Do You Have a Check Coming from Chugach Electric?

Do you know:

Adgerson, Jimmy
Gjendem, Pat
Grube, Wayne
Hunt, Scott
Marfin, David or Sarita
Security Pacific Natl Bank
Yerkes, Charles?

Chugach has money for them and about 13,000 more people.

Chugach also has information about this on their website. There's a little more information in the letter online than the one in the newspaper.

Last December the Chugach board of directors authorized the return of nearly $5 million, the last of the retail capital credits on the books from 1988, and a portion of the credits earned in 1989. A similar action by the board in 2006 authorized the return of $2.4 million of the 1988 capital credits.

Chugach mailed checks to members of record from 1988 after the board authorized retirements. Postcard notices were mailed to members who had not cashed a check from an earlier retirement. Many of the checks were either not cashed or were returned as undeliverable. In all, about 13,000 members of record are still eligible for their share of about $1.3 million in unclaimed capital credits.

That comes out to an average of $100 per person. Then there's this interesting bit:

State law makes a provision to prevent the unclaimed capital credits from going to the state, and preserves them for members of record who might make a claim on them in the future.

Capital credits from these retirements that have not been claimed by Dec. 31, 2008, will be retained by Chugach Electric Association. However, members of record may continue to claim their unpaid capital credits beyond this date. Questions may be directed to Chugach's Capital Credits section at (907) 762-4643 or to Customer Service at (907) 563-7366.

It's easy to jump to conclusions and wonder why Chugach keeps the money and doesn't turn it over to the state. Or who got that sweet provision into legislation? Since banks and other such institutions have to turned over unclaimed assets to the state after a period of time, why shouldn't Chugach?

That would be easy if we didn't read carefully and think things through a bit.

Chugach is not a regular private for profit corporation. It's a member owned coop. Wikipedia says

A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "capital credits", which are essentially dividends paid on a member's investment into the cooperative.

Each customer is a member and owner of the business with an equal say as every other member of the cooperative, unlike investor-owned utilities where the amount of say is governed by the number of shares held.

And that's what this money is. The newspaper section and the website say:

Capital Credits are a member's share of the cooperative's margins for a year in which revenues and other operating income exceed fixed and variable expenses.

So, who's on this list? Well, these dividends are for 1988. I'm not sure why the wait 20 years to pay the dividends. This list makes the voter registration list look up-to-date I'm sure. No wonder people they can't find anyone. (We used to get dividends from Chugach until our part of town came under ML&P.) I checked a few names on Google. I emailed three people who could be people on the list and for whom I could find email addresses without much trouble. (I chose less common names).

• One works for Early Head Start Enhanced Home Visiting Project
• Another is a landlord in Oregon (who got a great recommendation by one of his tenants)
• Another works for the US Department of Agriculture.

Some others whose names popped up on Google:

• Was listed on the F/51st COMPANY ROSTER "died peacefully on his houseboat on April 19, 2008, in Silver Point, Tenn." (Lived in Alaska once.)
• Complained about a late delivery from Amazon.com.
• Served in WW II, his 85 year old brother died last year and has relative in Craig, AK
• Came up on the Permanent Fund dividend attachment list
  

What's the PFD attachment list you ask. From a State of Alaska website:

What's Included

Only information about dividend attachments in October and November 2007 is listed. The list includes both successful and unsuccessful attempts to take people’s 2007 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends (PFDs) to pay debts. It contains information about the following:

1. dividends seized by writ of execution
2. unsuccessful attempts to seize the dividend by a writ of execution
3. PFD assignments (in which a person voluntarily signs over his or her PFD to the court)

It does not include assignments to other government agencies, writs issued by the federal courts or attachments by the IRS (taxes), CSED (child support), the Commission on Postsecondary Education (student loans), DHSS (public assistance overpayments and court-ordered treatment reimbursements), or the Department of Labor (money owed under the Employment Security Act).

There are 1011 pages of names (30 per page) - 30,330 minus duplicates, I calculate* nearly 24,000 people whose PFD checks are attached, not including all the ones excepted above. So the PFD last year paid about $40,000,000 to pay off creditors of Alaskans. (Not all of it actually got captured from what I can tell.) Think about it. We paid to cover $40 million worth of bad debts with Permanent Fund money. I wonder how much of that went to collection agencies or credit card companies? I'm sure there are situations where this makes good sense. Especially people who are working on paying off their debts and assign the money to their creditor. Except that probably also includes the Pay Day loan companies who pay people a fraction of their check's value in advance if they sign the check over to them.

I'm not interested in the state baby-sitting people who can't handle their money here (though that is a serious issue that we all pay for), but I'm just mulling over the idea of our paying off creditors to the tune of $40 million when we have villages with honey buckets still.

I know, there are creditors who are Alaskan businesses who are barely making it, for whom even a piece of this money is helpful. But it would be interesting to see a study of

• how many people/entities got money this way and
  
• how much each got.

Surely the PFD data base could spew out this information fairly easily. Then we'd know if this was something to try to work on or not.

Enough.

*Note: There are 1011 pages of names (VOLUME 5 (SEUBE through ZYWOT), pages 810 - 1011 - same link as above) with 30 names per page. But there seemed to be duplicates. Checking ten random pages the duplicate names ranged from 3-8, with 8 being the median number (most frequent). It averaged about 21% duplicates (I guess the duplicates represent more than one claim per PFD check.) So 30 names/page * 1011 pages = 30,330
- 21% = 23610