SECU What Next? Giving The Legal Profession A Bad Name?

   SECU sowing weeds?

✅ Trying to look at the bigger picture for credit unions can be difficult, but that's what we need to struggle with. The future of SECU is being refashioned without your consent. 

This undermining of purpose, principle, member governance, and North Carolina law is moving forward on several fronts. [Might want to refresh yourself on the parable about "sowing weeds".] Stick with this if you can as we wander into the weeds ; as a member you have much to lose.

✅ To add to the complexity of the puzzle, the dismantling of the credit union cooperative ownership structure is also proceeding rapidly on the national level through mergers, bank acquisitions, and future charter conversions.  But right now, lets continue to look at the letter from the SECU's "Chief Legal Counsel" [link].

Try the "chief legaler's" claim that the SECU bylaws: "... do not require SECU to offer the opportunity for member-sponsored resolutions." That statement, like the tawdry "no formal proposal proposal" and the classic "recently permitted prohibitions" [link] are what's known in the legal profession as pettifoggery! Sorta true but really not so much.

The actual truth is that from 1937 to 2023, resolutions from SECU members were always allowed at the Annual Meeting. No prior SECU Board ever considered removing that member right and privilege.  

😎 Evidently guided by the pettifoggery of the chief legaler,  the current SECU Board, has unilaterally taken this member right - to actively participate in the governance of SECU - away from you, without your consent.

Stick with this if you can as we wander into the weeds ; as a member you have much to lose.

✅ "Why does the SECU Board fear the members?"

... hold tight, there's still more!

 

 

SECU What Next? Chief "Legaler" Eliminates The SECU Annual Business Meeting?

  SECU is none of your business!

In case you are just joining us, we have gotten down to "brass tacks" [link] on the blog; focusing on the true, critical issues at SECU - North Carolina state law, the SECU bylaws, and the dismantlement of SECU cooperative principles and ownership. 

✅ As a member-owner of SECU, you have already lost your democratic rights to speak and actively participate in the Annual Meeting [link], with the N.C. Administrator of Credit Unions apparently being duped in the process [link].

😎 But there's more!

The "Chief Legal Officer" of  SECU, in her May 19, 2025 letter [link] to a member's lawyer, offered up the following:

"You have inquired about any existing policies to allow for submission of member resolutions in advance of the Annual Meeting. The purpose of the Annual Meeting is for members to elect directors. "  "... there was no process to allow members to introduce resolutions for consideration at the Annual Meeting."

First, note in the last phrase that the "legal" officer forthrightly confirms that you as a member-owner were prohibited from expressing any opinion, suggestion, or resolution about SECU at the last Annual Meeting.

✅ Of greater concern, the "legal" officer has unilaterally decided evidently that: "The purpose of the Annual Meeting is to elect directors." It would appear that the "legal" officer has decided that the election of directors is the only democratic right that members may exercise at an SECU Annual Meeting. 

This contradicts North Carolina state law, the Federal Credit Union Act, and the core legal principle that the annual meeting is the required yearly business meeting for the credit union and its members - true for all cooperatives.

No true legal authority disputes that principle and that fact of law - except evidently the SECU Board and its "legal" counsel.

 ✅ "Why does the SECU Board fear the members?"

... hold tight, even more to come!