Don McKee
Nelson, 63, should know the EMC inside out, having been with the co-op for 37 years, including seven as chief operations officer and the past four-plus months as interim CEO.
Now the long-suffering members want to know if and how he will change the culture of his predecessor, Dwight Brown, who is under indictment on charges of theft, racketeering, fraud and conspiracy to defraud government entities.
Nelson told the Journal's editors he wanted to make the EMC more transparent by creating an advisory council from the membership and "to make time to meet with members" along with his staff and "try to answer questions, particularly on where we are going in the future." He said, "I think our doors are going to be open to that."
Transparency along with listening to members would be a welcome change. Management meetings with members should be a step in the right direction, depending on how much transparency actually occurs. Will the meetings and the open doors result in the membership receiving more information about the management and operations of the co-op?
Early indications are not what can be considered promising. For starters, Nelson said he had no intentions of releasing the EMC's quarterly earnings although other utilities are required to do so. He argued that it would not be "wise" because the figures are unaudited versus a publicly held company's duly audited results. That could be fixed by having an audit, but Nelson dismissed it as "just more expense."
It's hardly the time to be pinching pennies on an audit to ensure that members are kept fully informed - after the EMC has spent who knows how much on lawyers and PR consultants defending itself and Brown against the lawsuit by members that finally brought management to heel.
Nelson also was not forthcoming about his salary. He would not disclose what he is being paid, passing off the question by laughingly saying, "it's less than" Brown's $300,000 a year. This is not a laughing matter. If the members of Cobb EMC do not have the right to know what their CEO is paid or the right to know what the quarterly financial performance of their co-op is - then what do they have the right to know?
If CEO Nelson is unwilling to tell the members what they are paying him, he might reconsider his talk about transparency.
Unfortunately, changing the CEO does not automatically change the culture of the co-op into one of genuine transparency with open doors and open books. The way to fix this problem is to elect new directors who will change the culture - or else persuade the General Assembly to amend the law governing EMCs to require their compliance with the state's Open Meetings and Open Records acts. Or both.
dmckee9613@aol.com
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Mr. Nelson needs to be given a chance but not that much time to make things right.
He says he is not aware of the goings on at Cobb Energy. He called it Energy in an effort to create distance. He needs to get up to speed fast and let us know. How do the two remaining Energy subsidiaries make their money and who gets it? Does Cobb EMC now own 100% of everything or do Brown and his cronies still own shares in Energy, or the subsidiaries Pro Core and Right of Way? Nelson stated that Right of Way manages tree clearing for Cobb EMC. Does it do anything else for Cobb? How does Pro Core make the bulk of its money and from who? Cobb EMC? Will Nelson put out these services for bid? Is JW Ryder still making over $750,000 a year from Cobb EMC and its Gas South?
And speaking of bidding, aren’t there better coal plant construction consultants than Dwight Brown and Dean Alfred? From what I understand Power Four Georgians already has gotten its permits. Why are these guys needed? To do a big fat land deal for more of their cronies? How much are they getting paid and who owns Allied Energy, the company that Alfred fronts for?
Cobb EMC has for years bought electric power from Cliff Hare, another one of Dwight’s buddies, and had the contract managed by one of the persons named in the grand jury indictments, a Anise Shirali. Cobb EMC has paid Mr. Hare and his companies hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Will Mr. Nelson do an accounting of these purchases to make sure we didn’t overpay. Who owns shares in Mr. Shirili’s company The Energy Consulting Group? Will Cobb EMC bid this business out to those who aren’t cronies of Mr. Brown?
Decades of member complacency allowed Cobb EMC's leadership to adopt a very condescending view of its members and a disturbingly cavalier attitude regarding the seriousness of its co-op status. This has enabled the leadership to treat with disdain (to the point of demonization) anyone who would dare to hold it accountable to its only real owners -- the members.
While I wish Mr. Nelson well and sincerely hope that his selection as CEO signals a turning point, I too am disturbed by the unbalanced perspective revealed by some of his responses. For example, consider the fact that Cobb EMC / Cobb Energy has felt it necessary to pay a PR firm millions for an aggressive, ongoing disinformation campaign to demonize critics while elevating co-op leadership to near sainthood. Now the new CEO tells us he feels that the cost of providing audited quarterly financials is "just more expense."
In other words, no price is too high to create the illusion of propriety, but REAL propriety, well, we just can't waste members' money on such frivolities.
I do hold out hope, though. Mr. Nelson appears to be an intelligent man with a functioning conscience, and is at least saying he wants to interact with members. If he is serious about this, and is able to step outside the Cobb EMC biodome long enough to clear his head, he will realize that expenses like the cost of quarterly audit reports are a small price to pay for credibility and trust.