MEA bylaw authors plan legal action

PALMER — The slate of candidates for two seats on the MEA Board of Directors is set, but a fight over the ballot continues.

At its meeting March 9, the MEA Board of Directors decided not to accept for inclusion on the ballot a proposed bylaw change to tighten conflict of interest requirements.

On Monday, Lee Jordan, a former president of the board and one of the MEA members sponsoring the change, announced in a press release that his group will fight the board’s decision.

Jordan said his group has hired Kenneth P. Jacobus to represent them in a suit filed in Anchorage Superior Court to seek an immediate injunction to get the change on the ballot.

At their meeting, board President Lois Lester said the petition wasn’t correctly filed, that it should have gone through board Secretary Peter Burchell. The board agreed with her, voting to reject the submitted change.

“That is the most ridiculous claim ever drummed up to stifle the voice of MEA members,” said Bill Folsom, a former board member and co-sponsor of the amendment, said in a press release.

Also at the meeting, the board asked MEA spokeswoman Lorali Carter to bring them a copy of the ballot to review before it’s printed. Board member Peter Burchell said he didn’t want to be surprised by any poll questions like the ones included on the back of last year’s ballot.

General Manager Wayne Carmony took credit for the poll questions, saying its within his purview to ask the members questions when it doesn’t cost anything and that if the board wanted to restrict that power it could.

As for which candidates will be on the ballot, Lois Lester and Kit Jones are seeking re-election to two at-large seats on the board. Their competitors will be Marvin Yoder and Crystal Nygard.

A fifth candidate, Tom Staudenmaier, filed for a seat but did not, according Carter, get his application materials in on time.

He’ll be on the ballot but his materials won’t be in the booklet distributed with the ballot. She said his materials were six days late.

Staudenmaier, who hails from Eagle River, is a perennial board candidate and on-again off-again board member. He uses his candidate statement in the election pamphlet to advocate for a merger of all the electrical co-ops in the Railbelt — MEA, Chugach Electric, Golden Valley Electric, etc., — into one large co-op.

In past elections Staudenmaier has said that the election materials at MEA are cheaper than printing his own leaflets or pamphlets since getting his name on the ballot only costs him his signature.

This year, he said, he’s hoping the floor will be opened to debate at the annual meeting and he’ll be able to discuss his ideas there.

During last year’s election, he ran into a different problem when MEA said he hadn’t gathered the requisite number of signatures for a spot on the ballot. He won the ensuing fight and ended up on the ballot, prompting an $8,000 re-print of the election materials.

This go-round Staudenmaier seemed less confrontational.

“It is what it is,” he said. “They can do what they want, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Usually, he said, when he applies to run for a seat MEA will send him a letter congratulating him and informing him of the upcoming deadlines.

This year, by contrast, “It was a one-line deal, there wasn’t anything else in it.”

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