PALMER — Matanuska Electric Association’s board of directors has had a handful of long discussions about its contract with General Manager Wayne Carmony.

But what is in the contract, exactly? What are the terms by which Carmony serves the power provider? Under the utility’s bylaws, those are both questions that will remain unanswered.

MEA Assistant General Manager Tuckerman Babcock said that, as part of Carmony’s contract negotiations, a previous board of directors agreed to put the contract in Carmony’s personnel file. Since personnel files are confidential, this means the document is not available to the public, he said. Babcock said specific pieces of information from the contract are public. Member owners are entitled to know how much Carmony makes overall ($224,139 in 2007), what benefits he is entitled to, how much leave he accrues in a year and that he has a company car.

As to how that stacks up to other cooperatives and utilities, Babcock said, “in some respects it’s actually middle of the road,” adding that many co-ops won’t even tell its members that much.

At Matanuska Telephone Association, a recent Frontiersman inquiry for that information was turned down with an explanation that all salary information is confidential.

“MTA’s policy is to not to release employment information. MTA views all employee salary and personnel information as private and confidential,” the company said in a statement.

The reverse was true for Chugach Electric Association, where the newspaper was told its members could request to see the general manager’s contract. Calls to Homer Electric Association were not returned Thursday afternoon.

A call to Golden Valley Electric Association in Fairbanks was returned Thursday, but spokeswoman Corinne Bradish did not know offhand what the rules were for viewing the general manager’s contract and said the person who did was tied up for the day.

Questions about the contents of Carmony’s contract come as the current MEA board recently voted not to automatically renew his contract for another year. Whether that move negated some already existing automatic renewal clause in the contract went unanswered after the meeting as board members cited confidentiality rules.

After not automatically renewing the contract, the board on Nov. 10 drastically changed the way Carmony and other top-ranking employees relate to the board, essentially directing the executives to work on any project the board asks, to not advise the board on any of its actions and to otherwise spend their time on the utility’s day-to-day operations.

Babcock said that as far as he knows, neither Golden Valley nor Homer allow their manager contracts to be viewed by anyone who asks. He said he believes Homer has a bylaw saying a co-op member with “a proper purpose” can look at the contract.

As to Chugach, Babcock said there’s a good reason its contract is readily available — the federal government made it so.

“Chugach has a different environment because they’re regulated by the [Securities and Exchange Commission],” he said.

Chugach’s debt is publicly traded, Babcock said, and thus the utility has to abide by rules set by the government organization that regulates public trading. One of the SEC’s rules says contracts for top officers are public.

Babcock said he hasn’t seen Carmony’s contract. And, it seems, the few people who have are board members.

According to MEA rules, an individual board member can view the general manager’s contract at MEA headquarters, under supervision, and may not take a copy home.

“We can’t divulge anything in the contract. Otherwise, we turn into pumpkins and probably get sued. And successfully sued,” board member Peter Burchell said. “At that point my wife would be really [upset].”

As to the process for viewing the contract, with someone in the room keeping tabs on him, Burchell said, “it’s kind of like the Pentagon Papers or something,” referencing the famously leaked documents about the Vietnam War.

Babcock said those requirements were put in place in 1998. The contract, he said, has been confidential ever since Carmony negotiated it. Carmony came to the utility in 1994. Sometime between then and 1998, a copy of the contract was made public and the board, Babcock said, instituted the measures to prevent that from reoccurring.

For his part, Burchell would advocate a change in those rules. He said some information at the utility has to be kept secret — information, for instance, that could, if released, be detrimental to MEA as it competes with other area utilities.

But, he also said Carmony’s contract doesn’t fall into that category of information and should therefore be public.

“I firmly believe that we should be transparent in everything,” Burchell said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.