It’s a choice: pay your utility bill or eat. [Narrator] In the face of record heat, Americans are cornered. Nearly a third of American families were unable to pay their energy bills for at least a month last year.
[Resident] My utility bills are double what they were a few years ago. We have 120 degree weather here, so we don't have a choice to turn off our air conditioner. [Narrator] In states like Arizona, that puts lives on the line.
[Newscaster] The big headline has been the heat, and it's been that way for a long, long time. 100 consecutive days at 100 or higher. We're breaking records it seems like almost every single day.
Ugh. We can't catch a break. In Arizona, it's a life and death situation.
People die in their homes if they don't have air conditioning. [Narrator] But energy bills aren't just going up because of high temperatures. [Resident] They've approved rate hike over rate hike, rubber-stamping it through for corporate greed.
It really shows us who has the Arizona Corporation Commission's ear. They're listening to Wall Street investors. [Narrator] Here's the thing: every state has a group of officials tasked with keeping utility companies in check and rates affordable.
In Arizona, they have failed to do so. To find out what's happened, we spoke to people across the state. What we discovered are regulators siding with power companies and big banks at the expense of everyone else.
[Newscaster] Commissioners personally meeting with investment firms that profit off of utilities. [Narrator] But we also found a chance for change on Election Day this November — The group of elected officials who decide your electricity rates faces the potential for a major overhaul this election season. [Narrator] — in one of the most important races that you've probably never heard about, a race that has implications far beyond Arizona.
[Resident] How many do we have in this stack right here? Uh, that’s. .
. . .
. That stack is 4,318. Hello, I'm Nanci Dickey.
And I'm Ruby Pippin. And we’re partners like nobody's business. Nanci and Ruby are retired, and live in western Arizona, where the power company is called UniSource Energy.
At the start of the year, UniSource raised its rate. I had got my power bill and it was triple, and I thought I had dementia. And at that same moment, somebody told me about a lady named Nanci that was doing a petition at the library for our power bills.
I could see that this was devastating to people. Everybody needs to go to the food bank just about, because there's no way any of us can afford the power bill that's hit us. [Newscaster] The price of power.
It’s becoming a big concern for some people in western Arizona, regarding a recent rate hike from the utility company UniSource. The company tells me that they were approved for a roughly 12 percent rate hike by the Arizona Corporation Commission. [Narrator] Like all rate increases, the hike to their electric bill was approved by Arizona’s utility regulator — the five person elected body called the Arizona Corporation Commission, or the ACC.
There's only five people on the Corporation Commission. But you do everything by majority vote, so three people in the state of Arizona basically set your electric bill and set all energy policy for the state. [Ruby] They approved of the $11 to $14 raise, - And they.
. . - A month!
A month! We just want someone to step up to us citizens and help us out. [Nanci] The root problem is with the ACC.
[Narrator] After years of an ACC divided between Republicans and Democrats, in 2022, Republicans won a supermajority. The standing commission has a 4 to 1 Republican majority. Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson — We are your Republican team for the Arizona Corporation Commission.
[Keriann] — were both elected to the commission two years ago. And that's where we've seen this rapid change in decision-making. [Narrator] Just in the last two years, there have been six requests from electric and gas utilities for rate hikes.
The commission has voted to approve all six. [Newscaster] A 12News analysis of major votes involving those utilities in 2023 shows a really clear pattern. The elected Corporation Commission overwhelmingly sided with utility companies, and in every case did not vote for the position taken by a state consumer advocate agency.
Arizona regulators approved a plan to give the state's largest utility bigger profits. [Newscaster] Get ready for a higher electric bill. More than a million customers will be impacted by this increased rate.
[Narrator] All of these companies whose rate hikes were blessed by the ACC are making record profits. And if you read the ACC's most recent annual report, you'll notice something strange. The Republican commissioners tout, above all, their efforts to In other words, they're focused on what Wall Street wants.
[Newscaster] Shortly after being sworn into the office, Corporation Commissioner Kevin Thompson flew to New York. On January 21st, Thompson posted on social media, “I spent two days this past week in New York meeting with financial institutions that invest in Arizona's utilities. My purpose was to let them know that Arizona is a great place in which to invest.
” [Keriann] Wall Street investors’ motivations are really pretty simple. [Newscaster] The more money APS makes, the more those Wall Street bankers make. They want to see rate increases because they want to see profit increases.
Public records show that in a memo from Credit Suisse, after this financial community visit, they essentially said, we're very comfortable with the regulatory environment in Arizona. [Autumn] The regulator’s primary responsibility should be to the public interest. I think that the job of the regulators is to keep monopoly utilities in check, so that we have affordable rates, and the lights stay on, and we are living in reality about the transition to clean energy.
Well it’s wrap for the effort to create clean energy rules for Arizona utilities. The Arizona Corporation Commission shot down a proposal to give utilities a deadline to be carbon free. [Narrator] Over the last two years, the ACC eliminated Arizona's rules for renewable energy and for energy efficiency.
It seemed a lot of people were on board with this plan, except for the three commissioners needed to make it a reality. [Narrator] That makes Arizona the only state to get rid of a renewable energy standard. Not only that, the ACC actually added new fees that penalize solar users.
[Newscaster] It was a big surprise to learn he now has to pay an extra fee just because he has solar. This corporation commission voted to totally kill community solar. [Narrator] Commissioner Thompson worked for Arizona's largest gas company for 16 years.
And the ACC's Republican chairman hired a longtime coal industry executive as his senior policy adviser, who happens to be Thompson's sister. [Autumn] There is very much a preference at the sitting Corporation Commission for continued reliance on fossil fuels. [Narrator] Solar power is now cheaper to produce than coal or gas power.
But lower costs are not necessarily what utility companies are after. [Autumn] Investor-owned utilities make money by. .
. They build stuff, and then they get a guaranteed rate of return on the things that they build, and then they pass that expense on to ratepayers. They don't make money when you pay for a solar system and put it on your roof yourself, and then sell them some of the power.
The problem with the utility business model is that it disincentivizes the utility from approaching innovative options that don't require them to build massive power plants. [Nanci] One of the board members on UniSource, last year she made $1. 9 million for that one year.
Where's that money coming from? Us! This rate increase has impacted the people, seniors, and families in Lake Havasu City, Kingman, and Tucson.
[Narrator] Nanci and Ruby wrote a petition asking the ACC to reverse the rate hike it granted to their power company. [Ruby] We are being forced to decide on paying huge utility bills or buying groceries. - Hi.
- Hey, hey, hey. Are you from here in Lake Havasu? We're trying to get it to all of Lake Havasu to sign this petition.
Are you guys from Lake Havasu City? Have all of you signed the petition here? Each and every one of us get ahold of everyone we know that hasn't signed this and have them sign it.
Everybody wants to know what's going on, and now the leaders are getting nervous, and they need to change these rules. This won't work unless you guys all are part of it. [Narrator] In just a month, they've collected over 12,000 signatures.
[Ruby] These ACCs. . .
You know what? They could bring this back up, right? If there was at least three of them that said, “Let's reopen this case!
” I'm going to tell you the whole Arizona would be having a party. They want my vote, I can tell you this right now, they better step up to the plate and open up this case again. [Narrator] In November, three of the five commission seats are up for election.
The Democratic candidates support reopening the case. [Democratic Canidate] Over 12,000 people in their city, which is a relatively small city, signed a petition asking the commission and asking their utility providers for some relief on the huge price increases they've seen. Mr Hill went up to Mojave County and said, “I will vote to reopen.
. . ” That's not how it works.
[Narrator] Three Republicans, including one current commissioner, are running on the track record of the GOP majority. What's most notable is they continue to support the decisions that have been made by the current commission. The current commission is getting it done.
What we've seen in our rates, what we've seen in the cost is the result of forced mandates, forced contracts, government regulation and subsidies that have driven up the rates. Our opponents are supporting over-dependence on renewable energy. They're putting our grid at risk.
But really the practical reality is that solar doesn't work at night. Wind doesn't always blow. Of course we know the sun goes down at night.
That's why so much investment has been made in the last decades to build up storage. [Narrator] Three Democrats are running on a promise to reverse the direction of the commission. Under the current Republican leadership, we have seen over half a billion dollars in rate cases approved just since 2023.
We've seen a quarter century of Republican leadership on the corporation commission that's done nothing but increase your rates and reduce your reliability. [Narrator] If Democrats win all three seats, they will take the majority for the first time in decades. It's an election in which just a handful of votes could have a dramatic impact.
[Autumn] It can sometimes be like 50,000 votes. That was the difference in the ’22 election. These are the people that decide how much you pay and what you're paying for, and so if you don't want to be paying a 10% return on equity, or you don't want to be paying for a huge bonus for the CEO of these companies, those are all things that are determined by the Corporation Commissioners.
And I’m just surprised ACC, if they haven't heard this, why they haven't jumped right up to the plate right now and said, “Let's make a stop to this right now. ” I mean, we’re not waiting for an election. If you really care about us, it wouldn't be a debate.
All they have to do is pick up a pen and paper, a typewriter, or whatever, keyboard, and change it.
