The South Carolina Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would require the state’s 20 electric cooperatives to publicly disclose the salary and benefits paid to board members and ban trustees from using their positions to profit from other business dealings with their co-ops.
The legislation, which also subjects co-ops to oversight by state regulators for the first time, was approved by the House in March and is expected to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster. There are slight differences between the House and Senate versions, but the House was poised to quickly agree to the Senate changes.
The bill grew out of a 2018 controversy involving the former board of trustees of Tri-County Electric Cooperative in Saint Matthews, South Carolina. Reporting by The State newspaper in Columbia revealed that the co-op’s trustees had received an annual salary of nearly twice the state average for co-op board members.
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