Local opinion: Tucson voters should reject TEP franchise agreement

You have the power to tell Tucson Electric Power (TEP) no. You have the power to demand more affordable energy from our monopoly utility by voting NO on Proposition 421, which is a November 2026 ballot measure asking Tucson voters to renew a 25-year franchise agreement (FA) allowing TEP to build, operate, and maintain power lines and other infrastructure on city rights of way.

If approved by the voters, this franchise agreement will increase your bills by allowing TEP to build additional expensive, polluting, water-guzzling fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources of electricity. The FA will reduce cheaper solar capacity, along with battery energy storage systems (BESS), rather than being a pro-customer proposal with required due dates to achieve renewable energy goals.

This issue is important to me because whereas TEP ads boldly proclaim to promote solar, last year alone the company’s total sales of solar energy dropped by more than 10% — from 14% in 2024 to 12.75% in 2025—even as its total sales dropped only 6%. Instead, TEP created more higher-priced energy and contributed further to climate change. The PR department is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

If the TEP/City of Tucson Prop 421 passes, TEP can increase your electric bill in several ways. There will be no requirements for TEP to stop buying expensive power capacity, because the higher-priced fossil fuel capacity makes it more money, which flows to Fortis, its Canadian parent company. TEP likes this agreement because it lasts for 25 years, when the term should be 5 years. Rapid changes in the decreasing price of solar (and batteries) and the cost of energy continually increasing owing to the buildout of data centers TEP is promoting will require changes in the FA in the next several years. And agreements with data centers are shrouded in secrecy. This issue is personally important to me because I have seen TEP force nondisclosure agreements (NDAs); however, I believe that, as a state-granted monopoly, it has no right to do so. It is playing outside the boundaries of fairness

The promoters of Prop 421 say the FA can be terminated at any time by the City. Practical considerations suggest otherwise. If council members want to keep their seats, they dare not vote against TEP. To make sure TEP keeps piling on the profits for Fortis, TEP put a provision in the contract that if the City even starts a municipalization process, the franchise agreement is dead. Municipalities and other offshoots like Community Choice Energy (see www.AZ4CC.org) provide less expensive energy to their customers than do investor-owned utilities like TEP.

The FA should contain strong requirements that TEP choose the cheaper and cleaner solar, wind, and storage options. The agreement should allow the City to pursue its own course of municipalization, or community choice energy, or community solar. If the City cannot negotiate a franchise agreement that is good for Tucson citizens, then it can look at how other cities, like Chicago, manage without even having an FA. Its 28-year agreement with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) expired at the end of 2020.

As Daniel Dempsey said in his letter to the editor in the Aug. 21 Arizona Daily Star, “The proposed franchise agreement imposes no meaningful constraints on TEP — despite statements from the Attorney General (Kris Mayes) that it could.”

Please vote No on Prop 421 and insist on a better franchise agreement. If TEP and the City of Tucson cannot negotiate a better FA, then no FA at all is better than a bad one.