Editorial: MCE right to remove overstatement from messaging

For more than 15 years, MCE – a homegrown clean-energy alternative to the power giant Pacific Gas & Electric Co. – has grown in scope, geographic membership, its budget and bureaucracy.

A lot of that growth has taken place outside of the public radar.

Started 15 years ago as Marin Clean Energy, MCE has not gotten the focused press coverage, in our pages and from others, that large public agencies such as the county, Marin’s larger cities, the Transportation Authority of Marin or the Golden Gate Bridge District get.

The growing agency’s benchmarks have been covered. As has its rows with the PG&E, over rates and reforms.

Our attention has risen as several of its Marin directors and observers have raised serious questions about the way MCE is conducting the public’s business and have called for reforms.

MCE’s leadership bristled at the criticism, but its board of directors has made some wise moves to address it.

For example, it is removing its long-repeated claim that MCE has provided its ratepayers with “100% fossil-free power since 2018.”

That attractively green claim has been challenged in the past, but MCE hasn’t budged from its sales pitch.

Until now.

“Our goal is to ensure that MCE’s communications meet the highest standard of accuracy, transparency and consistency with California’s disclosure framework,” Jamie Tuckey, MCE’s chief customer officer wrote in an email to directors.

Larkspur Mayor Stephanie Andre, her town’s representative on MCE, has been among those raising questions, including wondering how the agency can adopt such a pure-green branding when it relies on so many natural gas contracts. That source is not a renewable fossil fuel and contributes to climate change.

Becoming fossil-fuel clean is a key goal of MCE’s mission and it has made some impressive progress, but it can’t make that claim if it hasn’t attained that important all-green standard.

MCE was launched and has grown as a significant tool for Bay Area municipalities to help meet the state’s ambitious goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dropping its branding boast is the right thing to do. Working toward being truly worthy of restoring it, also is the correct mission.

The MCE board has also created a standing five-member finance committee and it includes two Marin members, Andre and Belvedere Mayor Sally Wilkinson, who have raised questions about the $800 million-per-year agency’s short- and long-term finances, from its rates and contracts with energy providers to transparency in how it conducts the public’s business. Both directors have experience in finance and public policy, making them well-equipped to work on the new committee.

With a membership of 34 members representing four Bay Area counties, the board has long needed a standing committee to review the agency’s finances and financial decisions. They deserve dedicated attention and a careful public review before those matters are advanced to the full commission.

With 34 members, most of them with little experience in energy and finance, the attention provided by a standing committee is warranted – and has been for a long time.

Having Andre and Wilkinson on the committee helps make sure questions are raised and answered.

Last year, in response to criticism of MCE’s management, one director said the questions were coming from small-town members who were not as busy as their colleagues who have other governmental responsibilities.

That’s exactly the problem. That’s precisely why the board and agency needed a finance committee. Following that director’s assessment, most of the directors are too busy to stay on top of MCE’s business decisions. Their oversight is compromised by the board’s large membership and its members’ lack of experience in the variable complexities of the worlds of energy and finance.

The role and scope of the finance committee will evolve. Likely, Andre and Wilkinson will have enough questions to keep its agenda busy.

MCE still faces questions regarding its governance and decisions made by its staff.

Its action correcting its green record and the long-needed establishment of a standing finance committee are signs of political and governance growing pains and its directors taking steps to respond to them.