In choosing the next LPEA directors, we need to agree on some basic facts.
First, our long-term power provider, Tri-State, has a debt load of nearly $4 billion, and its claimed assets – coal-fired power plants and coal mines – are quickly depreciating because of competition from lower cost electricity. The likelihood that this trend changes seems about equal to horse-drawn carriages making a comeback.
Second, LPEA member customers have been advocating to leave this arrangement for over a decade. For some candidates to claim that this is a “board-driven” decision is nonsense; it’s the exact opposite, the result of hard work by dedicated members, from the bottom up.
The costs are high, true, and in part driven up by litigation, rising interest rates, stalling and bad-faith negotiations by Tri-State. But LPEA’s current board has persisted in this difficult work because the long-term benefits so clearly outweigh the cost.
Some candidates are portraying the buyout as the reason for rising costs, but the exact opposite is true: There is no scenario in which we can stay with a financially dying company and not bear the burden. In fact, in its most recent SEC filing this month, Tri-State anticipates a wholesale rate increase of 6% in 2026.
The longer we stay with Tri-State the longer we are passengers on a sinking ship. It’s not pleasant to jump off a sinking ship, but it’s clearly better than the alternative. Vote for a board that sees this reality: Joe Lewandowski, Holly Metzler and John Witchel.
Andrew Allport
Durango
