On May 18, I stood outside the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) with small business owners, parents, faith leaders, veterans and everyday Arizonans who had one unified message for our state’s utility regulators: Enough. Only a single speaker that day supported Arizona Public Service’s (APS) proposed rate hike, a hike that could raise electricity bills by[...]

You’d be hard-pressed to find a political race with a more clear, direct impact on Arizonans’ finances than the Arizona Corporation Commission — yet most residents don’t seem to have any clue about it. It all starts with the name. “It’s not necessarily very clear what the Corporation Commission does,” Clara Pratte, a Democrat running[...]

“No rate hikes! No rate hikes! No rate hikes!” Before packing two Arizona Corporation Commission hearing rooms for nearly four hours of public testimony, local advocacy groups and utility ratepayers gathered outside of the commission’s downtown Phoenix building on May 18 to protest Arizona Public Service’s proposed 14% rate increase. APS is the state’s largest electricity[...]

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes spoke to around 200 APS customers Tuesday night at a town hall in north Phoenix centered around the proposed APS utility rate increase. The proposed rate would increase APS total revenue by nearly $580 million or 14% overall. Under the new rate structure, homeowners could pay 16% more, depending on[...]

In Arizona, one of the nation’s data center capitals, neighborhoods have started pushing back against data center projects to little avail. Why it matters: Neighbors say the giant technology centers diminish their quality of life and waste their water, but they face an army of lawyers and lobbyists working to push the projects through anyway.[...]