Texts show Andy Tobin is firmly in APS’ pocket
Pity poor Corporation Commissioner Andy Tobin.
He just can’t understand why so many people believe that he and some of his fellow regulators have Arizona Public Service Co. pocket lint in their hair.
Can’t understand why the commission is viewed as being oh-so-cozy with the utility it is supposed to regulate.
I know this because I was just reading some of Tobin’s text exchanges with APS lobbyists this year.
The ones in which he commiserates with the utility over its bad publicity.
The ones in which he seeks the utility’s approval for an energy proposal and, when it’s not forthcoming, promptly drops the idea.
The ones in which he goes out for drinks with the utility’s lobbyists — meetings that don’t show up on his public calendar — and seeks out their approval.
The 2018 text exchanges were published last week by the Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewable-energy watchdog group that obtained the exchanges via a public-records request.
Last month, the EPI disclosed that Commissioner Justin Olson read directly from an APS position paper while discussing energy policy during a May interview with a Wall Street analyst.
That was surprising (and disappointing) given that Olson, the state’s newest utility regulator, has demonstrated the potential to be an independent voice.
He has called for the commission to consider deregulation — the mere word gives APS hives — and has recommended that commissioners be barred from accepting campaign contributions or other gifts from utilities they regulate.
Tobin, meanwhile, is appearing more and more like your garden-variety APS pocket pet.
Tobin has texted APS three times this year to commiserate over negative media coverage of APS’ rate-hike requests — the $95 million request approved last year and the $67 million request now pending before him and the rest of the commission.
In September, during a three-day hearing on the latest request, Tobin contacted APS after hearing a media report that it was APS’ second ratehike request in a year.
“Is there a public information strategy planned??” Tobin asked APS lobbyist Amanda Ho.
One would think that a supposedly impartial regulator would be more concerned with whether a rate hike is justified than with whether APS is getting bad PR.
But then, it appears Tobin often is concerned with what APS execs think.
“Got lots of calls after my trip and
especially tonight’s Horizon,” Tobin texted to APS official Greg Bernosky in February. “Guess I called Palo Verde the ‘Diamond in the Desert’. Maybe that sticks.”
“I heard you did a great job but haven’t seen/isn’t on their site yet,” Bernosky replied. “I hope it does stick, great label you gave it. I’m gonna have our media folks track it down today. Wasn’t on their site. Good for you for doing the show.”
The texts lay out several times when Tobin met Bernosky or other APS executives for drinks — private tete-a-tetes that don’t appear on Tobin’s public calendar.
(Would be interesting to know who picked up the tab.)
They also detail Tobin’s efforts to get APS support for a proposal that APS and Tucson Electric Power be required to build renewable-energy plants on the Hopi or Navajo reservations.
“Why the tribal requirement? What is the angle there?” Bernosky asked.
“To show utilities have helped tribal economies,” Tobin replied. “Strictly public relations. That’s it. If. Your planning on building on the transmission lines. It could sell better and help get tribes on board. Rural piece.”
APS wasn’t buying it, and ultimately, the EPI reports that Tobin dropped it from his Energy Modernization Plan to generate more power from renewable sources.
Shocking, I know, to think that he would drop something that APS didn’t like.
APS, which spent $4.2 million to ensure that Tobin and fellow Commissioners Boyd Dunn and Bob Burns were elected in 2016. (This, to go along with the $3.2 million campaign the utility is widely believed to have secretly funded to help
2014.)
Tobin didn’t respond to a message from me about whether utility regulators should be playing digital footsie with those they regulate.
But clearly, he bristles at the idea that people might think our regulators are too cozy with those they regulate.
Consider his response to my Jan. 1 wish list, in which I expressed a hope that 2018 would bring us a set of utility regulators who might actually ask some questions before approving a $95 million rate increase that was supposed to raise the average residential APS bill by 4.5 percent.
A number of customers protested when their bills went up by more than double the advertised increase and have asked for a do-over on the rate case. It’ll ultimately be up to Tobin and his fellow commissioners whether that happens.
“What Arizona desperate needs, in 2018,” I wrote on Jan. 1, “is a set of utility regulators who aren’t bought and paid for by APS.”
Later that morning, a fuming Tobin texted Bernosky and provided a link to that column.
“Happy NY,” Tobin wrote. “Gets old (to) be accused of being bought and paid for. Sheesh.”
There is a way to stop that, Commissioner Tobin. two other commissioners in