Former CEO Dwight Brown did a number on the Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (EMC).

Cobb EMC serves around 175,000 member-owners just outside of Atlanta, Ga., and is one of 900 member-owned electric cooperatives in the United States. From the late 1990s on, the co-op’s members lost nearly $400 million dollars to Brown’s for-profit Cobb Energy, a shell entity Brown engineered to drain money from the cooperative. Over a 15 year span, Brown personally pocketed more than $21 million through self-dealing and conspiring with other business entities, including a proposed $2 billion coal-fired power plant that would’ve raised members’ electric rates by 10 to 20 percent in its first year of operation alone. Brown was indicted on more than 30 charges including theft and racketeering in 2011; he is still awaiting trial.

Brown and Cobb EMC’s story is more than a story of greed. It remains a stark reminder of just how much can go wrong when a member-owners of an electric cooperative fail to participate in the very electric utility they own and regulate. (For the most part, states do not regulate electric cooperatives.)

Mark Hackett, president of member-driven Cobb EMC Forum, joins John Farrell this week to talk about how an engaged membership continues to be essential to defending the vitality of a locally owned electric company.