Ice storm was 'defining moment' for BWL commissioners

LANSING – Board of Water & Light Commissioners David Price, Cynthia Ward and Dennis Louney often clashed with management and their fellow board members in 2014, but these days they agree when General Manager J. Peter Lark says BWL is not the same utility it was a year ago.

They want BWL's 96,000 residential, business and industrial customers to know BWL is storm ready, but also to know its Board of Commissioners is not the same board it was a year ago.

Generally, board members have a greater sense of their responsibilities and are determined to be more involved and to require management to provide more information to support its claims, they say.

"We simply were not on the same page, not even in the same book on some matters" after the ice-storm power outage, said Ward, a commissioner since 2010.

"Today, although the same people comprise the board, I think we are certainly a different board," she said.

That doesn't mean all of the schisms that surfaced in 2014 have healed or that every commissioner feels the same about the board-management relationship.

"The CRT called for a more assertive board," Ward said in reference to the recommendations of the independent Community Review Team that investigated BWL's handling of the outage.

"In my opinion, it will take a voting majority of (the eight) commissioners to be assertive to actualize a real difference," she said. "One or two can't go it alone."

Price and Louney tend to use the same phrase to describe the board's level of awareness when the outage struck a year ago: "We didn't know what we didn't know."

"The ice storm was a defining moment for the board and I believe we now require more accountability from management, and hopefully, hold ourselves more accountable," said Price, a commissioner for almost four years.

Responding to the post-outage outcry from suburban communities for seats on the board, he lobbied his colleagues to create a liaison committee to give the suburbs interim standing without waiting for Lansing voters to decide a board-expansion proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Despite losing on the liaison committee issue, Price challenged longtime Board Chair Sandra Zerkle and was chosen to replace her on a 6-2 vote in late July.

"I also agree with what was pointed out in the CRT report," Price said. "The board needs to assert greater control over the short-term agenda, annual objectives, current and emerging issues and strategic direction of the BWL. …

"While some might question Mr. Lark's performance during the ice storm, going forward his performance has been commendable in being the driver of necessary changes in the organization."

Louney, a board member since 2009, said BWL's failures in outage preparation, response and communications caught commissioners off guard — especially considering the success that accompanied the opening of BWL's new power plant and headquarters in 2013.

Asked if some commissioners expressed hope the backlash would blow over and things would return to normal, he said, "Yes, I heard that."

"There were several board members who had not been in a crisis situation like this," he said. "It was not an easy time communicating to the board and within the board so it was a learning process for everyone."

Now, he said, a "new normal" prevails in which commissioners are receiving training, asking questions and getting answers from management.

"In changing some of our methods of operating and interacting between the board and management it's been difficult," he said. "Change is always hard. But management is really listening to the board. …

"I look at the job Peter Lark has done since the crisis. To see all the changes and the positive things done to improve the board demonstrate to me the seriousness" with which Lark accepted the critical comments some board members made last summer in evaluating Lark's job performance.