Quick Fact: OPALCO General Manager / CEO Compensation

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 competitivity 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 most 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
• ~1,095 Unground/water miles of line (~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 provides 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:

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 Managers 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.
• 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/Vision: Maintain and publish guiding documents.
• 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 oversite. For illustrate 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.

Compensation:

One of the important factors is to split out the management efforts of OPALCO versus Rock Island. They are separate organizations that are required to be treated independently pursuant to IRS guidelines. The GM separately records Rock Island management efforts that are reviewed by the OPALCO Board President on a monthly basis. Given actual recorded time detail, approximately 70% of GM time is used to perform OPALCO management efforts and 30% is allocated to Rock Island.

For 2024 and pursuant to detailed time tracking approved by the OPALCO Board President, the Breakout of GM compensation is as follows:

The Board determines the appropriate compensation for OPALCO first, by reviewing multiple independent compensation benchmarks, including:

1. IRS Form 990 filings from more than 20 electric cooperatives located in Washington and Oregon,
2. Regional survey of 83 Northwest electric utilities, and
3. An independent compensation consultant’s analysis who references proprietary GM compensation and wage rates for the ~900 electric utility cooperatives across the U.S. nation.

These comparable benchmarks assist the OPALCO Board in determining the appropriate level of OPALCO’s General Manager compensation. The Board ensures that the GM compensation is reasonable for the duties performed and falls within competitive market ranges for organizations of similar size, complexity, and risk profile.

For Rock Island and as stated above, the OPALCO Board requires the GM to separately track his time for Rock Island oversight (~30% of his time). Given that the internet industry is a competitive environmental based on subscriber adoption, the OPALCO Board recognizes that a large portion of GM compensation associated with Rock Island oversight should be incentive based. The Board references a comparable compensation publication for similar private companies in the technology sector. Additionally, an Oregon Cooperative has set up a similar subsidiary type structure to Rock Island that serves their membership and surrounding community with internet services. The OPALCO Board references the publicly available Form 990 tax report for comparison.

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

A note for 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.