By Amanda Durish Cook

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A special task team is suggesting that MISO revise its Board of Directors selection rules to give stakeholders a more consequential voice in board makeup.

The Board Qualification Task Team (BQTT), composed of MISO stakeholders, last week released a draft of recommendations, including that the RTO double the number of stakeholder representatives on the Nominating Committee that selects board candidates and rotate the sectors from which committee participants are drawn. (See Task Team Zeroes in on MISO Board Recommendations.)

The recommendation would establish four stakeholder seats on the Nominating Committee, outnumbering the three seats reserved for MISO directors. The BQTT also raised the possibility of reserving one of the stakeholder seats for a representative of the Organization of MISO States.

Task team lead David Bloom, of the Power Marketers and Brokers sector, put the recommendations before Advisory Committee members at their meeting Wednesday. The list is still open to suggestions from the committee, which also extended the life of the BQTT through the end of the year to allow it to tweak the recommendations. The AC will vote individually on them at either its Oct. 23 or Dec. 11 meeting.

Also on the list is a recommendation to require state and federal regulators to observe a yearlong “cooling-off” period before becoming eligible for nomination to the board, a policy that currently applies only to those coming out of the industry. However, the change wasn’t labeled a must-have, as the task team also said it would accept if AC members ultimately don’t see a need to extend the moratorium to regulators.

MISO originally required board members with financial ties to the RTO footprint to observe two-year pre- and post-service restrictions, but it reduced those requirements to a one-year pre-service restriction in 2016.

Finally, the task team also presented options for MISO to either designate one of the nine director seats for those with experience representing utility customer interests or create a new process where RTO sectors could describe what qualifications they’re seeking in new board members. The Nominating Committee selects board member candidates in closed deliberations, assisted by management firm Russell Reynolds.

Reaction to the recommendations was mixed, with some AC members asking why the BQTT preferred a stakeholder majority on the Nominating Committee and others asking why all MISO sectors couldn’t be represented on the Nominating Committee at the same time.

Environmental and Other Stakeholder Groups representative Beth Soholt wondered if MISO’s cooling-off period unnecessarily limits the slate of board candidates. In meetings, the BQTT had mulled eliminating the period altogether.

“We note that [former FERC Commissioner Cheryl] LaFleur was appointed to the ISO-NE board without any cooling-off period. In fact, she’s probably red hot,” Soholt joked. (See LaFleur Elected to ISO-NE Board.)