It is a common cliché to say that social media and the deluge of content we consume each day have significantly hampered, if not entirely destroyed, our attention spans. Sometimes it seems like memory itself may be a vestige of a bygone era, when we connected current events to past decisions and, almost like magic, learned to take different actions.
Current high energy prices are blamed on the war in Iran, which started seven months ago. While true, not all cost increases are the result of this relatively new market dynamic.
Numerous federal and state policy and regulatory choices made over more than a decade have played their own roles in current and past pain at the pump.
As recently as 2024, energy was rarely spoken of without its companion “sustainability,” by which advocates meant “transitioning” away from reliable fossil fuels to more intermittent sources (though this last part was not said out loud).
Actions matched that rhetoric. On day one in office, President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project and was applauded for it. If he had not canceled it, more crude oil would have been brought to U.S. refineries, boosting fuel supplies and supporting lower prices. The Biden administration was overtly hostile to increased fossil fuel exploration and production, taking aggressive actions to strictly limit emissions from fossil fuel-powered electric generation plants, which would have led to numerous baseload plant closures for noncompliance.
Let’s not forget the 2024 LNG [liquified natural gas] export pause, where then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that LNG was in the “rear-view mirror,” at CERAWeek, one of the world’s largest energy events. At a time when U.S. LNG companies were stepping in to fill the supply gap following Europe’s divorce settlement from Russian gas, our policymakers decided to hit the brakes.
Then there is the matter of the small refinery exemption (SRE) to the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal requirement that fuel sold in the United States contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Enacted in 2005, this policy has incentivized numerous refineries to keep production below 75,000 barrels per day so they do not have to comply with onerous renewable fuel blending requirements. But good intentions do not make good policy. The program has been mired in overly bureaucratic administration and compliance nightmares, all the while keeping production at SRE-eligible refineries depressed.
There are also a host of state policy actions specifically designed to raise energy prices.
Cap-and-trade programs, which some states have adopted, put a price on emissions which increases fuel costs through refineries having to pay fees for producing gasoline and diesel. Likewise, low-carbon fuel standards, which also exist in a handful of states, add compliance costs and reduce refinery input flexibility, both of which increase your price at the pump.
State anti-energy price actions go beyond just costly emissions schemes and fuel blends. Led by California and New York, a handful of states have banned fracking or strictly curtailed oil and gas exploration, and across the Northeast, states have fought tooth and nail to block pipelines that bring crude oil and refined products to market.
The elected officials who run these states failed to investigate the real-world confluence of the results of these policies for energy availability and prices. They were focused on pursuing at any cost net zero, sustainability, ESG and “renewable” intermittent sources of energy.
Now they’re all preaching the gospel of energy affordability as if it can just be plucked out of thin air when needed.
Residents of states like California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Maryland and a few others are currently living with the natural result of decades of anti-fossil fuel policy agendas. But that’s not convenient to discuss.
Rather, amid price increases, those looking for a short-term political fix are, predictably, dusting off the usual playbook: export bans and additional taxes on companies for making a profit while serving market demands. And while those things may be tempting, especially with voters heading to the polls in a few weeks, we know, from memory, that they will have the opposite of their intended effect.
Instead, our leaders at both the state and federal levels should take a real, objective look at the energy policies on the books and ones under consideration and assess them through a simple lens: will this actually make energy more abundant and, therefore, more affordable?
It doesn’t take an expert to know which path to choose.
If memory serves, we’ve done it before. Hopefully, we can do it again.
Tala Goudarzi is a contributor to the Daily Caller News Foundation, partner at the Torridon Group, and the former Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fossil Energy (FE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother needed telescreens, microphones, and cameras to watch citizens, extinguish the idea of a private life, and to tightly control their “decisions”.
Today, technology makes that job considerably easier. And some policies kick the door wide open to this kind of government invasion of privacy and manipulation.
Programs to tax, track, and limit citizens’ vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are exactly that kind of threat, and many states are experimenting with them to their own detriment. California, as per usual, is the cautionary tale to our West, perfectly demonstrating the extreme costs and loss of freedom that could come with importing these VMT ideas into Arizona.
Arizonans have a chance to stop this kind of government overreach before it takes hold here…
Thirteen states from Vermont to Hawaii have written a hard deadline into law: 100 percent carbon-free (CO2-free) or “clean” electricity, most by 2040 or 2045. Lawmakers sold these mandates as a bargain: cheaper power alongside cleaner air. Voters in those states are struggling with ever-increasing electricity bills. Which are increasing faster than non-mandate states.
The metric politicians lean on to make that case is the “levelized cost of energy” (LCOE), which ranks wind and solar as the cheapest sources of generation on the grid. The U.S. Energy Information Administration itself cautions that the ranking is misleading because LCOE reflects the cost to build and run a single generator. It says nothing about whether that generator can deliver power at 6 p.m. on a windless February evening, exactly when a grid needs it most.
Energy analysts, Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, answer the question EIA’s own number dodges. Their “Always On Levelized Cost of Energy” (AOLOC) model adds back everything a bare LCOE figure leaves out: backup generation, transmission, overbuilt capacity and the power curtailed to keep intermittent resources reliable.
Run through Minnesota’s grid, the model puts wind’s real cost at roughly $272 per megawatt-hour and solar’s at $472. Treat those as modeled estimates, not quoted market prices, but they are the most honest attempt anyone has made to price what these mandates actually cost.
Set those figures next to new natural gas plants, a resource that needs no matching backup fleet and can be built wherever demand is, saving transmission buildout, rather than wherever the wind happens to blow, which needs vast amounts of expensive transmission.
Twelve more states carry the same 100 percent commitment on their books. Together, representing more than a quarter of the nation’s electricity use, they all lean on the same LCOE sales pitch that Minnesota did.
A nationwide review of utility rate filings by Orr and Rolling already shows the pattern in the data: states with these mandates sought rate increases 32 percent larger than states without them from 2020 through 2025, with prices climbing at nearly double the pace of non-mandate states, despite slower population growth.
Reliability is eroding on the same timeline. MISO, the grid operator serving Minnesota and fourteen other states, already counts wind and solar for only a small fraction of their rated capacity during the hours the system is under the most strain when it is very hot or cold, because they cannot be counted on to deliver when needed.
That is not a regional quirk. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s latest long-term outlook puts 13 of the 23 grid regions it tracks nationwide, including MISO, PJM, ERCOT, and much of the West, at elevated or high risk of a shortfall within five years, as retiring plants outpace the firm generation meant to replace them.
Wind and solar cannot fill that gap on command, and NERC warns the shortfall will force emergency responses, such as rolling blackouts, and no governor wants to explain that to constituents.
None of this argues against cleaner electricity. It argues against buying it blind. Before a state locks in a mandate and before a utility retires one more dispatchable plant, regulators should require a single disclosure: the full cost of the replacement power, including backup, transmission, storage, subsidies, and curtailment, not just the price of the generation.
Voters were promised a bargain. They are learning that this was a false promise. Electricity is far too important to ignore facts and charge ahead with ideology-driven, expensive, often dangerous net-zero mandates.
Over the last four years Governor Katie Hobbs, the teachers’ unions, and their allies in the corporate media have been relentlessly attacking Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) program, the most popular and successful school choice program in the country. Over 106,000 kids are currently using an ESA scholarship, with thousands more signing up each year.
Their most recent assault began last March, when the unions filed their ballot initiative in an attempt to gut ESAs. If passed, over 30,000 kids would have immediately lost their ESA scholarship or had their scholarship funds revoked because of the new restrictions. Another 400,000 children would have been permanently barred from participation in the program. The National Education Association (NEA) poured $7 million into this fight, hiring an army of paid circulators that were willing to say, and sometimes do, just about anything for a paycheck.
Interestingly, there were two different responses to this most recent threat. The response from most of Arizona’s school choice organizations and ESA families was a full-throated defense of the program. Within days, the AZ school choice coalition launched a countercampaign and made clear that ESAs would not go undefended. They fundraised, developed messaging, deployed grassroots “decline to sign” efforts, and crafted legislative countermeasures to put the unions on their heels.
And after the initiative was filed with the Secretary of State in July, a petition review was launched by the Goldwater Institute, which our organization helped support. That petition review revealed that thousands of signatures were either invalid or unlawfully collected by convicted felons. The result was that we proved in court that the NEA and Save our Schools was short of qualifying by nearly 15,000 signatures, and we knocked them off the ballot.
It was a pivotal victory in a long line of big wins for school choice in Arizona.
However, during this battle against the radical left, an alternative response to this attack emerged from the shadows: a belief that the only way to save the ESA program was to enact punitive regulations on the families that use the program. Rather than fighting back against the false attacks being levied against ESAs by the unions and the media, they preferred to make concessions that would make the program politically “attack-proof” in the future.
Sadly, this strategy has been tried in the past when dealing with the unions, and it almost resulted in irreversible disaster for our state.
Conceding the Issue to the Left Is the Quickest Way to Defeat
Our organization has seen this coordinated attack from the left before. Different issues, different talking points, but the same trajectory that involves goading us into accepting the other side’s terms of surrender…
Over the past few years, a government pay-to-play scandal has been brewing in Arizona that rivals the malfeasance we have come to expect from American bastions of improprieties like New York, Illinois, and California.
A couple of years ago, the state’s paper of record, The Arizona Republic, exposed a troubling relationship between Governor Katie Hobbs and Sunshine Residential Homes, LLC. The reporting revealed a suspicious link between political donations benefiting Hobbs’ inaugural fund and the Arizona Democratic Party and government-approved rate increases for Sunshine—at a time when similar increases were not being granted to other providers.
The revelation of a possible pay-to-play scandal at the highest levels of Arizona government sent shockwaves across the state and launched a quest for answers.
Thanks in large part to media reporting, we now know that more than $580,000 in political contributions from Sunshine Residential Homes and individuals connected to the company benefited Katie Hobbs and Democratic organizations. Then, the Hobbs administration approved rate increases that made Sunshine Arizona’s highest-paid group home provider per child. Internal messages uncovered over the past two years referenced Sunshine’s political connections and even discussed keeping its special arrangement quiet from competitors.
If that body of evidence doesn’t set off alarm bells, what will?
Following these revelations, three state and local officials sprang into action to investigate the allegations: Arizona’s Attorney General, the Auditor General, and the Maricopa County Attorney. Given the gravity of the allegations against Hobbs, each had a legitimate role to play.
But one of them—Attorney General Kris Mayes—publicly attempted to commandeer the investigation into her political ally, warning the other two against interference. Thankfully, the Auditor General and Maricopa County Attorney rejected this politically motivated power grab and continued exercising their lawful authority.
For more than a year, there was almost complete silence surrounding Mayes’ investigation, raising serious questions about her resolve to follow the facts wherever they might lead. Near the end of the investigation, we also learned that Hobbs had refused to sit down for an interview with investigators from the Attorney General’s Office.
Then, after two years—and conveniently just months before an election—Mayes cleared her fellow Democrat of wrongdoing, despite finding fault with numerous actions by the Hobbs administration.
In releasing her findings, Mayes suddenly announced a desire for reform. Even amid a matter as serious as this pay-to-play scandal, I had to laugh at the change of heart and sanctimonious posturing.
Over the past two legislative sessions, I introduced pay-to-play reforms designed not only to address concerns raised by the Hobbs administration’s conduct, but also to prevent future statewide officials from being tempted to travel down the same path. Hobbs vetoed both bills. Mayes stayed silent each time.
When Mayes had an opportunity to support meaningful reform, she said nothing.
That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice—and it helped set the stage for what has become a cover-up between Hobbs and Mayes.
As public servants, we have a responsibility to demand transparency and accountability from government. That obligation was not met by Hobbs, and it certainly was not met by Mayes’ sham report.
That’s why it’s time to shine some good old-fashioned sunlight on the Sunshine investigation.
Mayes must release the complete investigative file, including the evidence collected, relevant communications, interview and deposition transcripts, and the full rationale behind the decision not to prosecute. Arizonans deserve the opportunity to examine the facts for themselves. The other investigations with the Auditor General and Maricopa County Attorney remain open, and these must be allowed to continue without interference.
Transparency should not depend on political party. Accountability should not disappear when the person under investigation is a political ally. And reform should not suddenly become important only when an election is approaching.
Arizonans can rest assured that I will re-introduce these reforms again in the next legislative session—and I call on Attorney General Mayes to publicly support the policies ahead of time and work with me to ensure that these bills become law.
If she refuses, Arizonans will have every reason to conclude that this newfound concern for accountability was never really about reform.
It was election-year cover that would make New York, Illinois, and California mafia-style government officials proud.
T.J. Shope is the Arizona Senate President Pro Tempore and represents Legislative District 16.
After investigating an Open Meeting Law (OML) complaint against the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD), the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) determined that Dr. Menzel and the SUSD Governing Board once again violated the rights of SUSD parents and the public. They were denied the opportunity to attend Phase II Design Team meetings and hear deliberations as the team developed recommendations on school closures and boundary changes for the Governing Board.
SUSD parents should be outraged that the Governing Board and Dr. Menzel denied them rights guaranteed by law while considering such impactful decision as closing schools.
And by “Governing Board,” I mean Members Pittinsky, Sharkey, and Lewis. All three are union-backed Menzel supporters who consistently vote for his proposals, excuse the failures and consequences of his policies, and reward him with contract extensions and pay raises.
A.R.S. § 38-431.01(A), commonly known as the Open Meeting Law, states:
“A. All meetings of any public body shall be public meetings and all persons so desiring shall be allowed to attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings.”
In its September 16 letter to the District, the MCAO stated:
“SUSD has already been warned by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office that the Open Meeting Law does not permit a governing board to evade the public meeting requirements by ‘informally’ forming or establishing, or by directing a superintendent to establish, a committee to perform work that would otherwise need to be conducted in public.”
Despite the Attorney General’s warning two years earlier, Dr. Menzel and the Governing Board disregarded it and again violated the public’s rights.
Any legal violation by SUSD is serious, but this one is especially egregious because it concerns perhaps the most consequential decision of Menzel’s tenure: school closures.
At the September 22 public hearing, parents described the profound effects the closures would have on their children and families.
Yet SUSD denied them the legal right to attend the meetings, hear the deliberations, and participate in the process. Had parents been allowed to attend, they could have raised questions and concerns for the board to address as the work proceeded.
The MCAO also stated in its letter:
“It is also advisable that the Governing Board acknowledge this investigation at the next public meeting and take steps to assure the constituents of SUSD that the intent of forming the Phase II Team was not to bar the public from the policy creating process.”
At what was the next meeting, held September 22, I was the only person to mention the OML violation. When I used that phrase, Dr. Lewis immediately interrupted and asked SUSD’s general counsel to stop the discussion, which she did. You can hear the exchange right here.
I understand why the Governing Board might hesitate to admit what it had done or try to assure parents that it never intended to exclude them and deny their rights.
At a December 2025 board meeting, the Board openly discussed how complying with the law, (i.e. posting an agenda in advance, keeping minutes, allowing public attendance, and enabling people to hear deliberations) would slow down the process, even if it was an acceptable alternative. Listen to the discussion here.
SUSD deserves a Governing Board that respects parents’ rights and will not sacrifice them for “flexibility and expediency” merely to allow the superintendent to be more “nimble.”
SUSD deserves a Governing Board that does not view a committee meeting behind closed doors as “much more interactive” than an open meeting where anyone who wishes to attend and listen to the deliberations can do so.
SUSD deserves a Governing Board that sees legal compliance not as a problem to solve, but as an opportunity to demonstrate they truly believe in the values of integrity, honesty, transparency, accountability, openness, and authenticity that SUSD espouses.
This is the kind of Governing Board SUSD parents should demand.
Unless the Governing Board fully understands and addresses the causes of SUSD’s declining enrollment and evaluates every viable option, it is unlikely to solve the problem. Closing schools under an ill-conceived plan, railroaded through behind closed doors, that fails to assess the full financial impact of the plan is irresponsible and will merely carry the district’s financial problems into the next budget cycle.
Parents, even if your child does not attend a school affected by this pending decision, do not assume you have nothing to fear. Menzel and his supporters on current and previous Governing Boards have repeatedly shown little regard for your rights. Without meaningful consequences, they will continue to ignore adverse legal findings and warnings and violate parents’ rights with impunity.
This Governing Board has failed the SUSD parents, and they must be held accountable.
Parents, will your school be next and your rights denied?
Attend the October 6 board meeting, voice your outrage, and urge the Governing Board to halt the school-closure process. Demand that it start over with a comprehensive plan that considers every option to deal with the declining enrollment.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
