APS scores big time by raising your power rates

Remember when the Arizona Corporation Commission raised your electricity bills so that the state’s most impoverished utility, APS, could rake in another $95 million in profits every year?

Turns out Arizona Public Service banked $128 million in these first 10 months of that rate hike.

Not a bad return on the $7 million investment widely believed to have been made by APS in the last two elections, helping to persuade voters to stack the Corporation Commission with regulators the utility wanted.

The APS rate increase was approved by the commission last August, and was advertised as an average 4.54 percent boost that would raise the average monthly bill by $6.

But some customers reported their bills rose 10 percent or more. They have asked for a rehearing on the rate increase. APS, meanwhile, has chalked the higher bills up to the weather and assured us that new rate plans would actually lower our bills.

Or, perhaps not. According to the latest SEC filing by APS parent Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the utility scored $43 million alone from the rate increase from April through June.

Add that to the $85 million it took in from last Aug. 19, when the rate hike kicked in, through March.

All this from a rate increase which was supposed to provide APS with $95 million a year.

In all, APS scored $166.7 million in profits in its latest quarterly earnings report, filed last week. Over the last year, the utility has earned a hefty $488 million in profits, with a little help from the elected officials who regulate it.

It’ll be ultimately up to the Corporation Commission whether to reconsider the rate increase it approved. Fortunately — for APS, not you — the commission has repeatedly shown itself to be in the bag for APS.

The utility is widely believed to have spent $3.2 million on a “dark money” campaign in 2014 to get its favored candidates, Tom Forese and Doug Little, elected. (Little has since resigned to take a job in the Trump administration and been replaced by Justin Olson, who is running as a team with Forese on this year’s ballot.)

It openly spent another $4 million to get Andy Tobin, Boyd Dunn and Robert Burns elected in 2016.

Of the five, only Burns seems bothered by APS’ sway over the commission, and has spent the last few years trying to get to the bottom of the 2014 dark-money campaign, only to find himself blocked by APS and his fellow commissioners. They don’t see it as any of your business that they enjoyed millions in support from the utility they (supposedly) regulate.

Something to think about as you consider who to vote for this year.