Citizen advisory boards (CABs) have played important roles over the past 40 years in improving communication between elected officials and the community.

Members of advisory boards typically include experts on the subjects for which they’ve been asked to advise elected officials, as well as civic-minded representatives of the various communities served by the elected officials.

When conducted well, these boards of volunteers are an important conduit between communities and elected officials and can be agents of change. When conducted poorly, they can end up costing the government the goodwill of citizens.

And there examples of the effectiveness of CABs.

Thanks to Jefferson Healthcare employee Erin Coffey and members of its Patient Financial Experience Task Force, one of many citizen boards the healthcare system has, the hospital recently expanded its charity-care sliding fee scale, making more people in our community eligible for financial assistance and sending fewer people to collections.

Several years ago, Jefferson Public Utility District commissioners took a hard look at concerns about low-income customers. The PUD’s citizen advisory board recommended that PUD commissioners expand the low-income program to include all people in the county, not just seniors and those with disabilities. The PUD board heeded their advice. We thanked them for that last year.

Unfortunately, there is one issue that the PUD’s advisory board heard about but didn’t pass on to customers in a timely manner and that now is coming back not only to cost the PUD, but to confuse the community at large. The issue is smart meters and the PUD’s desire to switch out old analog meters with a new meter system called advanced metering infrastructure, more commonly referred to as “smart meters.”

One need only read the minutes of the May 9, 2016 PUD citizen advisory board meeting to be disappointed. It’s clear from the minutes that board members knew there would be concerns about “invasion of privacy and radiation exposure,” for example, and that the issue could be controversial.

One board member discussed the need to have clear public communication and develop a frequently asked questions document, while another said, “The PUD shouldn’t talk about ‘smart’ meters; the new meters should be called ‘replacement’ meters,” to which another member agreed, and another then suggested just calling them “meters.” That’s more akin to disinformation than information.

Those minutes reflect former PUD manager Jim Parker as saying that the PUD should use the same terminology the industry does.

To anyone reading the minutes, it sounds as though there was discussion not just about clarifying information but, to a certain degree, about trying to pave the way for the PUD to proceed with the smart meters without triggering any conversation or controversy.

And the PUD didn’t follow up with some CAB member suggestions, which included preparing frequently asked questions and answers.

Former PUD Commissioner Barney Burke urged that the public be well informed, and it also was suggested that the CAB write about the proposal in the newspaper, which didn’t happen.

One board member said, “If we see the ‘train going off the track,’ it’s our job to speak up.”

Well, the train did go off the track when the community caught up with the PUD’s near five-year discussion of smart-meters.

To be fair, there had been a few stories about the smart-meter issue that some people might have missed, but none that mentioned the controversies because at the time, there were none. And the meter issue was being discussed while there were a lot of other issues on the PUD’s plate, including poor state audits.

But once people who are opposed to smart meters started looking into the issue, they discovered the CAB minutes and those comments.

While one CAB board member recently asked about writing a perspective in The Leader – which is welcome and in the works – the PUD now is in the position of needing to backtrack and hire a consultant to evaluate the smart-meter proposal.

Let this serve as a lesson to other agencies and citizen advisory boards. It’s not your job to be a cheerleader for the agency. And the agency needs to do more than listen. The community needs CABs to ask questions other might not even know to ask.

Thanks to all those volunteers who take their advisory role

seriously. You’re helping both the agency and the public when you do.

— Allison Arthur

Editor’s note: The PUD Citizen Advisory Board minutes referenced in this editorial are online with this editorial at ptleader.com.