By Daniel Stefanski |

A coalition of Arizona’s Corporation Commissioners have reached out to the state’s governor over concerns of rising prices for a subset of constituents.

Last month, four state commissioners wrote a letter to Governor Katie Hobbs to ask her to address the overwhelming price increases for electricity customers of the San Carlos Irrigation Project (SCIP). The signatories to the letter were Kevin Thompson, Lea Marquez Peterson, Nick Myers, and Jim O’Connor – all Republicans. Commissioner Anna Tovar, the lone Democrat on the panel, did not add her name to the letter.

The commissioners asserted that the change in costs was “purportedly related to the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs’ application of new purchased Power Cost Adjustment agreements which soared to $0.056 per kilowatt hour,” adding that “neither the Arizona Corporation Commission nor the State of Arizona has any regulatory authority over SCIP.” These added costs – on top of the customers’ electric power rates – has more than doubled the payments for many within this jurisdiction.

The lack of state jurisdiction in this matter means that the federal government would need to come to the table to resolve the crisis at hand – something that the commissioners asked Hobbs to facilitate. According to the commissioners, former Congressman Jim Kolbe had attempted to take care of this issue in the early nineties, when he introduced the San Carlos Indian Irrigation Project Divestiture Act to “complete divestiture and free SCIP customers from federal authorities.” Though this legislation passed the U.S. House and Senate and was signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush, the policies apparently “never manifested into reality,” leading to this current unraveling of financial security and stability for these ratepayers.

In an exclusive statement to AZ Free News, Commissioner Kevin Thompson, who led the letter to the governor, said, “SCIP ratepayers are facing a terrible situation that is going to require officials at every level of government to work together like adults and find a solution for Arizonans that have been abandoned by the federal government.”

Thompson added, “Access to affordable electricity in a state like Arizona is a matter of life or death for too many and shouldn’t be a partisan issue. While the Commission has no authority over SCIP, I feel it is important to urge our leaders to explore meaningful solutions and act. These four Commissioners are willing to do whatever we can in our individual capacities to encourage our delegation and state government to put aside partisanship and get the federal government out of the business that private enterprise should be providing.”

The commissioners, in their communication to Hobbs, shared several potential solutions to the matter, which include exploring “divestiture of SCIP with the end goal of transferring generation, transmission, and customer responsibility to regulated Arizona utilities,” requesting “federal funds to provide necessary maintenance and improvements to the SCIP grid,” and researching “financial protections that can be provided to SCIP customers to increase the safety net and protect vulnerable ratepayers.”

They ended their letter with a plea for the governor and her team to do everything in their delegated authority to assist the afflicted Arizonans, saying, “It should be acknowledged that we recognize the vast majority of potential long-term solutions are outside of your control and authority as governor. However, like us, we know you are looking for meaningful solutions, and we would appreciate your willingness to advocate for Arizona ratepayers.”

This situation affecting SCIP customers has also attracted the attention of Senate Pro Tempore T.J. Shope, who issued a press release on October 23 to announce his “extreme frustration” with Hobbs’ “lack of care, concern, and action with skyrocketing power bills detrimentally impacting residents living in the SCIP.” Shope was less diplomatic in his statement than the commissioners were in their letter, writing that “Governor Hobbs is displaying she’s nothing more than an accomplice in Biden’s scheme to impose a radical energy agenda with attainable environmental goals, all for political gain, by ignoring the financial pain our citizens are experiencing.”

Before Shope went public with his comments about Hobbs’ handling of this situation, he led an October 3 letter to the governor, along with Senate Majority Whip Sine Kerr, House Majority Whip Teresa Martinez, and House Energy Committee Chair Gail Griffin, asking the state’s chief executive to “find a way to provide relief for the negatively impacted residents of the SCIP and push back against the Biden-Harris Administration on behalf of the ratepaying citizens of our state held hostage to the federal government.” The legislators’ letter echoed some of the sentiments from the commissioners’ letter, including the fact that “the legislature and Corporation Commission do not have the authority to remedy this crisis for residents because SCIP is a rare utility wholly managed by the federal government.”

As of October 23, Shope and his signatories had not heard back from the Governor’s Office about their letter. This lack of response by Hobbs led the Senator to believe that she was complicit “with Biden’s radical environmental agenda jeopardizing the financial security of Arizonans.”

Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.