MEA board lays down law

PALMER — In a move at least one board member says is directed at removing General Manager Wayne Carmony, the Matanuska Electric Association’s Board of Directors has made broad changes to the duties of executive employees.

A resolution the board passed this week includes five orders for its top management:

• Employees will cooperate fully with anything the board or its attorney asks.

• Employees must take orders from the board.

• Employees will devote all their time to the utility’s day-to-day operations and to board directives.

• Employees will not give the board advice on its activities.

• The board will review all performance evaluations and changes to salary for executive employees.

Executive employees listed in the resolution include all those listed under management on MEA’s Web site, mea.coop. They include Carmony, as well as his assistant general managers, executive assistant, the in-house attorney and a handful of others.

“The basic message is to have the dog wagging the tail rather than the tail wagging the dog,” said board member Janet Kincaid, who sided with Peter Burchell, Kit Jones, Katie Hurley and President Lois Lester in passing the measure.

According to utility bylaws, she said, “If you look at the structure the board is first and then the general manager is underneath. … it sort of got transferred around to where the general manager is on top and it’s not supposed to work that way.”

Board veteran Larry DeVilbiss, who, along with David Glines, voted against the measure, had a much different interpretation of the new regulations.

“It turned the co-op into a president-driven dictatorship,” DeVilbiss said.

He also disagrees with Kincaid’s assessment of how things were running prior to this week’s action.

“I guess some people are of the opinion that Mr. Carmony’s been running the board, but I’ve never felt that,” DeVilbiss said. “I tell you one thing — there’s nobody on that board that has the knowledge to run MEA.”

He said in no uncertain terms that he thinks the resolution is aimed squarely at ousting Carmony, whose relations with the other board members have lately been frosty.

“Frankly, I just felt that it was another instrument to try to provide cause for termination,” DeVilbiss said, adding that, of the board members who voted for the resolution, “that’s what the grapevine has been saying they’re after all along and everything is consistent with that.”

For her part, Kincaid denied the move is part of an effort to oust Carmony.

“No, that’s not true,” she said. “However, our attorney did say … that if you violated this it would be cause for termination.”

What’s unclear now is how MEA’s management is interpreting the changes or how the resolution is affecting the daily duties of the utility’s higher-ranking employees.

Reached Thursday, MEA Spokeswoman Lorali Carter, who is effected by the edict, was not comfortable discussing the resolution.

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