MAGA-Only AZ Corporation Commission is Found Corrupt and Lawless in The AZ Court of Appeals

Our pugnacious and fearless (and former AZ Corporation Commissioner) Attorney General, Kris Mayes, just spanked the purely Republican-only AZCC in court for failing to do their duty under the Arizona Constitution, flouting the law, giving an outright gift to Arizona’s Arizona Public Service monopoly, and failing to understand, or willfully ignoring, the most basic concepts of evidence and burden of proof.

AG Mayes released this statement [emphases added]:

Attorney General Mayes today announced that the Arizona Court of Appeals has vacated the Arizona Corporation Commission’s decision authorizing Arizona Public Service Company (APS) to impose a special surcharge on residential customers with rooftop solar, ruling that the charge was adopted without proper notice and that a later rehearing failed to cure the violation.
 
“APS customers with solar panels were blindsided by a rate hike that the public was never told about,” said Attorney General Kris Mayes. “The ACC cannot spring a new charge on ratepayers and then call it fair just because they later offer a rushed do-over. My office will keep fighting for the notice and fair hearing the Constitution guarantees utility customers.”
 
The charge was never proposed by APS or disclosed in the public notice of APS’s 2022 rate case, yet was approved anyway. The Court held the Commission’s subsequent rehearing didn’t fix that problem because the presiding judge cut off the State’s expert witness, a key APS witness was unavailable for cross-examination, and the Commission discouraged parties from presenting relevant evidence by declaring in advance — including in public remarks by then-Chairman Jim O’Connor — that the underlying cost of service study was already final.
 
The Court also held the Commission wrongly placed the burden on the State and its co-challengers to disprove the charge, when the law required APS to prove that substantial evidence supports the charge.
 
The Court vacated the Commission’s December 2024 Rehearing Decision and the underlying charges, and remanded to the Commission for further proceedings.
 
A copy of the ruling is available here.

So, Commissioner Thompson is corruptly violating any notion of a conflict of interest and proper recusal, and then-Chairman O’Connor (now relaced by the even more MAGA Chair Meyers) admitted to corruptly lying in order gift APS with ratepayer money.

These are just two of the urgent and very dire reasons Arizona Democratic voters MUST vote their ballot on AZCC line this cycle. Last year, if only those Democrats who voted for VP Harris for President had continued down the ballot and voted for our three Democratic candidates, Hill, Polacheck, and Aguilar, we would have won all three of the seats handily. There is currently no one on the Commission to keep this corrupt and conflicted cabal of con-men in check. It falls to our AG Mayes to do so!

We need honest and smart, well-qualified and prepared Democrats, Jonathan Hill and Clara Pratte, at the table to ensure that cases are properly presented, investigated, and fairly and impartially heard by the Commission. We can’t trust these incumbent MAGA tools of the fossil fuel industry to not give corrupt deals to power companies at the expense of Arizona ratepayers. Spend a few minutes with our Democratic candidates and you will be suitably impressed by them both; See Jon’s (coming shortly!) and Clara’s TheDGT.org Show appearances.