, dilute member power and make voting less fair.

Losing power

One recommendation of the committee is to introduce up to two additional board positions to be appointed by the OPALCO board, instead of being directly elected by members. Moreover, these two “expert” directors need not be OPALCO members. Given that the mission of the committee is to enable “members to feel fairly and well-represented,” I fail to see how the proposal will lead to anything but worsened representation and dilution of members’ power.

Accountability

The committee also calls for only two board positions to be elected by members at large (instead of seven). For the remaining five positions, directors would be “elected by district” with Orcas and San Juan residents electing two each, and Lopez and Shaw residents combined electing one.

The board’s accountability to membership gets muddied when most directors are accountable only to their own little district. Most OPALCO decisions affect members on all islands, but with the proposed changes, the directors steering OPALCO would have divergent accountability. This seems like a recipe for divisiveness and confusion at a time when OPALCO needs solidification of members’ support the most.

Unequal and unfair

When each member votes for all directors, not just a portion of the board, each voting member, regardless of where s/he resides, has equal influence over the outcome of each election. This system preserves the one-member-one-vote rule.

In contrast, “election by district” would have two San Juan positions elected by 5,000 members, two Orcas positions elected by 3,700, and one Lopez/Shaw position elected by 2,500. This means that a vote from San Juan, Lopez and Shaw counts as only 74 percent of an Orcas vote.

Disrespect of majority

At the 2016 Annual Meeting on April 30, Rob Thesman’s member-initiated bylaw amendment attempted to “reapportion the number of directors’ seats attributable to each of the districts.” It was struck down by the majority vote (60 percent). Now we find Thesman on this new committee, and the committee proposes to insert the same idea via a back-door approach. Such action is disrespectful to the voting members.

This particular point illustrates that this OPALCO committee is not representative of or aligned with the interests of the majority of the members, and should thus be treated by the board accordingly.

OPALCO will be holding an Open House on Thursday, Oct. 6, 5 p.m. at Woodmen Hall, Lopez Island. Show up and let OPALCO know your opinion on this important issue.