VANCOUVER, Wash. - During the three years that members of Columbia CU have been fighting management and directors of the $720-million credit union for a full accounting of the ill-fated conversion to mutual savings bank several underlying questions about the reality of credit union democracy have arisen.
Many of them exist in credit unions that don't undergo such controversies. Among them:
* Is it true democracy when the same candidates keep getting elected to the board over and over?
* Should the credit union itself endorse candidates to the board?
* What happens when the board enlists the help of paid employees and their families, all of whom are members, to campaign and vote for the board's proposals, like directors or charter changes?
* On what grounds, other than financial malfeasance, can a board expel a member from the credit union?
* What are member's/owner's rights in learning about internal Board deliberations on critical issues, like a change to a bank?
* And, most of all, to whom are the board members responsible? Do they have a fiduciary duty to the members of the credit union?
A group of Columbia CU members, the self-styled Save Columbia CU has been fighting through the courts for three years to answer some of these questions. The credit union has spent more than $2 million on the fight, much of it to thwart full disclosure, including hundreds of thousands of dollars of members' money to have Portland's best law firm defend it. That's members' money. Money that would have gone to higher dividends or lower loan rates or higher savings rates.
Columbia CU members are scheduled to vote again next week in a special meeting, at least the third since the failed conversion to bank, whether to expel two directors and one supervisory committee member who have led the three-year fight for a full accounting of the conversion. But instead of inviting all of the credit union's 65,000 members to vote by mail ballot - as they do for board elections-they will vote at a special meeting where fewer than 500 members, a number prone to manipulation by employees and their families, is expected to determine the outcome.
