APS spends $11 million in bid to kill energy vote

Arizona Public Service is sounding the alarm. It seems an out-of-state Democratic activist has sunk more than $8.2 million into his Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona initiative.

“California billionaire Tom Steyer will spare no expense in his shameless bid to buy this election and force his costly, California-style energy regulations down the throats of Arizona families,” Matthew Benson, spokesman with the APS-funded Arizonans for Affordable Electricity, said in press release on Tuesday.

Left unsaid in the press release: the fact that APS parent, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., has now sunk $11 million in its bid to knock the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona initiative off the November ballot, according to the latest spending reports.

And that’s not counting what it must be costing APS to have a legion of high-priced lawyers sitting in a courtroom this week as the utility tries to convince a judge to toss out Proposition 127.

Or how much it plans to spend if the renewable energy mandate remains on the ballot.

It’s been fascinating to watch to lengths to which APS has gone to ensure that Arizonans don't get the chance to decide whether they want to mandate greater use of renewable energy — from alarming phone calls to voters to payoffs offered petition circulators who don’t turn in their petitions. From attempting end runs at the Legislature to subpoenaing nearly 1,000 petition circulators to court.

The clean-energy proposal – funded by Steyer’s NextGen America super PAC – would require most utilities to generate half of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The current requirement is 15 percent by 2025, lower than every state around us.

APS contends the initiative would launch utility bills into orbit and force closure of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Others say renewable-energy standards across the nation have had negligible effects on electric bills and that Palo Verde would be fine. So who’s right?

Tough to say at this point, though other electric utilities in the state also have predicted that utility bills will rise. And I do get suspicious any time something is proposed as an amendment to be enshrined into the state Constitution rather than simply as a state law.

Unfortunately for APS, its credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years. It’s widely believed the utility secretly funded a $3.2 million campaign in 2014 to get its favored candidates elected to the Corporation Commission that regulates utilities and that it poured $752,000 into a 2014 campaign to get the son of then-Corporation Commission Chairman Gary

Pierce elected secretary of state.

Since then, APS has thwarted efforts by Corporation Commissioner Bob Burns to find out whether Commissioners Tom Forese and Doug Little (who has since resigned to take a job in the Trump administration) were beholden state’s largest utility.

So when a monopoly utility – one that last year scored $488 million in profits – warns that the renewable energy initiative is a bad thing, I have to wonder.

Is APS talking about the state’s best interests or its own best interests?

Hopefully, it’ll become clearer during the campaign. If, in fact, APS fails in its to the desperate, multimillion-dollar attempt to shut down the campaign, that is.

One positive has arisen from Steyer’s proposal.

APS has invested so much money in killing Proposition 127 that it apparently has nothing left to get its favored regulators elected this year. In addition to that $3.2 million APS is suspected of covertly spending in 2014, the utility openly spent more than $4 million to get Commissioners Andy Tobin, Boyd Dunn and Burns elected in 2016.

If Tom Steyer has done nothing else for us, he has at least given us a chance thus far to elect a set of regulators without APS spending millions to ensure it continues to enjoy a friendly commission.

Thus far.