All electric utilities receive federal subsidies in one form or another. Calculations based on federal government financial reports show that rural electric cooperatives receive the least federal amount of subsidy per consumer. This is in spite of the fact that RECs serve only 7 consumers per mile of line compared to 35 for IOUs and 47 for city-owned utilities.

Electric cooperatives are private, independent electric utilities, owned by the members they serve. Democratically governed businesses, electric cooperatives are organized under the Cooperative or Rochdale Principles, anchoring them firmly in the communities they serve and ensuring that they are closely regulated by their members.

Electric cooperatives began to spread across rural America after President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in 1935. The Executive Order establishing the REA and the passage of the REA Act a year later marked the first steps in a public-private partnership that has, over the last 70 years, bridged the vast expanse of rural America to bring electric power to businesses and communities willing to organize cooperatively and accept responsibility for the provision of safe, affordable and reliable electric power.

Missouri has a well-defined and well-run system of electric cooperatives that generate, transmit and distribute electric service to the rural residents of the state.

1. Our power is generated by Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., based in Springfield, Mo. Associated generates power to serve 51 distribution cooperatives in Missouri, southern Iowa and northeast Oklahoma.
2. That power is transmitted throughout Missouri by six transmission cooperatives. Our regional transmission cooperatives are KAMO Power Electric Cooperative located in Vinita, Ok. and  Sho-Me Power Electric Cooperative located in Marshfield, Mo., which owns and maintains the substations that serve our system.
3. The electricity is delivered directly to the members of Missouri by forty distribution cooperatives. Southwest Electric is a distribution cooperative.

Purpose: The aim of Southwest Electric Cooperative, Inc., (hereinafter called the “Cooperative”) is to make electric energy available to its shareholders (hereinafter called “Members”), at the lowest cost consistent with sound economy and good management.  Toward that end, the Cooperative does hereby adopt the following By-Laws: