MEA ballot grows by 1

MAT-SU — The name of a perennial candidate for the Matanuska Electric Association board will appear on the upcoming ballot after all.

A petition by Tom Staudenmaier of Eagle River to be listed as a candidate for the cooperative’s board of directors was validated after initially being rejected by MEA officials.

This year, Staudenmaier submitted 67 signatures to petition his way on the ballot. The utility’s bylaws require 50 signatures of MEA member-owners. When co-op officials counted up the names, Staudenmaier only had 49, MEA spokeswoman Lorali Carter said.

Staudenmaier said he counted the signatures himself and found one the utility had missed, a Talkeetna bakery owner. Carter confirmed Staudenmaier’s story, saying the woman had signed her name differently than it appears on the utility’s membership rolls.

“They didn’t want a lawsuit,” Staudenmaier said about why MEA is allowing him on the ballot. “We had our lawyers ready to go on Monday.”

Staudenmaier said the utility didn’t want to print his candidate’s statement, which advocates abolishing the co-op in favor of one overarching co-op for Southcentral Alaska.

Carter has said Staudenmaier’s claims are false, noting the utility had printed his statement in the past.

The utility decided to put Staudenmaier on the ballot after receiving a call from the bakery owner, Carter said, adding the utility probably would have taken a lot of flack had it disqualified Staudenmaier because one of his signers used an incorrect name.

Carter said the 44,000 ballots MEA has already had printed will have to be re-printed at a cost of $8,000.

In addition to electing new board members, an initiative on the ballot is also causing a stir. It’s one Palmer businesswoman Janet Kincaid and retired educator and board incumbent Peter Burchell, both running in the election, have put together.

Burchell, Kincaid and Staudenmaier are running against current board president Lee Jordan and former Houston mayor Tom Baird. The two top vote-getters will win the seats in the at-large election.

The initiative, if it passes, would change the utility’s bylaws to say a person is seated on the board within weeks of being elected at the March annual meeting, rather than in July as is now the practice.

MEA plans to print a statement on the ballot summarizing a statement by its bylaws committee that the change would adversely affect the business, Carter said. It’s something MEA has done before when bylaw changes have appeared on the ballot.

While she doesn’t believe the bylaws require the utility to print anything supporting or against an initiative, Carter said MEA management has to consider what’s in the best interest of the utility, and management believes seating new board members earlier than July is not.

“It’s not like this is a detrimental destructive bylaw amendment to the co-op,” Carter said; however, “It creates inconsistencies within the bylaws.”

The bylaws, if changed, would say new board members are seated in March and new officers — president, treasurer and secretary — are selected in June.

What is the utility to do if an officer loses a re-election bid, Carter asked. Should MEA go months without an officer? Should the current officer stay on until July as an officer, but not a board member?

“It’s not a good way to do business,” she said.

Mike Janecek, former MEA board member and a critic of the utility, calls that explanation baloney. The utility wants that window so it can sic its lawyers on candidates who may shake things up. With that extra time, MEA lawyers could find some reason to invalidate the cadidate’s election, Janecek said.

“Their effort would be to find some way in the [five] months that they had ... to get rid of somebody so they can appoint somebody again,” Janecek said.

Janecek said he believes that’s what happened in his own case, he said, in which he was removed from the board and somebody was appointed to replace him.

“Mr. Janecek’s statements are just silly,” Carter said, adding utility management doesn’t have the authority to go after board members it doesn’t like.

Janecek said he intends to find a way to fight the ballot statement in court.

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