BLOGS

The Chelan PUD is basically a home grown institution giving us local control over a share of an international resource – the Columbia River hydroelectric potential. Historically, the Chelan PUD has generally developed its management team internally or from within the community. This organizational approach can, at times, be less than ideal. When employment or advancement is offered based on loyalty or friendship rather than skill and competency, everyone suffers. For example, the current Chelan PUD lead attorney was hired by the manager at the time largely because of their personal friendship. Last week, Joe Jarvis and John Smith were fired for the ostensible reason that their financial analysis of the fiber program was off the mark. Neither Joe nor John had any depth of experience in building a fiber optic network and especially understanding the complicated finances of a communication business necessary to compete with Charter and Verizon.

Joe Jarvis began his career as a Distribution Engineer; and he was a good one by all accounts, yet he was tapped for financial duties by Manager Charlie Hoskin possibly based on Charlie’s desire to tighten financial control. Likewise, John Smith was hired as an electrical engineer. He was advanced to manage the $100 million fiber optic project which was perhaps beyond his skills. A degree in electrical engineering does not a communication expert make.

The Chelan PUD Board is definitely at fault. Since 2005, the board as well as the general manager was made aware of the flawed financial reporting within the fiber program and the likelihood that the fiber project would become a stranded investment. I recall executives from technology and communication companies warning the board and management about excessive costs, pitfalls and rapidly changing technology. The Chelan PUD was under pressure to placate our local Internet Service Providers that had a financial stake in providing high speed internet at competitive costs in order to gain a greater market share. These competitive costs and expanded services needed to provide the required marketing edge came at the expense of major PUD subsidies and $100 million fiber debt.

The Wenatchee World must share some blame since it lost its will for effective investigative reporting even though they possessed the facts.

General Manager John Janney must be thanked for finally exposing the questionable financial reporting within the fiber department and taking action to provide the transparency required. It is terribly hard to fire two long term employees who were asked to accomplish work out of their field of expertise involving a project that had no possibility for financial solvency.

The fiber debt will continue but perhaps this latest unfortunate experience will generate a new level of transparency by the Chelan PUD Board and management and a willingness to seek advice for projects obviously outside of their expertise.

Comments

Want to comment on this story? All Wenatchee World members are invited to comment on stories, by using the form below. Please know that we at wenatcheeworld.com hope our site is useful, entertaining and civil. So we'll delete comments that are obscene, abusive or way off topic. We appreciate it when readers use the "suggest removal" button to flag inappropriate comments. For more about interacting with the site, see our Use Policy.

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.

Sign in to comment