The clique that’s been running the Cobb EMC for far too long keeps coming up with new ways to prevent the members from upsetting management’s chokehold on the cooperative.

The message that’s been sent over and over to members is that they don’t really own the co-op -- it belongs to the management. So the members are told, in effect, sit down and shut up.

If more proof were needed, it’s provided in new bylaw changes. One of these anti-member changes requires EMC members to submit in writing any issue or proposal to be considered at an annual meeting 70 to 100 days in advance -- supposedly. But read for yourself the language of the new bylaw as follows:

“To be timely, a member’s notice for such matters must be delivered to the Secretary of the Cooperative at the principal office of the Cooperative in proper written form not less than seventy (70) days and not more than one hundred (100) days prior to the first anniversary of the preceding year’s annual meeting of members; provided, however, that if, and only if, the annual meeting or substitute annual meeting is not scheduled to be held within a period that commences thirty (30) days before such anniversary date and ends thirty (30) days after such anniversary date, such member’s notice must be delivered by the later of (A) the twentieth (20th) day following the Annual Meeting Announcement Date (as hereinafter defined) and (B) the date which is seventy (70) days prior to the date of the annual meeting or substitute annual meeting. In no event shall any adjournment, deferral or postponement of an annual meeting or substitute annual meeting or the announcement thereof commence a new time period for the giving of a member’s notice as described above.” (Check it out at www.cobbemc.com)

Attorney Pitts Carr, representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the EMC, got it right when he said the “brain teasing equation can have one goal and one goal only -- to make it virtually impossible for members to meaningfully bring up new business at the annual meeting, a right specifically reserved to the members by the EMC act."

Carr’s law partner, David Cohen, called it “a pure power grab and effort to tighten management's control over the entire EMC and its funds. It is wrong.”

If there is ever another annual meeting -- we’re two behind already -- the members themselves should rewrite the bylaws to allow election of all the directors at the same time and then vote all of the current board out and elect a new one.