{"id":1608,"date":"2011-08-23T13:29:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T17:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/coal-planning-cobb-emc-board-to-meet.html"},"modified":"2011-08-23T13:29:03","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T17:29:03","slug":"coal-planning-cobb-emc-board-to-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/coal-planning-cobb-emc-board-to-meet.html","title":{"rendered":"Coal-planning Cobb EMC board to meet"},"content":{"rendered":"Cobb EMC to hold first member meeting since spate of legal problems.\nIts current directors still want to build a coal plant in Ben Hill County.\n<p>\nKim Isaza wrote for MDJonline.com today,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/mdjonline.com\/view\/full_story\/15050073\/article-Sides-set-for-first-EMC-meeting--Date-set-for-Sept--17--but-Cobb-Superior-court-judge-must-first-grant-approval?instance=home_news_special_coverage\">\nSides set for first EMC meeting: Date set for Sept. 17, but Cobb Superior court judge must first grant approval<\/a>\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cobbemc.com\/en\/About-Cobb-EMC\/Directors.aspx\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.cobbemc.com\/~\/media\/Images\/CEMC\/SideBar%20Images\/contact_your_board_of_directors.jpg\"><\/a>\nPending approval from Judge Stephen Schuster, the first meeting of Cobb\nEMC members in nearly three years will convene at 10:15 a.m. Sept. 17.\n<p>\nAt that meeting, members will decide two issues: whether to allow voting\nby mail-in ballots at future elections, and whether to amend the electric\ncooperative\u2019s bylaws to limit director compensation to a daily rate\nwhile also prohibiting future directors from being paid retirement\nbenefits. Previously vested benefits would not be affected.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd look which one the directors really don&#8217;t like:\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/08\/about-as-fruitful-as-trying-to-squeeze-information-out-of-the-kremlin.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/wac.17f1.edgecastcdn.net\/0017F1\/medium\/65675024224\/medium\/65675024224_000023_2.jpg\"><\/a>\nThe larger of those two issues is whether Cobb EMC can finance campaigns\nof incumbent directors.\n<p>\nThe directors argue that the so-called muzzling provision is\n\u201cfundamentally unfair\u201d and thwarts the directors&#8217; First Amendment\nrights.\n<\/blockquote>\nReally? I never heard of the organization you want to be elected to\nfinancing your campaign being a First Amendment right.\n<p>\nThey respond with a non-sequitur:\n<blockquote>\n\u201cOnly recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City publicly\npledged to donate $50 million to the Sierra club to fight the use\nof coal for power generation,\u201d Davis wrote in his brief filed\nWednesday. \u201cGiven the Sierra Club&#8217;s longstanding, public and\nvociferous opposition to Cobb EMC&#8217;s plans to rely on coal to meet\nits members future electricity needs, some of Mayor Bloomberg\u2019s $50\nmillion will be spent supporting anti-incumbent candidates.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nHm, maybe if coal wasn&#8217;t such a bad idea, you wouldn&#8217;t be facing\nthat kind of opposition.\n<p>\nPeople who are not incumbents say:\n<blockquote>\n\u201cA rank and file member would have virtually no chance of ever\nsuccessfully pursuing election to the Board,\u201d Carr wrote in a memo\nfiled with the court yesterday afternoon.\n<\/blockquote>\nWell, openings on the Kremlin wall don&#8217;t open very often!\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/nocoal4benhill.bravehost.com\/index.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/nocoal4benhill.bravehost.com\/images\/photos\/coalplant.jpg\"><\/a>\nRemember this is the EMC that the same judge said asking questions of was\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/08\/about-as-fruitful-as-trying-to-squeeze-information-out-of-the-kremlin.html\">\n&#8220;about as fruitful as trying to squeeze information out of the Kremlin&#8221;<\/a>;\nthe EMC whose chief executive was\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lake.typepad.com\/.services\/blog\/6a0120a58214e4970b0120a5d894f5970c\/search?filter.q=cobb\">\nindicted on 31 counts of criminal wrongdoing<\/a>.\nHe got off on a technicality, but got removed from the board.\nThe same EMC that&#8217;s caused people to ask for\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/02\/transparency-for-power-companies.html\">more transparency for power companies.<\/a>\nAnd of course the same EMC\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/no-land-for-solar-in-georgia.html\">that wants to build a coal plant in Ben Hill County<\/a>\nwhen the land they bought for it could better be used for a solar plant.\nIf you don&#8217;t like that last,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/nocoal4benhill.bravehost.com\/index.html\">\nyou can help stop it.<\/a>\n<p>\nAnd if get electricity from Cobb EMC, you are a member, and can attend\nthat Cobb EMC member meeting.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cobb EMC to hold first member meeting since spate of legal problems. Its current directors still want to build a coal plant in Ben Hill County. Kim Isaza wrote for MDJonline.com today, Sides set for first EMC meeting: Date set for Sept. 17, but Cobb Superior court judge must first grant approval Pending approval from [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,47,216,1127,40,49,20,3],"tags":[2732,3906,3442,8753,8818,1153,1484,3905],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-climate-change","category-coal","category-cobb-emc","category-community","category-elections","category-law","category-transparency","tag-ben-hill-county","tag-bloomberg","tag-campaign-finance","tag-coal","tag-cobb-emc","tag-corruption","tag-election","tag-members"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-pW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}