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DEC sending member-regulation ballots
By Jonathan Starkey
Staff Reporter
Anyone who drives on Kent and Sussex County roads has likely seen signs promoting Delaware Electric Cooperative’s (DEC) member-regulation vote. Likewise, anyone listening to local radio has heard DEC officials stressing its importance. The downstate company has been promoting the vote for months. And late this week, they planned to send ballots to their members, asking them to vote to eliminate Public Service Commission (PSC) regulation of the not-for-profit, member-owned electric company.
“The entire board is in favor of this,” said Jack Sparks, who represents the Bethany Beach area on the 11-member DEC elected board of directors. “It will mean a savings for our members.”
Currently, DEC is regulated by its board of directors and the PSC commission. Eliminating the PSC regulation, officials say, would save response time and money. Each year, for instance, DEC spends about $330,000 on an annual PSC assessment. On average, it spends another $170,000 on hearings before the commission for things such as rate changes or what DEC Vice President Layton Wheeler called “terms and conditions.”
Recently, DEC officials have appeared before the PSC for issues with testing meters and changing pole lamps in certain Sussex County subdivisions.
Such problems — if the vote was passed — could be solved more quickly among the board of directors, who are elected every three years by DEC’s 65,000 member-owners.
“We will still be member regulated but we save on average a half-million dollars every year,” said Bill Andrew, DEC president and chief executive officer. “We are owned by our membership. When we conserve, we conserve our business model.”
Eliminating PSC regulation, though, would eliminate a check on the DEC board, making it the only governing body for those 65,000 member-owners.
Wheeler — who along with Andrew has been promoting the vote at speaking engagements and informational meetings in both counties for months — dismissed possible complaints that the DEC board would take advantage of its customers.
“We are committing to our member owners that when we become member-regulated, it’s business as usual,” he said, adding that 83 percent of the nation’s about 900 cooperatives are member-regulated. “Our service is second to none. Our rates are among the best. Nothing is going to change. Our rates are going to increase but they’re not going to increase as a result of member regulation.”
Once DEC customers receive the ballot in the mail — likely sometime early next week — they can vote over the phone, on the internet or by returning the ballot to the Pennsylvania Company which is handling the vote independent of the DEC. The deadline to vote will be on Aug. 8 in Harrington at the DEC annual meeting. Results should be known shortly thereafter. By Delaware law, 15 percent of DEC members have to vote to make the result legal. If 15 percent of DEC’s customers — about 10,000 — vote, a simple majority rules.
If in the future customers are not happy with member-regulation, however, they can submit a petition with 1,000 names to initiate another vote, this time to return to PSC regulation.
DEC officials will hold another Sussex County member-regulation informational meeting at 6:30 p.m. on July 18 at Delaware Technical and Community College’s Georgetown campus.
Visit DEC’s Web site at www.delaware.coop for more information, or call the Greenwood-based company at 349-9090.
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