We all now know about the hot-shot, big-dog, blind-eye corporate execs at SCANA (and Santee Cooper) who kept us in the dark about the failing nuclear project for years, all while collecting enormous performance bonuses for themselves.

Those bonuses were paid based on (I’m not kidding) meeting construction goals and progress targets on two new reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station site in Fairfield County.

Yet $9 billion later (including $2 billion of ratepayer money given to them courtesy of the South Carolina legislature and its Base Load Review Act), all those highly paid execs produced was a big hole in the ground and an even bigger financial, regulatory and legal mess.

Those battles will be fought and eventually resolved in state and federal courts and regulatory agencies, on Wall Street and perhaps in voting booths as citizens decide whether to hold accountable legislators who delivered us this hell-on-a-platter.

But with the SCANA execs, at least we’re talking millions of dollars in unearned and undeserved compensation, something worth hustling people over. If you’re into hustling people.

Compare that with what has recently come to light about the board of Tri-County Electric Co-op. It’s a sad tale of a similar pale, just on a smaller scale.

As The State has reported in a fine series on the previously under-the-radar co-ops, not all have held true to their original and important 1930s mission of bringing power to rural areas at the lowest possible operating cost.

Instead, The State framed the question of the performance of Tri-County Electric (and several others) as follows: “High pay and expensive perks: Has ‘absolute power’ corrupted SC electric co-ops?”

Sadly, the answer is obvious in the case of Tri-County Electric (which serves Lower Richland County), per this information from an earlier story in The State:

“With 13,600 customers, Tri-County Electric is one of the smallest electric cooperatives in the state. But the co-op’s nine-member board makes far more — about $52,000 per member in 2016, according to tax records — than their counterparts at South Carolina’s 19 other co-ops.”

And it only gets worse. The story continued:

“The co-op’s board held 50 meetings last year … as brief as 15 minutes long … collecting a $450 dollar (per meeting] allowance … Veteran board members also have given themselves lifetime health insurance. …

“Tri-County’s longtime board chairman, Eastover farmer Heath Hill, requested the co-op look into whether it could start a pension plan for board members. … The part-time gig as co-op board chairman paid Hill $79,000 in 2016. By comparison, the multibillion-dollar, state-owned Santee Cooper utility … pays its board members $10,000 per year.”

The good news is Tri-County Electric Co-op members have been raising holy hell since all this came to light, and have gathered enough signatures to force a vote on removing the board and replacing it with new members.

And they should, not only because of the self-enrichment by board members at the co-op’s expense, but also because the people on that board are not distant corporate officials the customers don’t even know, but rather friends and neighbors they do. That adds an extra dose of disappointment in the board’s performance, both personally and professionally.

It also shows that it’s not just the big boys in the big offices in the big buildings of the big companies who lose their way in the face of power and money.

Indeed, the little guys in the little offices in the little buildings of the little companies can get just as hung up on themselves, just as tempted by dollar signs and just as forgetful of why they are there to begin with.

From the Fortune 500-ranked SCANA to a tiny electric co-op in rural South Carolina, the executives and board members should remember the same thing: Do unto others …

Fisher is president of Fisher Communications, a Columbia advertising and public relations firm. He is active in local issues involving the arts, conservation, business and the arts.

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