Jordan: ‘Havoc and chaos’ for MEA

PALMER — Another group can be added to the list of watchdog organizations eyeing the way Matanuska Electric Association does business.

Friends of MEA has elected a chairman and will attend future board meetings with the purpose of educating the co-op’s members about the board’s activities, the group has announced in a statement released Sunday.

So far, the group is made up of mostly former board members. Lee Jordan, the board’s immediate past president, said he was motivated to put Friends of MEA together mostly after the current board changed the way it relates to the utility’s management team.

Among other things, current board has directed management to work on whatever the board asks, to not advise the board on its actions and decreed the board would review all performance evaluations and raises for upper MEA employees.

“The board is going to insert itself into the management of the utility,” Jordan said. “They’re not capable of doing it.”

Bill Folsom, Friends of MEA’s newly elected chairman and another former MEA board president, backed up Jordan’s assessment. He also stressed that Friends of MEA would remain neutral in board elections and said the group has no political agenda.

“None of us want to be on the board again,” Folsom said. “There’s nothing in it for us except maybe saving a few dollars on our electric bills.”

As far as MEA watchdog groups go, Friends of MEA would be the third. It joins the already active Utility Watch and MEA Ratepayers Alliance.

Jim Sykes, who heads Utility Watch, said his group is concerned with all area utilities — he’s been vocal about issues affecting the Matanuska Telephone Association and is currently looking at issues coming down the pike with natural gas company Enstar.

“Nobody’s been a bad boy more consistently than MEA,” Sykes said.

As to Friends of MEA, Sykes said new voices are always welcome, and he doesn’t think anyone involved in the group has anything but the best of intentions.

Still, noting that most Friends of MEA members were past MEA board members who had been, in his words, “phased out during the time that they’ve been phased out, in my view, it’s gotten better,” Sykes said.

Sykes, and MEA Ratepayers Alliance head Tim Leach, both said they support most of what the current board has been doing.

Sykes in particular said the new board has made its actions more transparent and, in its resolution last week regulating the utility’s management, made an attempt to turn things around and stop following General Manager Wayne Carmony down the wrong path.

“The board has made it clear that the manager works for the board,” Sykes said of the resolution.

This point — whether the current board or Carmony are working for the correct goals for the utility — will likely be the largest point of difference between the two established watchdog groups and the new Friends of MEA.

Jordan said he thinks most of what the current board has done has been to the detriment of the cooperative.

“Peter [Burchell] and Janet [Kincaid] campaigned on a platform of change,” Jordan said of the board members. “And in their anxiety to bring about change they’re moving faster than they’re thinking.”

Jordan predicts “havoc and chaos” as the directives of the new board are implemented and said co-op members will likely see that reflected in their electric bills.

“We are former directors who recognize the dangers of the actions they’re taking,” he said.

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