Crowd seeks Cobb EMC board’s ouster

A Marietta electric cooperative’s 70th annual membership meeting started out like a fair with balloons, hot dogs and a cheerful teenage chorus Thursday.

But it quickly turned ugly as angry Cobb EMC members demanded the board’s ouster and called on the utility’s executives and officers to sever all financial ties with for-profit operating affiliate Cobb Energy.

To loud cheers, Cobb EMC members also passed a motion reversing a recent board decision allowing Cobb Energy to collect an 11 percent markup for operating the nonprofit cooperative.

Members lined up at a microphone to blast the co-op over its ties to the for-profit company, which is controlled and partly owned by co-op executives and allies.

The actions were the most public display yet in a year-long battle between co-op executives and members that has mostly been fought in court. The central issue has been whether Cobb Energy has siphoned co-op assets.

“There is no credibility left with the board of directors,” Deborah Allen, a 28-year Cobb EMC member from northeast Cobb County, told the board. “I’m here because I don’t trust you anymore.

“What we’ve got is something that looks like a cash cow for you and your friends. What did you think was going to happen?”

Co-op supporters spoke, too, praising Cobb EMC’s service, technology and response to customers in storms.

“Don’t blow a good thing,” urged one. “Keep Cobb EMC the way it is and working.”

Harry McGinnis, a planning consultant from Acworth, also supported the co-op. “It’s like elected officials,” McGinnis said in an interview. “We have elected them, and we have to have confidence in them.”

But supporters were outnumbered, out-voted and occasionally out-shouted by critics, in a display co-op officials alleged was orchestrated by plaintiffs’ lawyers in a customer lawsuit against the co-op and Cobb Energy.

“They hijacked it,” said co-op spokeswoman Carol Cookerly. “This became their show.”

The annual meeting, which drew more than 850 co-op members, came as the lawsuit moves toward trial.

A judge in that case barred the co-op from holding planned board of director elections at Thursday’s meeting, but allowed the meeting to go forward.

Cobb EMC hosted the event in a fairlike atmosphere under red- and blue-striped tents, where Varsity hot dogs and hamburgers were on sale. The Sprayberry High School Chorus performed on stage in front of a huge U.S. flag at the start of the meeting. At the end, officials handed out door prizes, ranging from coffee makers to DVD players.

The members took over almost immediately, when former U.S. Rep. Fletcher Thompson made a motion to deny Cobb Energy an 11 percent markup.

Cobb Energy had been collecting that markup since 2005, after nearly doubling the fee. But the co-op board never approved that increase — worth about $2.5 million per year — until last month. Fletcher’s motion, which passed, rescinded that August approval.

A second member, former Cobb County Commissioner Charlie Jones, followed with a motion calling for the resignation of all board members, which also passed handily.

It’s unclear what those and other passed motions will mean. Although members and plaintiffs’ attorneys said the motions were legal, co-op attorney Bob Silliman and board chairman Larry Chadwick said they were not.

“The motions from the floor — although they were well-taken and the board of directors will consider all of them — they were illegal,” Chadwick said. “You can’t do that. They were against our bylaws.”

Plaintiffs’ attorneys denied orchestrating the meeting, although they said Thompson had consulted them.

“The rest of those people are here out of a sense of outrage directed toward the management of Cobb EMC,” said William Pitts Carr, lead plaintiff’s attorney.

Board chairman Chadwick said the litigants are close to settlement that could resolve many issues brought up at Thursday’s meeting. Dwight Brown would remain CEO of both Cobb EMC and Cobb Energy under the proposed settlement, Chadwick said.

“It is all being worked out between the parties,” Chadwick said. “Basically, what we are trying to do is get everything that is related to Cobb EMC back in Cobb EMC. That’s the way it will be.”

Board attorney S. Lester Tate III and Carr both called any settlement talks tentative.

Cobb EMC management also heard Thursday from environmental activists opposed to the co-op’s participation in a coal plant development project in Washington County.

Seth Gunning, a Cobb EMC member from Roswell, pushed through a motion requiring that cost-benefit studies on the plant be made public. Gunning is a member of the Cobb Alliance for Smart Energy, which opposes the plant based on concerns it would be too costly and harm the environment.