Look at this tree.

Bob P.  from Arlington, Texas sent me this photo of his backyard tree, cut by Oncor Electric Delivery’s tree-pruning company.

“Only someone with a sick sense of humor would ‘prune’ a tree the way the one in my backyard was cut,” he says. “The Oncor contractor and the rest of his team probably laughed about it all day long. It would have been merciful to cut the entire tree to the ground.”

For years, I’ve received heart-breaking letters from folks whose trees are butchered by Oncor Electric Delivery, which serves one-third of Texas. Oncor owns the lines and transformers that the retail electricity providers offer homeowners and businesses.

As I shared in the Nov. 29, 2009 Dave Lieber column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oncor has operated an ineffective, poorly-managed, non-communicative and disorganized tree-trimming program.

Now along comes Grapevine Mayor William D. Tate.

Tate is one of America’s finest mayors, and his town, not surprisingly, is the best little town in Texas.

This is one more reason he gets the title.

Tate is an old-fashioned, handshake mayor. He could easily have been a U.S. Marshall a hundred years ago. Now he’s taken Grapevine to the highest heights. And he’s taking on Oncor for the butchering of hundreds of trees in the best little town in Texas.

“I feel like The Watchdog on this,” he told me.

Tate is a watchdog that won’t let go.

Turns out Oncor has messed up trees in other area towns, too. Homeowners complain that when they call for information about tree trimmings on their property, they can’t get any information. When the trimmers arrive, they often don’t speak English.

Tate complained to the Public Utility Commission. He said that got their attention. And it did.

I recently attended a summit with Tate, a few other mayors and top officials of Oncor.

Oncor is overhauling its tree trimming program.

The most important part is the addition of mandatory “customer sensitivity” classes for supervisors of the five tree trimming companies used by Oncor.

Oncor has also created a toll-free number (1-800-518-2380) for homeowners who have questions when tags are placed on their door. Usually, a tag means a tree trimming crew may come in five days or so to trim away from electricity lines.

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See for yourself. In this brief video by Dave Lieber, I show you some examples of Oncor’s tree trimming work in Grapevine.

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More information

Visit www.oncor.com/trees.

- State law prohibits residents from trimming trees near power lines.

- Oncor urges homeowners to use Oncor-sent trimmers or hire their own qualified trimmers.

- Homeowners can also pay to bury lines underground.

- Homeowners should avoid planting spreading trees within 50 feet of power lines.

- Read Texas law here about overhead power lines.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. His book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, won two national book awards in 2009 for social change.

I don’t have a lot in common with State Sen. Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay, Texas. He chairs the Texas Senate committee that writes laws regulating business and industry.

I, on the other hand, investigate and write stories for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and WatchdogNation.com about what happens to folks when the laws he writes do not work

But both of us are extremely bothered by secretive groups. Both of us have found ourselves standing outside the doors of an electric co-op meeting, not allowed in. Fraser did something useful with his initial rejection a couple of years ago from a board meeting of the Pedernales Electric Co-Op, of which he is also a member. He tried to pass a law earlier this year in the Texas Legislature subjecting these secretive electric co-ops to state open records and open meetings laws. Electric co-ops fought it, and it didn’t pass.

For my Fraser-like experience, I was shown the door recently at a members’ only meeting at Tri-County Electric Cooperative. In the video you can see me get turned away. (Sorry for the jerky camera, but I was testing the tiny Flip Mino. I wasn’t undercover, just holding the minuscule camera.)

WatchdogNation.com finds it so unacceptable that in this Era of Transparency in government – local, state and federal governments are making more information public than ever before – these little good-ole-boy clubhouse holdouts still exist everywhere where you can’t get any idea of what is going on. It’s so, well, darn un-American.

Electricity is serious stuff in Texas and everywhere else. Forty-seven states have electric co-ops. Every little bit of information given to consumers helps. But these co-ops, as shown in this classic study by an consultant of the most crooked co-op in Texas, Pedernales, show the way corruption can flourish when unchecked.

My study of Tri-County’s secretive ways began months ago when resident Paul Thompson asked me for helping in digging up information.

We both ran into a one cold stone wall – Tri-County Executive Vice President and General Manager Craig Knight.

The co-op, which brings electricity to residents in 16 North Texas counties, is run, like many others, as the secretive fiefdom of one man. Knight earns about $300,000 a year, according to one of the few government disclosure documents the co-op has to file. Knight’s father ran the co-op before him. Not much else about him is known.

You can read my latest study about Knight and his secretive ways in the Dave Lieber Watchdog column here in the Nov. 1, 2009 Star-Telegram.

This video shows my “Troy Fraser moment” standing there, trying to get in to watch the co-op elect a new director. But that never happened. I didn’t get in. And there was no true election.

Previously, Knight had told me I could attend only if the membership approves, but he never even offered them the opportunity that night.

Turns out there were only 90 people inside, not enough to make the 3 percent quorum, so as my detailed report in the newspaper shows, the election wasn’t held and the nominee, who has held the job for three decades, was reelected without opposition.

Other watchdog groups keep an eye on their co-ops, such as CoServ Watchdogs and PEC4U.org. Bravo for them. Tri-County and many other co-ops don’t have peering eyes.

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee writes in his study of co-ops: “Too many electric co-ops have turned away from their historic role as exciting, pro-consumer organizations and have instead taken on deeply troubling anti-consumer behaviors.”

As co-op activist John Watson said in the Dave Lieber column, “Co-ops, everywhere as far as I can tell, need a beady eye cast on them by members and the press. Most operate with a lack of transparency.”

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Dave’s new book — Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation — won two national book awards for social change in 2009.