Larkspur Vice Mayor Stephanie Andre came prepared for MCE’s board meeting in September.

Andre, an investment banker, and a handful of MCE directors from Marin on its 34-member board, were frustrated.

For more than a year, managers at the not-for-profit public agency — which sells electricity to 85% of Marin and whose monthly plans cost slightly more than Pacific Gas & Electric Co. — have resisted their calls to be more transparent, accountable and collaborative.

The majority of the board had confidence in management. But for the second year in a row, MCE’s expenses differed from its budget by more than $100 million, its auditors reported. Total expenses increased by $200 million from the year before — creating a net operating loss.

The Marin directors, including several with finance careers, wanted to know what was driving these results.

Andre expected MCE executives to point to factors beyond their control, and they did.

“The energy market is highly volatile,” said Maira Strauss, MCE treasurer and vice president of finance, who would soon be promoted to chief financial officer. “Fluctuations in bilateral prices and differences from our budget in absolute terms are to be expected.”

“It was also affected by regulatory oversight of the prices that weren’t known to us when we were setting our budget,” MCE Chief Executive Officer Dawn Weisz said. “And those things aren’t affected by hedging.”

A staff presentation cited four contracts where energy costs unexpectedly surged during the fiscal year ending March 31.

Andre suspected the contracts were not the full story. Since she wasn’t getting sufficient answers, she looked for clues.

Though relatively new to MCE’s board, Andre and a few peers with finance careers and experience on corporate boards felt a duty to exercise oversight. MCE is not a struggling nonprofit. After launching in 2010 as Marin Clean Energy, it has grown into a nearly billion-dollar operation that has been lauded as an environmental leader in creating California’s renewable energy sector.

The annual budget of MCE — which serves about 1.5 million people in Marin, Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties — is larger than half of California’s counties. But for the past three years, its projections were nowhere near its audited actual expenses. Andre and a handful of directors studied MCE’s financials and staff reports. They attended board and committee meetings. They listened. They didn’t hear much on the drivers of the $769 million MCE spent on energy last year.

They knew that vast sum, which is 94% of MCE’s budget, was spent a half-dozen ways.

About 75% was for contracts for long- and short-term supplies of carbon-free and renewable energy, and for renewable attributes — power produced elsewhere, and for financial hedges to insure against price spikes. Another quarter was for state-required reserves and grid costs.

What they didn’t know was where MCE was making possibly avoidable mistakes. Andre looked at financial statements at eight of MCE’s peers to see if they had similar cost swings in the same time frame. They did not, she told MCE’s board.

“Everyone is subject to the same market price volatility and also the same changing legislation,” she said, citing the executives’ explanations. “MCE’s financial results for the last fiscal year are an outlier.”

“My question is, why are we different?” said Sally Wilkinson, Belvedere’s vice mayor and a former investment banker who has advised the U.K.’s Conservative Party on fiscal and economic policy. “Help us understand, as a board, how much market price exposure we have.”

Wilkinson asked MCE staff if they had compared its unexpected costs to California’s other energy nonprofits — what Andre did. Not yet, they replied.

“I would like to just get a better handle on the energy portfolio,” Andre said. “And piggybacking on some of the public comments that were (made) earlier, if that means we create a finance committee or a risk committee, I would be very interested in something like that.”

Most of MCE’s three dozen directors sat quietly during this exchange. As was often the case, only a few directors asked pointed questions. But at meetings throughout 2025, many Marin MCE directors — elected officials from Mill Valley, Fairfax, Belvedere, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Ross, San Rafael and Sausalito — had voiced concerns about financial oversight and governance issues and voted as a bloc.

‘Small, small minority’

Several days later, Weisz and allies from outside Marin said Andre’s investigation and criticism were misplaced and misinformed.

“So you heard a couple of board members cite this dramatic swing, ‘Oh my gosh, $200 million of difference,’ right?” Weisz said. “That is what they’ve said. $100 million of it was already baked into the budget. We were expecting it.”

Weisz said Andre’s analysis was based on unaudited quarterly statements, which were unreliable because the energy field can take six months to get solid numbers.

“She doesn’t understand the time lags,” Weisz said, and dismissed the implication from Andre’s like-minded colleagues that MCE’s portfolio of dozens of energy contracts had some underlying issues. “They are not aware of all of the ins and outs and moving parts, and they don’t have the background and the context.”

“This is just a small, small minority of people,” said El Cerrito Mayor Gabriel Quinto, vice chair of MCE’s board of directors. “I know they have great financial backgrounds and all that, but they do not understand what the CCAs are going through.” CCA stands for community choice aggregation, the kind of service MCE provides.

Weisz and Quinto both said the price of most of MCE’s monthly electricity plans have held steady despite the energy field’s uncertainties.

“This is why we have high reserves,” Quinto said. “And the reserves are intended to keep MCE stable during volatile times.”

But this particular boardroom clash over governance was not an isolated incident.

Who’s in charge?

Since last fall, a handful of Marin board members pushing for better explanations and independent oversight have been repeatedly met with resistance and evasions.

They have seen management rewrite a report from an audit committee based on a “financial control” concern MCE’s auditors raised a year ago after the outside auditors found that MCE staff had overlooked $9.6 million when preparing its books. In the months that followed, the audit committee was blocked from presenting its report to MCE’s full board, which included several oversight and governance reforms. Management subsequently shut down the audit committee entirely in July.

For nearly two years, growing numbers of Marin directors have called for the creation of a permanent finance committee, which, when taken up by MCE’s executive committee last December, was voted down — following management opposition.

They called for hiring a chief financial officer after MCE’s previous chief financial officer went to work for another CCA in mid-2024. That post was filled in mid-October when Strauss was promoted to chief financial officer from finance vice president, MCE spokesperson Jared Blanton said.

“Staff was internally informed on Oct. 10,” he said. “Our executive team has been informing members of the board in individual conversations.”

No public mention of Strauss’ promotion was made at an Oct. 6 executive committee meeting or at the annual MCE directors’ retreat on Oct. 16.

Like MCE’s chief executive officer, Quinto said the agency has sufficient checks and balances and called these reactions and calls for reform “overblown.”

“These (Marin) small towns are not as busy as other cities that are part of MCE,” he said. “When it comes to an audit, we are not there to discuss it. That is the job of the auditors and they gave us a clean report. … That’s not our job to dissect that audit piece by piece.”

But the calls for better explanations and accountability about MCE’s energy costs and priorities were also coming from environmentalists who support MCE’s goal of transitioning to cleaner carbon-free renewable power.

Before the September directors meeting, MCE staff assembled a 700-page meeting packet. That package did not discuss whether MCE might have avoided the $200 million cost swing. During the meeting, a handful of advocates said MCE would benefit by having a finance committee that could distill energy contract issues and answers.

“Other CCAs can provide much more financial information in public in a timely manner in these finance committees — why not MCE?” said Robert Miller, co-chair of the Marin Conservation League’s climate committee.

“What we’re asking is, does our business strategy somehow expose us to more energy market risk or not?” said Dan Segedin, a member of the organization.

“A finance committee would be a very valuable step forward,” said Ben Schwartz, policy director for the Clean Coalition, a statewide renewable energy think tank.

More losses

A week after the September board meeting, Weisz placed creating a finance committee on MCE’s Oct. 6 executive committee agenda — along with last year’s staff report opposing it. And MCE posted its latest unaudited quarterly financial statement. The red ink from last year’s financial statement continued.

MCE reported an operating loss of $26.9 million between April 1 and June 30, 2025. Electricity costs were $16 million more than sales. As was the case last year, its investment income buffered the impact and lowered that quarterly loss to $20.2 million.

At its Oct. 6 executive committee meeting, even more outside groups called for creating a permanent finance committee.

“I just simply can’t imagine an organization the size and with the budget that MCE has that does not have a CFO in place and a standing finance committee,” said Jody Timms, 350 Marin founding member. “It’s primarily a financial organization and I just really urge you to take that step.”

“We are alarmed by MCE’s failure to flag and adequately discuss the large quarterly operating loss and fiscal year operating loss, regardless of why the operating losses occurred,” said Miller. “The fact is that the board and public didn’t learn about these losses in a timely way.”

Weisz did not comment on her pending decision – announced to staff four days later – that Strauss was to be promoted to chief financial officer.

After an hourlong discussion, the executive committee voted 7-4 to recommend that MCE’s full board of directors create a finance committee. The majority included directors from Larkspur, Belvedere, Mill Valley, Fairfax, Corte Madera and San Rafael.

But after some procedural wrangling, there was a second vote. Contra Costa County Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston proposed that MCE’s full board simply rename the executive committee as the executive and finance committee. It passed 8-3.

In other words, when the full board meets next in November, it will get mixed messages in the call for greater transparency, accountability and collaboration. On one hand, there is a call for a permanent committee to delve into finance issues. On the other hand, there is a call to rename a current committee that now has much on its plate.

“We have an obligation to engage in active oversight, which is not just passively receiving information or just approving what comes before the board,” Andre said.

“We were the first CCA in California and we’re the most experienced,” said Quinto. “We plan ahead and we’ve done a good job in that.”

At its Oct. 16 retreat, MCE staff discussed its energy contracts in greater detail than at recent board and executive committee meetings.

But Weisz didn’t announce Strauss’s appointment as chief financial officer, not when Andre and other Marin directors were calling for better governance.

Instead, Weisz was overheard urging at least one board member to oppose the finance committee when they next met.

The MCE series

Oct. 26: At its 15-year mark, MCE faces growing questions about oversight and costs.
Oct. 27: Observers ask why MCE prices are rising when energy costs are falling.
Oct. 28: MCE says it provides 100% renewable energy, but is that really true?
Oct. 29: Attempts by critics to reform MCE’s practices meet stiff resistance.