More than 8,000 Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative members cast ballots in this year’s board election, with results announced at SMECO’s 88th Annual Meeting Wednesday at the Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department Social Hall.
Members elected five directors to three-year terms: Nancy W. Zinn in the Calvert/Anne Arundel counties seat, Charles B. Bowling Jr. in Charles County, Daniel W. Dyer in Prince George’s County, and Joseph Douglas Frederick and Joseph Gilbert Murphy in the two St. Mary’s County seats. Two bylaw amendments on this year’s ballot, including one related to capital credits, also passed.
Zinn defeated Terry W. Schroepfer and Timothy Twigg with 3,574 votes to their 2,098 and 1,342. Bowling won with 4,239 votes over Brandi Jones’ 2,549 and Donta Varney’s 471. Dyer beat Kenneth Swann 4,016 votes to 2,907. In St. Mary’s County, Frederick and Murphy took the two seats with 4,004 and 3,578 votes, ahead of Lynn Delahay’s 3,317 and Mark P. Harris’ 2,237.
Ballots were mailed and emailed to members July 13 and accepted by mail or online through Aug. 12. Sixty-seven percent of ballots were returned by mail and 33 percent were cast online; SMECO offered 30 electric bill credits of $50 each as an incentive for members who voted. SMECO’s board has 15 directors total, with five seats up for election each year to staggered three-year terms; this year’s ballot included 12 candidates for the five open seats.
SMECO Board Chairman W. Rayner Blair III opened the meeting, and President and CEO Sonja Cox introduced a video version of the cooperative’s 2025 annual report. The video covered SMECO’s efforts to maintain a reliable system while managing rising costs.
Cox said the cooperative had “to look carefully at where we could reduce or delay spending” during a year of rising costs, while working to protect its financial standing and keep service reliable.
Cox took questions from members on the capital credits bylaw amendment and on SMECO’s stance toward data centers seeking to locate in Southern Maryland. As the exclusive electric distribution utility in its territory, SMECO is required under state law to connect any customer who requests service, Cox said. But consistent with Maryland law, the cooperative’s position is that any data center developer must pay the full cost of any transmission or distribution system buildout needed to connect the facility, rather than spreading those costs to other ratepayers. SMECO has outlined the same cost-recovery position in briefings to county governments across its service territory this year, and state regulators are separately developing rules requiring large-load, high-demand customers like data centers to cover their own infrastructure costs.
Members also asked about SMECO’s Time-of-Use rate option, which lets residential and some commercial customers save money by shifting electricity use to off-peak hours. Customers can compare a Time-of-Use rate against their current rate based on their own usage patterns by logging into SMECO’s online Account Manager tool.
Cox said the cooperative intends to keep leaning on its purchasing power and resources to manage costs while protecting service reliability going forward.
SMECO is a member-owned electric cooperative serving more than 175,000 accounts across Calvert, Charles, southern Prince George’s and most of St. Mary’s counties.
