Supreme court backs decision

MEA required to pay attorney fees in Waterman case

By RINDI WHITE-Frontiersman reporter

A three-judge panel of the Alaska Supreme Court handed down a decision Friday, sewing up a lawsuit that represents three years of battling between Matanuska Electric Association and MEA board member Michael Janecek.

"I feel vindicated," Janecek said Friday. "I still maintain that there are others who have broken bylaws there who have gone unpunished. I believe the bylaws are worse than when this all began."

In a judgment penned by Chief Justice Dana Fabe, the panel upheld a 2002 Alaska Superior Court decision that stated the MEA board was not able to remove Janecek from the board for perceived campaign disclosure violations.

The lawsuit stems from MEA's 2001 board of directors election, in which Janecek won a seat on the MEA board. At the board's April 30, 2001, meeting, board members decided 5-2 not to seat Janecek, claiming his campaign disclosures were inaccurate and did not demonstrate a good faith effort to comply with MEA bylaws. Shortly after the decision, Scott Waterman, a member-owner of MEA and would-be constituent of Janecek's, filed a complaint and subsequent request for a restraining order and injunctive relief against the decision.

Alaska Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler, in a Feb. 2002 ruling from the bench, found that Janecek should have been seated and ordered MEA to do so. He was seated at MEA's March 2002 meeting. A final judgment in the case came in Sept. 2002, when Cutler determined that Waterman fit the criteria to be a public interest litigant and ordered MEA to pay $100,000 in attorney fees to Waterman's attorney, Ingaldson Maassen.

MEA appealed the decision, stating concern that accepting Cutler's decision could "lead to disarray in 2003 board elections," through Cutler's interpretation that MEA candidates can correct any campaign disclosure violations, no matter how significant.

Prior to the appeal, MEA posted a $125,000 bond to pay Waterman's attorney fees in 2002. The Supreme Court decision did not stipulate when that money will be transferred.

MEA spokesman Mike Pauley said Friday that, although MEA disagrees with the decision, the battle is one that won't be repeated.

"We never thought it was a reasonable interpretation of the correction clause to say anything could be corrected by filing a correction form. [But] the legal issues that gave rise to Waterman concerning the bylaws certainly aren't going to happen again," Pauley said. "The new bylaws are very tightly written."

Pauley said the 2004 board candidates have, thus far, complied faithfully with the new bylaws.

Although bylaws pertaining to campaign disclosures appear to be off the legal hook, other new bylaws that were voted in by MEA members in 2003 are now being challenged in another lawsuit launched by Waterman. The lawsuit, assigned to Palmer Superior Court, alleges that MEA's new drug-testing bylaw, requiring board members to submit to hair-sample drug testing before being seated on the board, violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, as well as four other causes of action related to the bylaw. That case, Pauley said, is presently in its discovery phase.

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.