New voices make MEA our company

Companies don’t always run like a democracy. In fact, they seldom do. Most of the time, that just makes sense.

But when it comes to a cooperative, it makes sense for it to run, well, cooperatively.

We are heartened to see the new board of directors at our electrical cooperative, Matanuska Electric Association, has made strides toward putting a representative form of cooperation into its way of doing business.

Earlier this week, the MEA board seated a new bylaws committee, replacing all but two members of the old committee. The terms of all but one member appointed early this year had long since expired, but the board was left intact by former MEA president Lee Jordan, which he said was his right.

Which takes us right back to those bylaws. The letter of the law at MEA has seemed to mutate into something more despotic than democratic over the last several years. Some have accused the bylaws committee of becoming a bully pulpit for MEA management as it sought to maintain control of the board and force its will on the membership.

With a new bylaws committee, we hope to see some real progress in returning MEA to a true cooperative.

Does that mean MEA will sway with the voices of popular opinion? We neither think so or hope so. But we do hope the new committee is an indicator that the new MEA Board of Directors is willing to listen to the public, wants input from its members and won’t try cramming its will down the collective throats of a screaming membership.

It may not be fair that the new MEA board has so many fences to mend with its member/owners, but mend it must. We think that by giving the contentious bylaws committee a virtual clean sweep, MEA President Lois Lester and the board are sending a message that a wind of change is blowing through MEA and it is generating power — the power to take back the cooperative from a management team that has shown itself distant and hostile to its own membership.

We applaud the appointments of a diverse group of volunteers. While we don’t know each of the new members, we can see it isn’t stacked with “yes” people or cronies. It emphasizes independent thinking and diverse backgrounds. We like that.

We hope this is the first of several steps to make MEA our cooperative again.