Quick Fact: OPALCO General Manager / CEO Compensation

Updated October 2026

The General Manager (GM) is one of three positions hired and managed by the OPALCO Board of Directors. The other two are the Auditor and Legal Counsel. The unique characteristics and competitiveness of the electric utility cooperative and service territory are taken into consideration with hiring and reviewing GM performance. Executive compensation in the electric industry does not scale with community size – it scales with system risk, complexity and fiduciary responsibility.

OPALCO is not a typical rural utility. It operates one of the more complex electric distribution systems in the Pacific Northwest. San Juan County also has a much higher cost of living than many parts of the Northwest.

The General Manager holds full fiduciary and operational responsibility for OPALCO’s electric and communications systems. Additionally he is responsible for Rock Island Communications, OPALCO’s wholly owned broadband subsidiary. Responsibilities include oversight of hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure assets, enterprise-level financial performance, federal loan compliance, regulatory coordination, emergency response, and long-range capital planning.

Despite this complexity, OPALCO’s retail electric rates remain below the national average and comparable to Washington State averages. Maintaining competitive rates in an island-based system with extensive marine infrastructure requires disciplined budgeting, long-term planning, and careful risk management. https://www.opalco.com/quick-fact-opalco-rates/2025/12/

Specifically, OPALCO has the following characteristics:

• 20 Island Service Territory,
• 25 Submarine Electric Cables
• 1,279 miles of power lines (~ 14% overhead lines, ~86% underground)
• 11 Substations
• Three Crew Facilities, approximately 50 employees
• ~16,000 meters, ~12,000 members
• ~234M kWh Purchased
• ~$40M Revenue
• OPALCO officially formed an internet subsidiary in 2015, dba Rock Island Communications. Our current GM was instrumental in forming, coordinating start-up and providing oversight over operations and the strategic aspects of Rock Island.

OPALCO’s Guiding Documents: The GM follows OPALCO’s Guiding Documents, including:

• Mission and Values Statements
• Bylaws
• OPALCO Policies
• Integrated Resource Plan
• Long Rage Planning
• Construction Work Plans
• BPA Power Contracts

Duties:

Performance Review and General Manager compensation is determined by OPALCO’s Board of Directors through a structured, documented process as required by OPALCO Policy 1.14. Policy 2 – General Manager delegations. OPALCO’s Strategic Directives serve as the performance basis for the General Manager’s annual review:

• Safety: Safety is our highest priority. Safety programs will be implemented to engage all staff members and to promote OPALCO’s high standards for safety with a goal of no accidents.
• Reliability of Electric Service: Maintain reliability of electric service. Preserve our connection to the mainland power supply, support the federal hydro system and optimize locally generated power. Develop local resiliency for emergency conditions.
• Sustainable Power Supply Strategy: Maintain a long-term strategy to provide safe, adequate, reliable power which balances source risk, economics, climate and energy policy uncertainties and environmental impact. Leverage collaboration to access cost-effective and environmentally sensitive generation in our service territory and beyond.
• Rate Adequacy: OPALCO will maintain an equitable and financially sustainable rate structure that appropriately reflects costs while balancing affordability, equity, conservation, and long-term financial stability consistent with our complex island service territory.
• Personnel: Attract and retain top quality employees by actively cultivating a workplace culture based on mutual respect that embraces diversity, encourages high team functionality and harmony, promotes personal and professional development and maintains high employment satisfaction. Maintain wage rates that are competitive within the industry and for our region. Include apprenticeship and training programs for all positions and succession planning for key positions.
• Member Satisfaction: Sustain high levels of member satisfaction as evidenced through periodic member surveys.
• Communications with Members: Provide regular communication outreach to inform members of relevant issues and to encourage member participation and engagement in co-op affairs. Maintain transparency for co-op governance and operations. Cultivate a culture of listening and provide opportunities for member feedback.
• Cash and Debt Fund Availability: Ensure revenue and financial stability and have cash and debt availability to provide for foreseeable demands and to mitigate the impacts of potential significant damaging events including storm damage, loss of electric supply, equipment or cable failure.
• Debt & Equity: Maintain appropriate levels of debt and equity that support the long-range strategic plans while maintaining all loan covenants and meeting regulatory requirements.
• Guiding Documents and Cooperative Principles: Conduct the business of the Cooperative consistent with the Mission Statement, Strategic Directives, Bylaws, Policies, and seven cooperative principles.
• Communication Backbone: Maintain fiber optic and wireless communications infrastructure to support grid operations for OPALCO and its subsidiary.
• Rock Island Communications: Manage OPALCO’s wholly owned subsidiary to provide our membership high quality, reliable internet, voice and communications services. Prioritize communications to emergency responders and fiber to the home deployment while continually improving wireless services and maintaining key partnerships.

The Board conducts an annual written performance evaluation based on the Board’s Strategic Directives, which is compared to and supported by safety, reliability, operational, financial stewardship, workforce leadership, member service, communications, regulatory engagement and subsidiary oversight. For illustrative purposes, a portion of the 2024 supporting documentation is as follows:

• OPALCO and Rock Island Year-End Review – 2024, page 8 thru 13
• Year-end Financials – 2024
• Budgeting – 2024
• Independent Audit Reports – 2024
• RUS Financial Form 7 Reporting – 2024
• Member Policies
• Rates and Tariffs
• Real Time Dashboards metrics:

Member Metrics:

• Member Low Income
• Energy Efficiency
• Switch-It-Up
• Service Additions
• Revenue and Billing Distribution

Financial Metrics:

• Budget Variance
• TIER/Margin Tracking
• Expense Tracking
• Power Cost
• Energy Metrics
• Capital Projects
• Debt/Equity
• WIP
• Income Statement Trending
• Margin Trending

Power Outage Tracking:

• Outage Statistics (ASAI, CADI, SAIDI, SAIFI)
• Cause of Outage

Member Services

• • Communications
  • Member Programs
  • Regional Issues
  • Energy Savings
  • Annual Meeting

Rock Island Reporting

Consistent with employment practices, personnel matters, including the GM annual performance review, the OPALCO Board meets in executive session to review individual and collective GM evaluation materials. Compensation is considered only after completion of Board’s group evaluation.

OPALCO and Rock Island Communications

It is common for a parent organization and its subsidiaries to share executive leadership. In these structures, the General Manager or CEO is responsible for managing both the parent organization and its subsidiaries.

OPALCO follows this common structure. The General Manager/CEO is responsible for both OPALCO and its wholly owned subsidiary, Rock Island Communications. However, OPALCO and Rock Island are separate legal and financial entities. OPALCO is a not-for-profit electric cooperative, while Rock Island is a for-profit communications company.

Because the two entities conduct different business activities and have different tax treatment, wages, benefits and other shared costs must be accurately allocated between them. This helps ensure that income, expenses and related tax treatment are recorded by the appropriate entity.

Accurate allocation also protects the people who pay for each service. OPALCO electric rates should cover the appropriate share of the costs associated with managing the electric cooperative, while Rock Island subscribers should cover the appropriate share associated with managing the communications business. This helps prevent either group of customers from improperly subsidizing the other.

Benefits of Shared Executive Leadership
OPALCO serves the island communities of San Juan County, where attracting and retaining experienced utility and communications executives can be challenging and costly. The cooperative benefits from having one experienced executive capable of successfully managing organizations in two complex business sectors: electric utility operations and broadband communications.

Hiring separate chief executives for OPALCO and Rock Island would likely require two executive compensation packages and could make recruitment more difficult in a remote island community. The current structure allows both organizations to benefit from experienced leadership while sharing applicable executive costs according to the work performed for each entity.

This shared-leadership model provides a financial benefit to OPALCO and Rock Island while maintaining accountability through detailed time coding, separate financial records, Board oversight and independent annual audits.

Time Coding and Cost Allocation
The General Manager/CEO maintains detailed time records identifying the actual hours worked for OPALCO and Rock Island. These records provide a consistent and supportable basis for allocating applicable wages and benefits between the two entities.

The General Manager/CEO is a salaried executive, not an hourly employee. Time coding does not determine the amount of compensation and is not based on an assumption that the position is limited to a 40-hour workweek. Instead, it documents how the total hours actually worked—whatever number of hours is required—are divided between OPALCO and Rock Island.

As part of its annual compensation process, the Board reviews the prior year’s actual allocation between the two entities. That historical split serves as the basis for allocating applicable wages and benefits for the following compensation period.

For the period reflected in the 2024 compensation table, approximately 27% of the recorded hours were assigned to Rock Island and the balance to OPALCO.

A 27% Rock Island allocation does not represent a separate Rock Island workweek, nor does the remaining percentage represent a fixed number of OPALCO hours. It reflects each entity’s percentage of the total hours actually recorded and serves as the basis for allocating applicable wages and benefits between the two entities.

Rock Island Performance Incentive
After determining compensation for managing both organizations and reviewing the allocation, the Board separately determines whether a Rock Island performance incentive is appropriate.

Rock Island operates in a competitive broadband and communications market in which financial performance depends heavily on subscriber adoption, customer retention, service quality and operating results. The Board therefore determined that a significant portion of the compensation associated with Rock Island should be performance-based.

Any Rock Island incentive is based on Rock Island’s performance and is assigned entirely to Rock Island. It is not allocated to OPALCO or recovered through electric rates. It is also not calculated by treating Rock Island as a second full-time position or by applying the Rock Island time-allocation percentage to an assumed 40-hour workweek.

2024 Compensation

For 2024, the General Manager/CEO’s total compensation for managing both OPALCO and Rock Island was $791,700. The total consisted of:

• $366,271 in base wages;
• $45,736 in medical and automobile benefits;
• $224,304 in retirement compensation;
• $141,351 in Rock Island performance incentive compensation; and
• $14,038 in other compensation.

The $224,304 retirement figure consisted of $176,290 in cash retirement contributions and a $48,014 noncash actuarial adjustment in retirement-plan value. The noncash adjustment was included in compensation reported on IRS Form 990 but was not an additional cash payment to the General Manager/CEO.

The compensation table shows how applicable wages and benefits were assigned between OPALCO and Rock Island. The Rock Island performance incentive was assigned entirely to Rock Island.

Compensation Benchmarking

The Board uses multiple independent sources to evaluate whether General Manager/CEO compensation is reasonable and competitive. These include:

• IRS Form 990 filings from more than 20 electric cooperatives in Washington and Oregon
• a regional compensation survey covering 83 Northwest electric utilities
• an independent compensation consultant’s analysis using proprietary compensation information for approximately 900 electric cooperatives throughout the United States.

The Board considers more than organizational size. It also evaluates system complexity, operational and financial risk, infrastructure responsibility, geographic challenges, emergency-response obligations and the regional cost of living.

The Board separately evaluates the compensation associated with Rock Island responsibilities. Because Rock Island operates in the competitive broadband and technology sector, the Board considers relevant private-sector compensation information, comparable subsidiary arrangements and Rock Island’s documented performance.

Public Form 990 comparisons should be considered in context. OPALCO’s General Manager/CEO is responsible for both an electric cooperative and a for-profit broadband subsidiary. Direct comparisons with executives responsible only for electric operations may not reflect the full scope of the combined position.

Investor-owned utilities compensate CEOs at the highest levels, while consumer-owned utilities, including electric cooperatives, pay substantially less. Even so, the General Manager of a rural electric cooperative is often one of the higher-paid positions in the community due to enterprise-level responsibility for essential infrastructure, public safety, financial stability, environmental compliance, and emergency response.

Check out a Regional Cooperative Executive Compensation Benchmarking
Find general manager/CEO compensation for approximately 123 electric cooperatives and public utilities across the Pacific Northwest and Western United States. This information has been compiled from publicly available IRS Form 990 filings accessed through ProPublica’s nonprofit database.

How to Breakdown Form 990 GM compensation for 2024

Responsible Board Oversight

The Board’s responsibility is to balance competitive compensation with careful stewardship of member resources. Market-competitive compensation helps OPALCO attract and retain the experienced leadership necessary to manage complex electric and communications systems, maintain financial stability, respond to emergencies and plan responsibly for long-term infrastructure needs.

The same philosophy applies throughout OPALCO. Competitive compensation is necessary to recruit and retain qualified lineworkers, engineers, information-technology professionals, accounting personnel, member-service employees and organizational leadership.

OPALCO belongs to its members. The Board takes its fiduciary responsibilities seriously and remains committed to transparency, responsible financial management and decisions that serve the long-term interests of the cooperative and the communities it serves.

A note from the 2025 Board President, Vince Dauciunas: 

“The OPALCO Board is made up of local member-owners—your neighbors—who take our fiduciary responsibilities seriously. Compensation decisions are not made lightly. They result from a structured annual process that follows OPALCO’s Strategic Directives and includes formal performance evaluations, assessment of organizational results, and detailed comparisons using multiple independent compensation benchmarks from peer electric cooperatives and regional utilities.

It is also important to understand the scope and complexity of OPALCO’s operations. Our General Manager is responsible for overseeing an island-based electric system with unique reliability and emergency response challenges, major infrastructure investments, regulatory compliance, and the management of a successful broadband subsidiary. Serving geographically dispersed island communities requires experienced leadership and a high level of operational expertise”.

The Board adjusts compensation only after careful review, balancing the need to retain qualified leadership with our obligation to be responsible stewards of member resources. Market-competitive compensation supports the stability, continuity, and performance our cooperative depends on.

This same approach applies across the organization. From line-workers and engineers to IT, accounting, member services, and executive leadership, OPALCO’s wage policy is to remain competitive within the cooperative utility industry so we can attract and retain the skilled professionals required to deliver safe, reliable electric and broadband services.

OPALCO belongs to its members. We welcome questions and remain committed to transparency. The Board’s role is to act in the best long-term interests of the cooperative and the communities it serves.”

Read OPALCO General Manager, Foster Hildreth’s bio HERE.