Trustees targeted by reformists
A group working to reform Socorro Electric Cooperative was successful in helping to get a slew of new bylaws passed last April. Now, they’re going after the board of trustees.
A petition asking to recall District 2 trustee and co-op President Paul Bustamante was turned into the co-op at the board’s regular meeting on Nov. 22. The group announced last week another petition has begun circulating in Socorro to recall District 3 trustee Donald Wolberg.
Charlene West, chairwoman of the Socorro Electric Cooperative Reform Committee, said petitions should soon be starting up in Districts 1 and 4, where Leo Cordova and Dave Wade, respectively, serve as representatives.
West said the campaign was started because trustees aren’t following the directive member-owners of the rural electric cooperative gave them when a bevy of new bylaws aimed at reform passed by overwhelming margins at April’s annual meeting.
“The group is upset because they (trustees) aren’t moving,” West said. “No matter what we ask, they balk at it. It’s gotten to be ridiculous.”
The reform group formed almost three years ago when it came to light in 2007 that the 11 members of the board accumulated nearly $300,000 in expenses, including reimbursements for per diem, travel, hotel, fees and health insurance. Board expenses reached $482,000 in 2009, before members passed a bylaw to limit the board’s expenses to $115,000 per year, including benefits.
Other new bylaws call for:
• The size of the board to be reduced from 11 to five trustees
• District boundaries to be realigned to create more equitable representation
• The board to follow the Open Meetings Act and Inspection of Public Records Act
• Board meetings to be open to the public and the press and advertised in local newspapers
• Mail-in voting to be incorporated into district and co-op wide elections
• Board members to be limited to serving two consecutive terms
While the co-op has taken some steps to begin implementing the bylaws, West said the board is still doing everything it can to resist the change members demanded.
“They shouldn’t be fighting us,” she said. “It’s been three years of us fighting to get them to pay attention to what they should be doing all along. You’d think by now they’d be more willing to do what the people — not the reform group, the members — have asked them to do.”
Starting at the Top
West, who lives in Lemitar, which is a part of District 2, said she had little to do with the petition circulated in that district to have Bustamante recalled. Member-owner Richard Epstein did most of the legwork in obtaining the 115 signatures, she said, and he presented it to the board at its November meeting.
Epstein also turned in a letter that stated the action was being taken against Bustamante for “breach of fiduciary duty and no confidence.”
Though Epstein asked that an independent auditor verify the signatures, Richard Lopez, the co-op’s interim general manager, said the vetting process was being done in-house to save on expenses.
“It’s about two-thirds complete,” he said on Thursday. “We should have verification of whether the signatures that are on the petition are in fact members of the co-op by the next board meeting.”
That meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 29.
If a sufficient number of names are verified — 10 percent of members in the district or about 75 are required, as per the co-op’s bylaw — Lopez said a special meeting would be called in District 2. At that meeting, members would have an opportunity to state their case and Bustamante would be given a chance to answer the allegations.
Before any vote could be taken to recall the co-op president, Lopez said a decision would have to be made to determine if the charges against him were warranted.
“A lot of it would be based on legal opinion, as to whether the allegations being brought up were valid or invalid,” Lopez said. “You can’t just yank somebody out.”
Lopez said the bylaws don’t specify who makes the determination as to the validity of the allegations.
“We’re looking into that now,” he said. “It has to be legal, so it will be counsel’s decision as to how to go about it.”
That’s what worries reform group members. West said it seems apparent that co-op attorney Dennis Francish is guarding the interests of the trustees, who hired him a year ago, and not those of the members.
“He’s their lawyer, not ours,” she said.
Which Way Out?
West said the reform group is targeting Wolberg next because even though he was elected as a reform candidate, it appears he’s now entrenched with a core of longstanding trustees she said is resisting change.
“Wolberg is spearheading everything,” she said, of the New Mexico Tech adjunct professor who is chairman of the redistricting committee, serves on the general manager search committee and emerged as the board’s spokesman at an informational meeting held prior to the annual meeting last spring.
A reform group press release that announced the petition drive against Wolberg described the informational meeting as “a propaganda session contained in a lecture.”
The press release states that Wolberg was chosen as the next trustee to be recalled because “so many members consider that he has betrayed them by running as a reform candidate and then joining the board majority in actions detrimental to the members’ interests.”
That petition also cites breach of fiduciary duty and no confidence as the reason for the recall.
Approximately 418 signatures would be needed to begin the recall process against Wolberg, who is one of five trustees representing District 3, which encompasses the city of Socorro.
Wolberg said members can circulate a petition to remove him if they want to.
“I’ll even sign it,” he quipped. “If people are unhappy with someone who stressed the need for mail-in ballots, term limits, improving management and redistricting, they can do that. Those are all the things I ran on.”
Wolberg said he only ran for the position of District 3 trustee because his children urged him to do so to help affect positive change at the co-op, and now he thinks he’s accomplished about all he can do.
“I think I’ve done my part,” he said. “There’s not much more I can bring to the table in a practical sense. (The plan for) redistricting is almost done. When redistricting happens, all the trustees can serve out their terms in the old districts, and when there are new districts there will be new trustees.”
Wolberg said he would be willing to resign as soon as the redistricting plan passed to expedite the process of getting down to five trustees, and he thought the two other trustees voted in as reform candidates, Luis Aguilar and Prescilla Mauldin, would as well.
“None of us are taking any money for doing this. We’re tired of working for free and spending 20, 30 hours a week doing co-op business on top of what we normally do,” he said. “All these things bear heavily on all three of us … In my mind, the honorable thing to do would be to get it done and get out.”
More to Come
Meanwhile, petition drives are planned in other districts.
Virginia Martin of Tierra Grande said she plans to start circulating the petition to recall District 1 trustee Leo Cordova after Christmas.
Asked why she wants to see Cordova removed, Martin said it was because she doesn’t see any signs from him doing anything to help the co-op or the members in his district.
“I don’t think he’s the guy we want representing us,” she said. “He votes with the gang. He doesn’t have an idea of his own. If he wanted to do the right thing, he’d vote with Charlie (Wagner) at least some of the time.”
Cordova said people have a right to try to remove him if they want.
“They can try. If District 1 feels that way, I would respect that,” he said. “I respect freedom of speech and of the press. Everybody has got a right to their own opinions. That’s how it is in America.”
But Cordova said he’s always been dedicated to doing what’s right for the co-op.
“I’ve served on the board for seven years, and my responsibility has always been to the people who voted me in and to the co-op as a whole,” he said. “I’m only concerned about what I do, and that’s all I can do.”
Recalling Cordova would require approximately 156 signatures from the co-op’s northern district.
Martin said she attends neighborhood watch meetings at which 50-60 people regularly attend.
“People that come to those meetings feel pretty much the same way,” she said, adding that she might start getting signatures as soon as Tuesday.
That’s when a status hearing will be held in district court in Los Lunas on a case originally filed by Socorro Electric against Charlene West and “all unnamed member-owners” of the co-op — or all of its approximately 10,000 customers.
The lawsuit was brought as an effort to block three new bylaws that require the co-op to conduct business with increased transparency.
Though the board later voted to dismiss the suit, counterclaims have been filed, including one that calls for all of the trustees to be removed and for them to pay out of their own pocket for reimbursements unfairly received.
West said people are as mad as ever over the board’s apparent reluctance to abide by all the new bylaws. She said when the reform movement first started it was hard to find supporters, but that’s not the case anymore.
“People are upset,” she said. “Everybody knows what’s happening and they don’t like it.”
West said the reform group is organizing a petition drive in January to recall Vice President Dave Wade in District 4, where about 65 signatures would be needed. She said the plan is then to start circulating petitions to recall two other District 3 trustees, Leroy Anaya and Milton Ulibarri.
Contact T.S. Last