Burchell claims MEA seat

July 15, 2005

DAWN DE BUSK\Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -- After three months of answering allegations of improper campaign disclosure, Peter Burchell stepped into his three-year-term seat on Matanuska Electric Association's board of directors Monday.

Both Burchell and incumbent Lee Jordan were sworn in during the monthly board meeting at MEA headquarters in Palmer.

First, board members voted 4-2 to reprimand Burchell for breaking the board's campaign disclosure bylaws. The approved resolution will require findings of the investigation into the Burchell's campaign reports to be made available to co-op members.

Also, if Burchell chooses to run for a second term, co-op voters will be provided with information about his past discrepancies.

"The reprimand is a formal statement that the board believes [Burchell] was not in compliance with the rules," MEA spokesperson Mike Pauley said Wednesday.

Board member K. Scott Daugharty, who, with Lois Lester, cast the two dissenting votes, left the board room amid applause from the audience.

Daugharty said Burchell should be allowed to start his term with a clean slate or the board should decide his campaign disclosure mistakes were too grievous for him to take his seat.

Burchell took his seat at the board table, announcing he was prepared to tackle issues like finding sources of energy to replace the all-power-purchase contract with Chugach Electric Co., which ends in 2014.

"I was raised old school. I believe you can tell a lot about a person by how they spend their time and money," he said, explaining that he devoted time and personal funds to gain a seat on the board.

In May, MEA's member advisory committee discovered mathematical errors in Burchell's campaign reports. Burchell caught of those mistakes and corrected them prior to the board elections in April.

After the committee reported its findings to the board, the board requested bank statements and other campaign records from Burchell.

The information Burchell provided to the board revealed two campaign contributions he had not reported at all, according to Pauley. One of those contributions was a personal cash loan of $2,000 and the second was a $484.33 donation from former board member Michael Janecek.

Those amounts made up about 22 percent of Burchell's campaign funds, Pauley said.

Burchell added both fund sources to the campaign cache in March while he and his wife were on a wedding anniversary vacation in Mexico, Burchell said.

He explained that while he was on his trip, he asked a campaign volunteer to remove $2,000 cash from the safe in his house and deposit the money into his campaign account.

As in last month's meeting, board member Bill Folsom said he had trouble believing the omission was an oversight.

Burchell is too intelligent to have made such a mistake, Folsom said, contending he suspected the failure to disclose was "by design."

Some board members said providing co-op members with information about the donation from Janecek could have changed the outcome of the election.

"The outcome of the election is speculative. You don't know for certain how information would have affected the voters," Pauley said. "It's in the realm of the hypothetical."

Officers were elected during the meeting: Lee Jordan will continue to serve as president while Larry DeVilbiss will keep his vice president position. Dallas W. Massie will take the role of secretary-treasurer.

Contact Dawn De Busk at 352-2252, or dawn.debusk@frontiersman.com.