Are you being served?

We have had an Arizona Corporation Commission since Arizona became a state in 1912. Policies and statutes generally should be seen as a snapshot at any given moment in time.

The Corporation Commission was established to give the people of Arizona the ability to have some oversight regarding powerful franchises or legal monopolies that the people of Arizona were willing to allow doing business in our state.

Over time, it has gone from a three-member board to a five-member board. This was done to protect the integrity of the representation that the board was to provide. We cannot forget the truly staggering financial impacts that the Corporation Commission has on the lives of the people of Arizona.

In 2003, when the gasoline pipeline blew up in Tucson, there was a mix of significant public safety issues coupled with large economic issues. When I discovered that the Corporation Commission had agreed to sign an agreement with the federal government that prevented the Corporation Commission from notifying fire chiefs or any other first responders in Arizona that a test on a pipeline reveal it to be dangerous, I told the Commission that this was unacceptable. After all, there are two basic reasons to test pipelines:

(1) To see if they are safe and to tell the owner of the pipeline what must be done to fix the pipeline and

(2) To protect the public. The Corporation Commission had signed away one of their fundamental responsibilities to the citizens of Arizona.

This action made me take a long hard look at the Commission. I have served as a public official for more than 15 years. My work has made me keenly aware of issues such as fiduciary responsibility, public safety, and last but not least, structures of governance.

It is the last issue, governance, I want to address. When the pipeline issue was unfolding I noticed that all the Corporation Commission members came from one area of the state.

This made me wonder if this was historically the case. After several months of research with the help of historical societies around our state, we have some information. We feel we have a complete list of all the people who have ever served on the Corporation Commission and where they came from.

My staff and I were concerned and surprised to see that of all the members of the Corporation Commission since 1932, 33 people had been elected to the Corporation Commission, 28 of them came from an area no greater than a 120-mile diameter circle in Arizona. Another way of saying this is that about 85 percent of these Commission members have come from less than 1 percent of the entire state of Arizona.

It might have made sense once upon a time to have all the Corporation Commission members run at-large in the entire state. However, clearly it doesn’t make sense any more. There are fundamental issues of fairness and accountability that have been lost. The state should be divided into five districts to secure real representation and accountability. This would better protect public safety and our economy.

If you have thought on this issue, please contact me at the following address:

Council member, Ward V, 4300 S. Park Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85714 or call 520-791-4231 or e-mail my office at Steve.Leal@tucsonaz.gov.