Proposed Light Board overhaul could include 3 elected members

Acton voters could soon get a direct say over who sets their electric rates. 

Right now, the town manager appoints the five-member Light Board and chooses the Acton Municipal Light Plant director.

Officials are considering a new “blended” board with three elected members and two appointees. The group would hire a general manager to run the light plant. 

Reforms could address a “governance paradox” that CMLP Director Jason Bulger described to the Select Board July 27. 

It’s “just the first step in a conversation,” Bulger said. Proposed changes would need Town Meeting and state legislative approval.

Acton’s appointed Light Board is tasked with adopting rates and setting policy, but has only advisory legal authority under local code.

The town manager’s appointment duties give her “unchecked power” and leaves her liable if things go wrong, Select Board Clerk Cameron McKennitt told colleagues.

Restructuring would aim to address current problems and bring CMLP in step with most other Massachusetts municipal light plants, nearly 90% of which use blended or fully elected boards, per Bulger’s presentation. 

“If you go down the happy path” and the process moves quickly, the town could elect light plant representatives in 2028, said McKennitt, who helped develop recommendations as part of an informal working group.

CMLP had an elected board after its founding in the late 1890s. It switched to an appointed panel in the 1950s as the town slashed its cohort of elected positions.

Light plant governance questions have resurfaced in the decades since. 

McKennitt, who works for National Grid, said utility experience usually isn’t part of a town manager hiring process. “Yet, the town manager is forced to take on that responsibility” as the plant’s general manager in the current structure, he said. 

A ‘problematic’ status quo

He said Town Manager Kerry Lafleur “hasn’t done anything bad,” but the status quo is “problematic.” 

Besides McKennitt, the CMLP working group included Bulger, former Select Board members Alice Kaufman and Mike Lawson, current Light Board member Warren Leon, and retired Shrewsbury light plant General Manager Michael Hale. 

Kaufman is president of The Acton Bridge’s Board of Directors. Members of the Bridge’s board are not involved in news coverage decisions.

Bulger relayed the working group’s recommendation as a balancing act of sorts. 

Three elected members would make a majority of the board directly accountable to ratepayers. The two appointed slots would ensure the board maintains a level of utility expertise, Bulger said. 

“Through [an] election, you never know what you’re going to get,” Select Board Chair Wendy Rovelli said.

Although a reworked Light Board would get a new degree of independence, Bulger said other light plants often function as town departments even with their own elected leaders. 

“It’s not like this unregulated, free-for-all environment, where people are Scrooge McDuck swimming in gold,” Bulger said. “It’s very organized. It’s very similar to the town.”

Asked after the July 27 Select Board session, Lafleur told The Bridge that a state legal principle known as the “Connelly Exemption” meant the CMLP working group could meet privately without violating open meeting law. 

As Select Board members generally endorsed the group’s recommendations, Rovelli previewed a push toward a possible Town Meeting vote next year. 

“It sounds like you have a lot of education to do,” she told Bulger.

“It should start now,” he said.