Belvedere says MCE board needs broad overhaul, not just expertise

By TYLER CALLISTER and KEVIN HESSEL

Belvedere has told the Marin civil grand jury it agrees the board governing the region’s public electricity provider is short on expertise and that its members often fail to show up, but it balked at the jury’s prescription for fixing the problem.

The June 16 report found that the board of MCE, the four-county agency once known as Marin Clean Energy that supplies the electricity for most Belvedere residents, had “rarely asserted its responsibility of governance,” while management “appeared to be taking advantage of this situation.” Jurors started digging after the agency’s power costs jumped nearly $200 million in a single year. The day after the report came out, MCE’s longtime chief executive, Dawn Weisz, was gone.

The City Council approved Belvedere’s response unanimously without discussion July 13, agreeing with both findings the jury directed at member cities: that board members have limited expertise for an agency as complex as MCE, and that poor attendance has undercut its oversight. It also agreed with one of the two required recommendations, that cities commit their appointees to attending every board meeting.

Belvedere objected to the second recommendation, the jury’s remedy for the expertise problem: a call for cities to reassess their appointments and pick the members with the most financial and energy expertise. Not every council has such a member, Belvedere wrote, and the recommendation is “at best, an interim measure” that does nothing about the size and structure of a 34-member board.

Mayor Sally Wilkinson, the city’s representative on the MCE board since December 2020, brought the response to the council in a staff report with City Manager Robert Zadnik. Her part in it does not end with Belvedere’s letter. The MCE board on July 16 appointed her to the ad hoc committee of Marin and Contra Costa County officials that will draft the agency’s own reply. Working with staff and a governance attorney, the committee is to bring it to the full board to consider Aug. 20.

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