Dissidents Routed from Columbia CU Board

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Columbia CU said members elected seven new directors and five new members of its supervisory committee, successfully eliminating from its governance a group of dissident members who defeated the credit union’s bid to convert to a bank. The new directors are: Wayne Bigelow, Judith Chipman, John Cheek, Brianna Johnston, Michael England, H. Dexter Garey and Charles McDonald., and the new directors are John Bucholtz, Angie Rawson, Donald Harris, Bill Hughes and Lowell McDougal. Members voted in November to expel two directors and one member of the supervisory committee who founded Save Columbia CU to engineer the reversal of the credit union’s bank conversion three years ago. But repeated legal challenges by the dissidents since then had prompted several of the Save CCU members to abandon the group, including Cheek, and culminated in the rare member expulsions.