MEA board silences general manager

PALMER — The Matanuska Electric Association further tightened the reigns on General Manager Wayne Carmony on Monday.

In a 4-2 vote, the board approved a measure from Janet Kincaid prohibiting Carmony from speaking to the media regarding board policies and procedures. The measure answered a question Carmony posed as he sought a venue for his complaints.

“If this passes it seems as if the board has basically imposed a complete gag order on me,” Carmony said. “Do I have no obligation whatsoever to the membership?”

Board Member Larry DeVilbiss who, along with Peter Glines, voted against the measure, backed Carmony. DeVilbiss said he wouldn’t want to be in the general manager’s shoes if such an order were in place.

“You wouldn’t be able to open your mouth,” DeVilbiss said.

Board Attorney Robin Brena said he disagreed with Carmony’s assessment that the board was interfering with the general manager’s obligation to MEA members.

“This board is accountable to its membership and you are accountable to this board,” Brena said.

Carmony said the media ban was the final piece of a larger gag order that has, over the past few months, closed off all of his avenues for complaint.

The first piece came in November when the board changed its policies to say that Carmony can’t comment to them on their policies or procedures. The second piece came earlier in Monday’s meeting when Brena said he didn’t think it right that Carmony was using the board’s newly imposed whistleblower policy to file complaints.

“I have a problem with the general manager using this to … re-initiate a dispute with matters that the board has already ruled on,” Brena said.

In the end, the board didn’t make any changes to the whistleblower policy but instead asked Brena to come back with amendments fixing the problem he saw with Carmony using the policy and also rules in the policy that seemed to be generating a lot of anonymous, unfounded complaints.

Those complaints were a bone of contention at Monday’s meeting. Board members Katie Hurley, Janet Kincaid and Peter Burchell expressed shock and dismay, calling some of the complaints libelous and others unfounded.

“I’m appalled at the amount of paperwork being forwarded to me regarding the whistleblower policy,” Kincaid said.

She said one of the complaints was “obviously written by a chimpanzee.” Kincaid didn’t say which she was referring to but likely meant complaint No. 6 that lists as a date of incident, “UFSAqhuiPJZzCZ” and as a phone number to contact the complainant, “OUuRGbtJVzOCxY.”

“I do not believe that we should accept any kind of a letter that does not have a signature,” Hurley said.

“I think I predicted this when we set this up,” DeVilbiss said.

According to MEA’s Web site, where the complaints have been posted, as of Monday 17 complaints had been filed since the policy was enacted at the board’s Feb. 23 meeting.

All but five of the complaints are anonymous. Three of those with signatures came from Carmony.

In his complaints, Carmony brings up issues of proper notice for board meetings, which he says hasn’t always been given, issues of board meetings being properly recorded, which he says they often weren’t, and of an off-the-record conversation he had with Kincaid at a meeting last year.

“I have not felt safe to bring this to the attention of the full board, due to what I believe is a strong possibility of retaliation from Director Kincaid,” Carmony said.

The complaint contains an e-mail dated Aug. 12 in which Carmony says Kincaid handed him a flier for a Ted Stevens for Senate banquet.

“Feeling uncomfortable, I finally just asked if the flier was an invitation. All she said was, ‘yes,’ continuing to stare at me,” Carmony writes.

Also at Monday’s meeting, the board rejected a petition from a group of co-op members to toughen conflict-of-interest rules for board members.

Bill Folsom, one of the sponsors of the bylaw change said the board’s rejection of the petition left him “outraged.”

The board, in explaining its decision, said petitions like this have to go through board Secretary Peter Burchell. At the meeting, Burchell said he’d received no such petition. The petition had apparently been sent instead to MEA attorney Jim Walker.

The press release from the petition’s sponsors called that ruling an abuse of power.

“No petition in 20 years of our collective memory had first gone to the secretary,” another sponsor, Lee Jordan, was quoted as saying in the press release.

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