Arizona opinion: Tucson city government's hypocritical stand on TEP increase proposal

A few months ago, Tucson’s mayor and city council showed up at the Arizona Corporation Commission like populist warriors, opposing Tucson Electric Power’s proposed 14% rate hike. “We believe that monopoly utilities must not be allowed to exploit customers,” declared Mayor Regina Romero, draping herself in the usual banners of affordability, climate justice and equity.

The implication was clear: TEP’s request was portrayed as immoral and certain to hurt ordinary people. It had to be stopped.

But the affordability crusade did not extend to City Hall. While attacking the power companies in the name of affordability, the same city leaders were quietly looking to raise taxes on those same ratepayers through an increased public tax on all utilities in Tucson. According to the city’s website, city leaders proposed raising the rate from 4.5% to 5% in a move expected to generate more than $5.25 million in fresh revenue. For the mayor, increasing rates to continue to build out our power infrastructure was corporate greed, but lining the city treasury with money from working families? “Boosting revenue” for government officials to spend, apparently, is just common sense.

The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical. TEP’s hike, while hardly popular, was at least grounded in reality: the cost of utility-grade transformers has soared due to Biden-era federal mandates, global inflation, and tariffs. Unlike the city, the utility must justify its prices to regulators. But Tucson’s hike? That is simply an attempt to plug a hemorrhaging general fund, caused by years of poor leadership, and to preserve the illusion of solvency for another year.

The city’s budget problems did not materialize out of thin air; digging such a deep financial hole took real effort.

Tucson leadership has found itself neck-deep in a financial fiasco of their own making. The Downtown Links road project, pitched to voters in 2006 as a modest $76 million infrastructure upgrade, has turned into a bottomless pit of taxpayer money. It now sits at more than $110 million and counting for just 1.3 miles of pavement. Completion is delayed until at least 2026 — five years past the deadline voters were promised. City officials have returned again and again to the Regional Transportation Authority, seeking yet another bailout despite the city's clear legal obligation to cover all overages beyond a 10% cap.

The city has found itself in a cycle of leadership failure that continues on repeat. Each new funding request arrives wrapped in vague excuses — railroad coordination, telecom delays, drainage issues — before being reframed as a non-negotiable necessity. Other Arizona cities managing RTA-funded projects have managed to eat their own cost overruns without dumping the bill on the rest of the county. Tucson, in contrast, acts like the rules don’t apply. The RTA keeps cutting checks as Pima County taxpayers keep paying for the mistakes.

Faced with this record, city leaders have chosen deflection over accountability. The mayor and council would have you believe they’re fighting on behalf of the people, shielding them from greedy corporations, but that’s just the scapegoat. But the truth is harder to stomach: the city is bleeding money, and leaders are using ratepayers as a pressure valve to mask their own poor fiscal management. The utility company may be an easy target, but at least it operates under oversight. Tucson’s spending spree, its tax hikes, and its endless excuses face no such scrutiny.

All of this exposes a basic problem with Tucson’s political theater. The city’s leaders like to talk about fairness, affordability, and accountability until those words are applied to City Hall itself. It is easier to attack a regulated utility than to explain years of missed deadlines, ballooning costs, and projects that never seem to end.

Voters notice when officials denounce higher bills in public while approving their own behind closed doors. If Tucson wants credibility in the fight over power costs, it should start by putting its own books in order.

Until then, every speech about protecting working families rings hollow.