The coming week will be a pivotal one concerning the controversy entangling the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative and the cooperative’s future.

The good news is that the strong public response to the outrageous behavior of utility officials, documented in a series of investigative reports by this newspaper and the Norwich Bulletin, has led to this day of reckoning.

But what will the reckoning look like?

The ability of municipalities to enforce ethical standards in this unusual case could face a legal test. Meanwhile, the legislature confronts its own difficult test as it seeks to prevent future abuses, without destroying the good the energy cooperative has done in helping control utility rates.

This controversy began when news reports last year documented how for four years dozens of board members, staff, guests and municipal officials were treated to lavish junkets to Kentucky for Derby weekend. The last trip, in 2016, cost $342,330 for 44 participants, or $7,780 per person. Over the four years, CMEEC expended more than $1 million on the trips.

The Derby parties were disassociated from the mission of the cooperative, which is to negotiate wholesale power purchase deals for the municipally owned utilities that are its members — Norwich, City of Groton, the Borough of Jewett City and Norwalk. Executive Director Drew Rankin has rationalized that the trips — with their lavish parties, five-star hotel stays and expensive dinners — were “strategic retreats” that helped utility officials work better together. But there was no business conducted.

These were vacations, paid in full using money intended to benefit utility customers.

Last Monday, the Norwich Ethics Commission rendered its verdict concerning Mayor Deberey Hinchey and four Norwich Public Utilities officials. It found all five had violated the city’s code of ethics by accepting what amounted to a gift — a very big one — and placing themselves in a conflict of interest.

A final decision rests with the City Council. While not recommending anyone loses their job, the Ethics Commission did recommend that the five should reimburse the city for all or a portion of their trip costs. The council would do well to back the commission.

While it appears Mayor Hinchey, who has apologized for taking part in the Derby excursion, may be apt to take her medicine should the council impose sanctions, the legal issues surrounding the other four are complex.

Norwich Public Utilities General Manager John Bilda, NPU Division Manager Steve Sinko, Utilities Commission Chairwoman Dee Boisclair and Vice Chairman Robert Groner could make the claim that their conduct is beyond the reach of the city’s Ethics Commission. This was a CMEEC trip and the cooperative is a nonprofit, its legal link to the city and the city’s ethical regulations tenuous.

CMEEC’s unusual status — an arm’s length from the municipalities it was ostensibly created to serve and also falling outside the domain of the state’s regulatory authority — will be among the subjects of a hearing in front of the state legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee on Tuesday.

In the wake of the scandal, lawmakers have filed various bills concerning the future operation of the electrical energy cooperative.

Sen. Cathy Osten, a Democrat whose 19th District includes Norwich, has introduced legislation requiring greater transparency into CMEEC’s operations. This would include requiring public access to financial reports, the public posting of its meetings, and requiring those meetings be held in Connecticut. Joining Osten as so-sponsors are Sen. Paul Formica, R-20th District, Rep. Emmett Riley, D-Norwich, and Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, whose 139th District includes a portion of Norwich.

Openness is a good thing, of course, but given the limited staffs of news organizations and the operation of the cooperative outside normal municipal government circles, one has to wonder, particularly as time passes, who will be keeping an eye on CMEEC, transparent or not.

Worthy of close examination is Sen. Heather Somers’ proposal to dismantle CMEEC. Somers’ 19th District includes Groton. Her bill would replace CMEEC with a stripped-down entity more in keeping with its original mission of cooperatively purchasing power for the municipal utilities. CMEEC went beyond that mission in raising money by re-selling electricity and services to nonmembers, such as the Mohegan tribe and some Massachusetts municipal utilities, and managing hydropower systems.

That money ended up in the “Margin Fund,” which became the slush fund for the Derby trips.

The legislature must take a hard look at whether CMEEC needs to be reined in, replaced or better regulated, or some combination thereof. That process begins Tuesday.