MEA members have full plate of ballot questions

PALMER — This year’s raft of bylaw changes in the Matanuska Electric Association election would make viable a fledgling charitable program, change the nomination process for the board of directors and tweak campaign disclosure rules.

Chances to the group’s bylaws have in recent years become something of a fixture for MEA elections. MEA Bylaw Committee member Dewey Taylor said that probably won’t change anytime soon.

“The bylaws have been such a patchwork,” he said.

Changes seem to make the rules that govern the cooperative more complicated over time rather than less, and the Bylaws Committee is working to straighten them out. Following is a rundown of what that means this year:

Proposition 1: The measure would change a provision of the bylaws written in by mistake last year that makes the drug testing rules barely hold together logically, but seems to state that incoming board members must fail a drug test to be seated. Taylor said it was basically an oversight.

“Last year we changed all the bylaws to be in the positive and someone didn’t change that one,” Taylor said.

Proposition 2: This one changes the way candidates make it onto the ballot in the co-op’s yearly board of directors election. There have always been two ways to get there. The easier route was to seek the endorsement of the nominating committee. But that committee was far from a rubber stamp. It has, at times, declined to nominate current board president Lois Lester, former director Katie Hurley and, most recently in this year’s election, candidate Bill Folsom. The thing about all three of those moves, though, is that those candidates made it on the ballot anyway. All three went the petition route instead.

“That’s one that just seems like it was controversy for no reason,” Taylor said.

Propositions 3 and 4: Both of these deal with campaign disclosure rules. Proposition 3 would most notably make sure all contributions from campaign funds to other campaigns are disclosed. Proposition 4 would clean up something that has tripped up numerous candidates in the past, making clear that each candidate has to file financial reports 45, 30 and 15 days before an election, two days after an election and then a final report on June 15.

“It’s just mainly trying to make the rules simpler,” Taylor said. “We wrestled with that one (to find a way) to say it without being so complicated.”

Proposition 5: This one changes the way the co-op provides notice for special board meetings.

It allows for notifying board members via email instead of through the mail or personally. The email has to be sent 72 hours before hand. Note: the rules only apply to notifying board members.

MEA customers still have to be notified through postings at MEA offices and on its website.

“So much is going to email so it was just allowing (something) other than a letter to allow for a meeting,” Taylor said.

Proposition 6: This makes it so that the co-op has to preserve and document official emails for five years.

“If communication is happening via e-mails that information has to be archived,” Taylor said, just like it does for government agencies.

Proposition 7: This one is probably the one that will get the most attention. It deals with the Round Up Program, which rounds customers’ bills to the nearest dollar and donates that spare change to charitable programs and projects. MEA spokeswoman Cheryl Heinze has said before that Round Up won’t take off otherwise. It’s simply too difficult to get people to sign up on their own to make such tiny contributions to a fledgling program.

Taylor would add that Fairbanks has a similar program and it’s been doing great ever since it was set up to automatically gather the funds.

“Now their participation is 80 percent and now they have a viable program that is doing good things in their service area,” Taylor said.

Putting it on the ballot forms the idea as a question. Is this something members want to do?

Proposition 8: The final bylaw change mandates that the Bylaw Committee have changes to the bylaws to the board of directors at the start of the year. The board would them have enough time to debate them.

“The board has been a little bit frustrated that they haven’t been getting bylaw changes in a timely manner so that they can do their debate on them,” Taylor said.

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