Local opinion 'Just Say No To The Yes-Men'

You can’t tell the players without a program. This won’t wait until November. Put it on your front burner while you’re feeling the June heat. Your vote can stop future Novembers from feeling like June.

The two Arizona Corporation Commissioners seeking re-election, Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson, have well-established anti-solar, anti-wind and anti–energy efficiency voting records. Their primary opponent would double down on everything.

Myers/Thompson are Utility yes-men, heirs to a despicable legacy of Utility dark money, Koch Bros. PR machines and calculated misrepresentations.

That legacy?

Set the time machine for 2006, a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away, when Arizona Republicans and Democrats were not mortal enemies.

Current AG Kris Mayes led a Republican ACC majority to proactively address rising temperatures and water scarcities by passing the Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST), giving Utilities 20 years to get onboard with science and increase their renewable energy generation — specifically including rooftop solar — to a minimum of 15%.

REST was never intended as a goal — like you save for a vacation, you go, you’re done. REST was a new beginning.

But to Arizona Power Service (APS) and its parent, Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, it looked like the beginning of the end. Every kilowatt-hour of solar energy ratepayers added to the grid was a kilowatt-hour APS wouldn’t be selling — an encroaching bottom-line disaster.

Dial the time machine to 2013. REST was still stuck in the Utility’s craw. APS filed to completely cut off net metering (which would credit solar owners at current rates for their grid electricity) and also filed to impose on solar generating ratepayers a grid access fee of $50-$100 per month.

Only got $5, not happy campers. Schemed to get their own yes-men on the ACC.

Enter Pinnacle Capital. They injected about $14,000,000 in dark money to sway public opinion. Those undisclosed fringe legal “donations” funded 16 Political Action Committees ( PACs) — like the cringeworthy “Save Our Future Now.” Orchestrated by Koch Brothers PR agencies those PACs ran anti-solar campaigns. They pitted neighbor against neighbor — “it’s a subsidy to the solar industry”; “your solar neighbor is making your bills higher.” And funneled $3,200,000 of that into the victorious ACC campaigns of their hand-picked yes-men, Doug Little and Tom Forese, midterm 2014, sworn in 2015.

Just one month later, the new yes-men delivered.

The Republican ACC majority became Utilities R Us. Net metering for solar was killed. APS’s 4.5% rate hike — approved — adding about $100,000,000 into its coffers; ACC Commissioner Burns’s subpoena to force APS to disclose campaign dark money was killed by blocking funding for the investigators..

And the deed was done.

The yes-men legacy of the ACC continues in Myers and Thompson. In less than two years, they:

Slashed again what utilities pay ratepayers for solar energy to the grid, using Koch Bros. PR 101 — “it’s some mandate or subsidy” — and misleadingly used 2015 utility-scale solar costs to argue against what is now hands down the least expensive electricity generation source.

Rejected scientific consensus and your own common sense, and killed REST (which saved ratepayers $2 billion), claiming it was no longer needed while incentivizing Utilities to burn gas and oil.

Gutted demand-side energy efficiency — which provided ratepayers $1,300,000,000 in economic benefits — claiming the usual mandate or subsidy hogwash.

Delayed the scheduled 2031 closure of 4 Corners coal plant to 2038; wrote rules practically guaranteeing gas would replace that coal generation.

You’re being played. Their tired dogma of “subsidies” and mandates” are the PR party line siren calls manipulating you for over a decade. Take action and reject it, reject them.

"The Blob” scared the pants off me in 1958. A farmer took a stick and picked up this ooze from a crashed alien spaceship and watched curiously as it slid up his arm and devoured him. Thompson and Myers are the scariest movie in town right now, and like "The Blob" they will continue to ooze the life force right out of Arizona.