OXFORD – Before a crowd of about 35 at the Oxford Grange on Tuesday, Chris Hansen’s challenge was made clear.
“We do not want Tri-State being bought out and you going to a different company,” an older woman in the back of the meeting hall said emphatically, kicking off the 45-minute town hall-style event. “If everything is so peachy keen and everything is working, why are you trying to sell us out?”
“Well ma’am, I’m definitely not trying to sell you out,” Hansen, the CEO of La Plata Electric Association began his response.
“It sounds like it,” the woman retorted, as the two continued to talk over each other.
A man asked whether the co-op’s planned exit next year from a restrictive wholesale power contract with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is final and binding. It is, Hansen confirmed.
“Jesus Christ,” the woman uttered, gathering her things just minutes into the event. “Been sold out again.”
She shed an expletive and slammed the door on her way out.
Hansen did not let commotion distract him from the question being asked by someone else in that moment.
When the former state senator was named LPEA’s CEO in November, he was handed a mandate. Not the kind his elected brethren often tout, but a mission to find alternative sources of power for the 36,500 members of the co-op in Southwest Colorado. The board of directors, who are elected each year, voted in March 2024 to exit a contract with Tri-State that obligated LPEA to buy 95% of its power from the wholesaler through 2050. Upon his selection, it became Hansen’s job not only to navigate that transition, but to explain it to a large contingency of skeptical LPEA members.
The power supply question has been settled, for now.
LPEA has signed a contract to purchase about 30% of its power supply from a Tri-State-owned solar project near Dolores through 2033. The co-op has also locked in a contract to fulfill the rest of its power needs through 2028 with Mercuria Energy America, a commodity trading group. That brings LPEA’s wholesale power costs down by 10%, which the coop is calling a “major win” for owners.
But at the Oxford event, hosted by the La Plata County Farm Bureau, the skeptics were running in circles.
Hansen arrived in Durango after eight years in the Colorado Legislature. The child of a small Kansas farm town, he’s an energy aficionado with a Ph.D. from Oxford to show for it, but still leaned on agricultural metaphors before the Farm Bureau.
“Electricity is a commodity – corn, wheat, pork bellies (and) electricity – it’s a commodity,” he said.
In the face of withering criticism, Hansen’s expression made the slightest of jumps, from dispassionate to stony.
Some have claimed that Hansen is making as much as $750,000 annually. One woman asked whether it was true that Hansen makes $500,000, as LPEA has stated, and his predecessor, Jessica Matlock made $250,000.
Hansen confirmed that his salary is $500,000, but said that Matlock’s was $524,000.
“That’s a false number. Get your phone out. It’s public, go look and see what our predecessor (makes). Go look at the 990s,” one man yelled from the audience, referencing the public tax form LPEA files each year. “It was not over $500,000 with benefits included. I know that for a fact.”
Matlock was actually paid $545,000 in 2023 with an additional $62,000 in benefits, the most recent available 990 shows. The slightly lower figure included on the co-op’s website and cited by Hansen was a typo, an LPEA spokeswoman said.
This wasn’t the only point of confusion.
The distinction between a rate increase levied by LPEA – like the one that took effect April 1 and is the first in five years – and the one levied by Tri-State in 2023, which was passed through to LPEA consumers, is lost on members who tend to pay more attention to their growing bill rather than to who in the supply chain raised prices.
Would that 10% savings in wholesale cost LPEA is touting be passed on to members, one attendee asked, just as the wholesale price increase was?
Absolutely, Hansen replied. But not in the form of a rate decrease.
“Our blended wholesale costs are coming down, which is great. Unfortunately, our cost to distribute that electricity are not,” he said, citing materials and labor cost increases driven by tariffs and inflation.
But would the monthly cost of running a center jump from $800 to $2,000 after the Tri-State exit?
“There’s really no scenario where in 2028 it goes from $800 to $2,000,” Hansen said.
“Can you put that in writing?” someone asked.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
