The Rural Electric Cooperative (REC) Legislation List is a resource for member-owners, nonprofits, and State Representatives who want more transparency, oversight and democratic governance at their rural electric cooperatives. This al-la-carte collection of best practices can be used to support drafting state legislation for REC reform, or by groups who are evaluating the governance practices of their co-ops.

In the South and across the country, member-owners have been fighting for many of the best practices offered in this list via election campaigns, efforts to amend their bylaws and by appealing to their state public service commissions. Unfortunately, these struggles have unveiled deep entrenchment, resistance to member oversight and other corruption of cooperative leadership, highlighting the need for state legislation to bring about the reforms member-owners need and want.

This legislative reform list is a project of the Advancing Equity and Opportunity’s “Democratizing Rural Electric Cooperatives” issue group, which is a collaborative of organizations that have been organizing for REC reforms in the South since our inception in 2014. This particular effort also included organizations and member-owners from outside the south thanks to New Economy Coalition and We Own It. These organizations provided valuable contributions to this list and offered a national perspective that was necessary for capturing the range of reforms that might be needed at various co-ops.

Special thanks also goes out to these individuals for their contributions:

Andrea Miller - People Demanding Action

Liz Veazey - Solar United Neighbors

Lynn Tobey - PVEC Member Voices

Benita Wells - Southern Echo

Kathy Friese - Repower REC

Chris Woolery - Mtn Association

Karen Godfrey

Jake Schlacter - We Own It

Sara Ochoa - Southeast Climate & Energy Network

Patrick Thompson - Cobb EMC Forum

Shiva Patel - Energy Democracy Leadership Institute

Erik Hatlestad - CURE

Bri Knisley - Appalachian Voices

In this legislation list you will find a comprehensive collection of best practices for rural electric cooperative regulations and procedures. The items included are meant to be general ideas that can be brought to a bill author rather than comprehensive legislative language.

The list is organized by the name of the policy suggestion, rationale for this suggestion, and the category under which the reform falls. The main categories addressed include Financial/Anti-corruption, Elections, Governance, Community Benefit, and Transparency.

There are policy suggestions included in this list which may contradict each other. For instance, one suggestion proposes that nominations committees be eliminated from the co-op election process, while another proposal calls for specific procedures for forming nominations committees. These varying approaches have been included to allow for a diversity of regulations and needs at each electric cooperative. This list does not address potential contradictions with various state legislation. Those concerns should be taken into consideration by groups who are referring to this resource.

For elected representatives or nonprofits considering new electric cooperative legislation in your state, we encourage you to get in touch with member-owner groups and organizations who are already working in this space. For connections to REC groups in the South or in other areas of the country, please contact Advancing Equity and Opportunity or New Economy Coalition via our input form below.

If you are a member-owner seeking state legislation, we hope this list will be a useful resource for you to take to elected representatives and other allies. If you would like to be connected with other groups in your region that are working towards electric cooperative legislative reforms, please use the input form below to contact us!