by David Winstanley | Oct 3, 2025 | Opinion
By David Winstanley |
Sandra D. Kennedy, with help and funding from Soros and company, has made it clear that she will bring the Green New Deal to SRP whether customers care or not.
You remember Sandra Kennedy, right? Kennedy tried to pass a Green New Deal regulatory mandate while serving at the Corporation Commission, but it was thankfully defeated by the other Republican Commissioners in 2022. Now, we conservatives need to pay attention again because with the SRP Board elections coming in April, there is a push to flip the board by Sandra Kennedy and her supporters.
Currently, the SRP Board is nearly split between conservatives and Green New Dealers, but the left is pushing hard to flip board members at the SRP election in April. We can’t let that happen.
It is important to understand that SRP does NOT fall under Arizona Corporation Commission jurisdiction, the entity that regulates the other Arizona electric utilities. The Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District (the District) was officially organized in 1937, formalizing its dual role in managing water resources and providing electricity. This formation was driven by a need to expand the utility’s role in power generation to support the growing population and industries of central Arizona at that time. SRP was formed according to ARS Sec: 48-2301-48-2475, which permits self-governance by a board elected from its members and elections that are completely independent from the regular elections held by city, county, and state.
The next election of Board members (a complex process) will be held April 7, 2026, and all eligible SRP voters must be registered with SRP no later than March 9, 2026. This registration and voting is completely independent of Maricopa County and the Arizona Secretary of State. Maricopa County residents can register to vote here (though you may find that many of you will not be eligible to vote).
Another important point to explore is why all Maricopa County residents who receive electricity from SRP cannot have a vote in who decides on costs of decarbonization, new power plants, and rates to fund these. I have lived in Mesa and Gilbert for the past 45 years and owned 4 houses in that time, but I could only vote in SRP elections at one of the 4 houses, why?
The answer is because the SRP District voting boundaries have never changed since it was incorporated in 1937 even though SRP has expanded service well outside the district’s original boundaries (see here).
The result is that more than 250,000 Maricopa and Pinal County residents have no say in how SRP spends its earnings or sets rates for us customers. This wide swath of Maricopa citizens cannot vote in SRP District elections, and that is just patently unfair!
It is well past time for SRP and the Arizona Legislature to update SRP Governance to include all ratepayers—or give the Corporation Commission the authority to regulate SRP. In the meantime, please do something NOW. Register to vote if you are eligible, and TALK to everyone you know about voting!
David Winstanley is a retired Director of Engineering at Honeywell Aerospace, former Chair of LD15 Republicans, and a conservative activist for local issues in the East Valley.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Sep 10, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
It was Biden’s biggest “accomplishment.” The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he later admitted had nothing to do with inflation (it actually did, just not in the direction the name suggested) but was really about dumping billions (really trillions) into subsidizing the green new scam. It was the biggest acceleration towards the “Net Zero” climate scam resulting in utilities across the country, especially here in Arizona, spamming the grid with unreliable energy generation such as solar, wind, and battery storage, driving up rates for utility customers while shattering reliability.
And President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would terminate it on day one, instead committing to unleash American energy dominance, “drill, baby, drill”, and slash harmful regulations standing in the way of building affordable baseload generation. The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” was the avenue to do the first.
What finally made it through Congress and was signed into law on July 4th terminated tax credits for electric vehicles, “energy efficient” home improvements, and residential solar this year. As for the much larger credits, those subsidizing grid scale solar and wind farms, it’s much more complicated.
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Aug 20, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
In 2020, Arizona’s largest monopoly utility announced a voluntary commitment to one of the most extreme clean energy goals in the world: to go 100% carbon free by 2050. Five years later, they’re rolling that commitment back. Sort of.
When they first announced their original Clean Energy Commitment in 2020, APS boasted about their plans to decarbonize. According to their own release, they weren’t doing what they described as the “easy thing” other utilities were doing–developing resource plans that still allow you to produce some carbon emissions, so long as you offset them elsewhere. No, they were committing to go “carbon free,” which means shutting down every single source of baseload power beside nuclear and replacing it entirely with solar, wind, and battery storage.
But late last week, APS announced a modification to their climate commitment. Instead of going carbon free, APS is switching to carbon neutral by 2050.
How is the new commitment different than the old one? For ratepayers worried about skyrocketing utility bills, it doesn’t change much…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Aug 15, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Since taking office in January, President Trump has worked hard to restore sanity in America. While the wins have been stacking up in many areas, perhaps his administration’s most notable efforts have been in its pushback against the junk science driving the climate agenda.
Along with executive orders in January and April to unleash American energy, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would be reversing a Biden administration regulation that held Arizona accountable for the eighty percent of emissions in the Maricopa County nonattainment area that emanated from outside of the state—primarily from China and Mexico.
While all that is good news, the Trump administration delivered quite possibly the best news yet for American energy last month when the EPA released its plan on rescinding the Endangerment Finding. And it has the climate cult drowning in their tears.
What is the Endangerment Finding?
Back in 2009, the Obama administration declared carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant that threatens public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act. Of course, this ignored the fact that CO2 is one of the most important ingredients for building and sustaining life on Earth. But the Obama administration was never known for exercising commonsense, so it gave birth to this controversial policy by relying on cherry-picked scientific data to justify a vast expansion of regulatory power at the EPA.
Since its inception, the Endangerment Finding has been used as the basis for many of the green scam regulations impacting Arizona’s economy. During both the Obama administration and the Biden administration, the EPA passed new regulations on vehicles, factories, power plants, and other mobile sources all based on the alleged dangers of CO2. These mandates have cost the U.S. economy over a trillion dollars, and here in Arizona, they have been responsible for higher energy prices and higher utility bills.
But if the climate cult gets its way, it wouldn’t stop there…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jul 16, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Attorney General Kris Mayes has long fancied herself as a champion for ratepayers. After another round of rate hikes rolled in at the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), this time a proposed 14% increase by both APS and TEP, AG Mayes fired off a press release announcing that she will “vigorously oppose” these requests as “Arizona residents struggle to keep up with ever-increasing electricity bills.”
Setting aside the fact that the AG has little purview over ACC affairs, Mayes seems to think that her own time serving on the Commission back in the 2000s makes her uniquely qualified to stop what seems like an endless barrage of double-digit rate hikes by our public utilities. Unfortunately for ratepayers, having Kris Mayes involved will only pour fuel on the Net Zero fire currently raging at the Corporation Commission.
You see, Kris Mayes is the one that laid the foundation for the Green Scam rate hikes Arizonans are suffering through today. In fact, the biggest irony about having Kris Mayes jump into the rate hike fray is that it highlights the dangerous parallels between the Commission she served on in 2006 and the one that we have today…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
