Corporation Commission
It is no longer in voters’ best interests to elect the people who set their electric rates. Just as Arizona heads into a powerful electrical storm over its energy production, serious questions swirl about how independent an elected Arizona Corporation Commission can be when Arizona Public Service powerfully seeks to influence its members’ political futures. It is less clear these days who is regulating whom.
The solution: Arizona needs to join the 36 states that appoint their utility commissions, emphasizing expertise over electoral prowess.
Big issues face the corporation commission: How to respond to regulations that would profoundly limit coal-fired energy production. How to resolve the tension between decentralized solar power and the traditional, centrally controlled producers of power. And beyond that, how to balance disruptive innovations yet to come with the need for reliable electricity.
The public needs to have faith the commission is facing these challenges independently, with no favor to any side. But the way APS appears to be flexing its muscle, that faith is harder to come by.
It started when APS first sought to charge rooftop-solar users to support the electric grid. The solar industry responded with an over-the-top, campaignstyle ad blitz that besmirched APS.
The utility responded in kind — and then, kept going.
Or rather, we believe it kept going. The utility won’t say how much money, if any, it spent in the 2014 election. It is widely believed to have spent well into the millions.
Commissioners can require the utility to disclose political spending. None has. They saw what happened to people who stood up to APS.
In the 2014 primaries, two Republican candidates who supported the solar industry were flooded with negative ads. The same happened to the Democrat with the best chance of winning in November.
APS is believed to have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to independent expenditure groups that pounded those candidates and celebrated those it was known to prefer.
The utility may have flexed its political muscles in other ways.
The company is believed to have contributed heavily to a “dark money” independent expenditure group that spent $444,000 in support of Justin Pierce, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for secretary of state. He is the son of former Corporation Commission member Gary Pierce, who left office last year.
Gary Pierce met frequently, more than any other commissioner, with APS President and CEO Don Brandt as well as APS lobbyists and other executives, reported Arizona Republic reporter Ryan Randazzo. He often, though not always, voted for the utility’s position.
A former aide wrote a whistleblower letter detailing the Brandt meetings, as well as others, suggesting that Pierce displayed favoritism toward APS. That letter prompted an Arizona Attorney General’s Office investigation into any possible improprieties, all of which Pierce denies.
The investigation will run its course. Meanwhile, broader questions remain. Can an elected commission truly regulate a utility willing to spend freely to support the regulators it prefers and destroy those it doesn’t?
Appointing a Corporation Commission would not eliminate politics altogether. There is always some element of patronage with gubernatorial appointments. But requirements could be instituted for a certain degree of expertise and knowledge, so we’d be more likely to end up with commissioners who were wonks first, with little or no interest in politics. With an elected commission, that order is reversed.
Arizona voters are not often inclined to deny themselves the right to vote for office holders. They have turned down a proposal to make the commission an appointed body before, though the most recent was three decades ago.
But, this time, making the commission an appointed body is necessary to fend off the state’s biggest, most headstrong public utility, and put consumer interests first.