After Years Of Silence, AZ's Biggest Utility Acknowledges Spending Millions To Fight Rooftop Solar
Facing what it saw as a threat to its monopoly from a surging rooftop solar industry, Arizona's largest utility secretly funneled millions of dollars to back favored candidates for the state commission regulating it.
Arizona Public Service Co. recently acknowledged it gave money to groups that spent $3.2 million in the 2014 Arizona Corporation Commission races. The disclosure in filings with the commission came after the utility refused for the past four years to confirm or deny its participation in the election despite broad suspicion that it did.
The spending raises questions about whether a regulated monopoly such as APS should be allowed to contribute money to political causes that could adversely affect customers, and whether it should be permitted to keep such spending secret. "They are still taking ratepayer money and using it against the ratepayers to jack up their rates," said Tom Ryan, an attorney in metro Phoenix who has been a critic of some commission members.
The 2014 move by APS and its owner, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., was a break from a decades-long practice by the state's utilities of not meddling in political races involving their regulators. The utility spent on elections again in 2016 and 2018 but publicly disclosed it. The shift led to years of negative press, along with an FBI investigation that continues to this day.
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http://www.startribune.com/arizona-utility-finally-comes-clean-about-political-spending/509097912/
= new reply since forum marked as read
unwillingness or lack of ability to move past Piaget’s early elementary cognitive development stage of concreteness - what I see and hear is an absolutely accurate way of understanding the world and I don’t see anything changing.
