By Alex MacLeod

You may have seen OPALCO’s recent paid advertisement about legal threats its Board made against a former board member and a sitting County Councilman, and publicly lying about the origins of those threats.

The Board published the ad in The Journal, The Islands Weekly and The Sounder after approving it in yet another secret meeting (You can also find it at //www.opalco.com/news_article/opalco-board-responds-to-member-concerns/)

The OPALCO statement is fundamentally dishonest and perpetuates behaviors that are crippling our co-op: holding closed meetings, silencing questions, being blatantly dishonest with member-owners and treating the membership with distain and arrogance.

In its statement, the Board laid out a detailed case for making the bogus legal threats, then asked us to believe that neither board members nor senior managers could recall any of those details when asked about them at a public meeting.

Bull.

Let’s start with the Board’s “justification” for making legal threats against John Bogert. The first threat came via e-mail from Joel Paisner, then one of OPALCO’s Seattle lawyers, the day OPALCO received Bogert’s letter of resignation from the Board.

Bogert’s letter set forth three reasons for resigning:

• “The board continued to pursue its own broadband agenda in spite of a clear no-confidence vote by the membership and failed to be transparent in doing so.

• “Meanwhile…Century Link and OPALCO determined that a collaborative venture would significantly improve broadband coverage in the county at no cost to the membership, potentially a ground-breaking agreement…

• “The board’s decision-making on this issue lacked the thoroughness and commitment necessary to complete these negotiations.”

Paisner’s letter strongly implied that Bogert’s resignation letter violated the confidentiality of OPALCO’s dealings with CenturyLink. Puzzled, Bogert called Paisner the next day. The two went through the letter line-by-line.

As Bogert later wrote to the board, and as Paisner has since reiterated, Paisner agreed that, in fact, Bogert had in no way violated confidentiality.

The Board’s statement continues: “Soon thereafter, Mr. Bogert published his letter of resignation and later testified before the County Council on Oct. 14 about OPALCO’s relationship with CenturyLink.”

According to the board, these two actions caused Paisner to send the second, more threatening letter to Bogert despite then-board president Thomerson’s “misgivings about sending the letter.”

This is hogwash.

Bogert never “published” his letter of resignation (snippets of it were reported in a news story) and never “testified” before the County Council. He did ask one question at the council meeting which Brian Stading, CenturyLink’s regional president, fielded.

Specifically, Bogert asked if it was correct that OPALCO had changed direction and now was pursuing a “piecemeal, incremental” broadband build-out, rather than the more “global” approach Stading had described to the council. Stading answered: “That’s a fair characterization of where we’re at.”

New board member Glenna Hall presumably called board president Chris Thomerson to report on Bogert’s “testimony.” Within hours the second letter “to formally demand that you cease making such statements” was on its way to Bogert. The evidence strongly suggests that Thomerson initiated the letter, not that he “expressed misgivings about sending” it.

In its advertisement, the Board says the legal threats to Bogert “did not in any way direct (him) not to discuss why he left the OPALCO Board.” Since he had done nothing else, and hardly even that, what other purpose was there? In fact, the Board was clear: Shut up or we’ll sue you. Bogert shut up.

Addressing Topic No. 2, the board is equally ludicrous. What was the issue?

When asked at a Shaw Island Town Hall meeting, OPALCO Board members and senior management each categorically denied any role in sending the letters to Bogert, implying it was the doing of its lawyers.

(I summarized their statements in an e-mail the next day to General Manager Randy Cornelius while asking to review the lawyers’ bills to determine the truth. Cornelius left my summary unchallenged and denied my request to see the billing records.)

Now reversing its story, OPALCO asks us to believe that members couldn’t be relied upon to make accurate statements because  “memories of the events last fall were no longer fresh.”

Really? That overlooks an opinion piece I wrote on the subject in mid-April, published by The Journal and islandguardian.com.

Several co-op members, concerned by the Board’s apparent lack of memory (or honesty), told me they intended to bring up this issue from the floor at OPALCO’s annual meeting. They never had the chance. For the first time in OPALCO history, questions from the floor were not allowed. Go figure.

Is this just a Shaw Island issue, as the board would have us believe?

I don’t think so.

I can’t think of anything more fundamental to a cooperative’s board than honesty. Right behind that is the ability to acknowledge mistakes, apologize and take steps to make sure they aren’t repeated.

This basic level of transparency and trust is especially important now as the board, and we members, wrestle with the shared desire to improve broadband service in a way that we all understand, support and can afford.

Right now, we’re not getting that.

All issues related to broadband are discussed in secret. So are members’ complaints about bad judgment and dishonesty. We are asked to believe the unbelievable and trust people who have shown themselves not to be trustworthy.

If you are no longer willing to accept this, please say so. The OPALCO board is putting our co-op at risk. It’s time to put an end to this before it’s too late.

— Editor’s note: Alex MacLeod is a resident of Shaw Island and a 25-year member of OPALCO.