PEDERNALES ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE
Former co-op execs subpoenaed
Congress’ hearing Thursday adds former general manager and board president as witnesses.
By <http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/25/mailto:cgrisales@statesman.com>Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
A congressional committee has issued subpoenas to compel two former top Pedernales Electric Cooperative officials to testify before a U.S. House investigative committee Thursday. The hearing will be focused on what the committee termed “questionable practices” at the Johnson City-based utility and other rural electric co-ops around the country.
Karen Lightfoot, communications director for the committee, confirmed Tuesday that the committee has summoned former General Manager Bennie Fuelberg and former board President W.W. “Bud” Burnett to appear at Thursday’s hearing in Washington.
A U.S. Marshals Service representative in Austin confirmed that the agency has tried to serve the subpoenas in recent days.
“That is correct,” said Hector Gomez, Austin supervisory deputy for the marshals service. They “have not been served. They haven’t been home.”
Fuelberg and Burnett have been major figures in the controversy that has plagued the co-op for the past year and that eventually forced them from their positions. Neither has spoken publicly since leaving Pedernales.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has slated several key Pedernales’ players to testify, including Fuelberg’s successor, General Manager Juan Garza; two state lawmakers; and two co-op members.
Pedernales, the country’s largest member-owned utility, with more than 225,000 members, has been rocked by disclosures of questionable expenditures by directors and executives, including large compensation packages and expensive travel.
Last week, five new directors were elected to the board under new, more democratic rules. The one incumbent director seeking re-election, D.L. Ruff, was unseated.
The House committee is led by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., whom Time magazine once dubbed the “scariest guy in Washington” because of his committee’s wide-ranging investigative powers.
The 40-member panel includes U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who has taken a special interest in electric co-op issues. On Tuesday, Cooper’s paper “Electric Co-operatives: From New Deal to Bad Deal?” was published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. The paper is critical of co-ops’ closely guarded financial operations and failure to return excess revenue to their member-owners — issues that were central to the Pedernales controversy.
“Too many electric co-ops have turned away from their historic role as exciting, pro-consumer organizations and have instead taken on deeply troubling anti-consumer behaviors,” Cooper’s paper says.
cgrisales@statesman.com; 912-5933
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