Tracking Legal Events involving Electric & Telephone Cooperatives

Democracy Issues

Here we attempt to highlight some of the more interesting and more important issues concerning democratic control and voting involving Rural Electric Cooperatives and Rural Telephone Cooperatives involved in litigation.

Some of these links take you outside of the Coop Litigation News website so we aren't responsible for the content. 

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Lack of Member Control

Coops belong to their Members; however, many Coops have management and Boards that have come to believe that it is "their" Coop and the Members should not meddle or participate in any meaningful way in the management of the Coop.

These Coops make it difficult or impossible by requiring Members to obtain the signatures of impossibly large numbers of other Members to even be hear by the Board.

One requires over 30,000 signatures just to place an issue before the Coop membership for a vote.

One Coop requires over 60,000 affirmative votes to pass a resolution at an annual meeting where 2,000 votes are the most ever cast ballots in the 70 year history of the Coop.

Still others impose voting requirements that guarantee the reelection of longtime Board members.

This issue is being litigated with several Coops:

CoServ Electric (Texas) Litigation