Key Points

• Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson says her longtime policy advisor was fired without her knowledge or consent

• Commissioners voted to hire independent counsel to investigate Executive Director Doug Clark’s employment authority

• Critics, including a former commissioner, say the firing sets a risky precedent

An Arizona Corporation Commissioner is questioning the authority of the body’s executive director after he terminated one of her staffers without her consent last week. 

During an Oct. 7 open meeting, Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson accused ACC Executive Director Doug Clark of firing her policy advisor without consulting her. She asked her fellow commissioners to adopt a policy statement clarifying Clark’s authority over employees the commissioners themselves hire and oversee. 

It was not immediately clear what specifically prompted the firing. The Arizona Capitol Times has filed a request for public records related to the decision. 

State law allows the Commission to delegate its authority to oversee commission divisions and employees, but Márquez Peterson argued that commissioners never delegated authority over their personally hired employees to the executive director.

“… [T]here’s no language in the statute that gives the executive director the power to terminate or remove employees who work for the elected commissioners, which does not constitute a commission division,” Márquez Peterson said during the meeting. 

Each commissioner typically employs a policy advisor and an assistant who are separate from the Commission’s staff. Márquez Peterson, who has served on the commission since 2019, said commissioners have always had the ultimate authority to hire and fire those staff members.

The Commission voted to allow Márquez Peterson to hire independent counsel from the law firm Snell and Wilmer to investigate whether Clark exceeded his authority. Commissioner Rachel Walden said she would have supported Márquez Peterson’s proposed policy statement, but Commission Chair Nick Myers and Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Rene Lopez said they wanted more information first.

“I don’t have a problem looking into that, but I don’t necessarily want to throw anybody under the bus until we have heard the whole story,” Myers told his fellow commissioners. 

The issue appeared to stem from an employee complaint filed against Laurie Woodall, Márquez Peterson’s longtime policy advisor. 

Tom Van Flein, the ACC’s general counsel, serves as the ethics officer charged with investigating those complaints. But the undisclosed issue involved a member of the Commission’s legal division, which Van Flein oversees. To avoid conflict of interest, Van Flein hired local employment attorney Michael Zoldan to investigate the complaint. 

Zoldan recommended firing Woodall in a report circulated to commissioners before the Oct. 7 meeting. Van Flein said Zoldan advised that Clark had the authority to terminate Woodall.

Van Flein also said the Commission then sought confirmation of that determination from the attorney general’s office and the Arizona Department of Administration, which houses the human resources division responsible for state employees. But an attorney general’s office spokesman said it advised ADOA, not the ACC directly. 

“The Human Resources Division of the Arizona Department of Administration has statewide responsibilities for reviewing State Personnel System agency dismissal packages,” said Tim Tait, an ADOA spokesman. “The Arizona Corporation Commission asked for review of this dismissal package, as required by the relevant rules. Following ADOA’s standard procedure, this dismissal package was reviewed by ADOA.”

Woodall declined an interview request through a representative.

Márquez Peterson said Clark left her a voicemail at 8:39 a.m. on Oct. 1 notifying her that Woodall would be fired at 9 a.m. for insubordination. She also received a follow-up email from Clark at 9:28 a.m. regarding the termination. 

Márquez Peterson told her fellow commissioners that the news “shocked” her and that it was “unilaterally done without any conversation with me.” 

“The advisor who was terminated, who worked for me, was a highly respected 40-plus-year attorney, [who] had been with the commission for decades,” Márquez Peterson said.

Bob Burns, a Republican who served on the Commission from 2013 to 2021, said ACC staff instructed him that he had the discretion to hire and fire his two direct reports. He described Clark’s move to fire Woodall as “definitely not kosher.”

Burns noted that policy advisors play a crucial role for elected commissioners who may not always have the legal or economic background to parse the complex regulatory decisions they must make. 

Diane Brown, the executive director for the Arizona Public Interest Research Group and a longtime Commission observer, agreed with Márquez Peterson and Burns.

“While specifics aren’t public, nor should they be, it is clear the executive director and the legal division director agreed to circumvent Commission norms and directly fire a policy advisor — viewed by most Commission regulars as a consummate professional with decades of utility and energy experience and expertise — without providing due process for the policy advisor or even a proper heads-up to the impacted commissioner,” Brown said in a statement.

Even more concerning, Brown said, was the Commission’s vote to redact the meeting’s transcript and video recording to remove specific references to Woodall.

“The fact that the Commission discussed the firing of a policy advisor in the open and in the context of a new policy statement and then considered retracting statements and video footage is deeply disturbing,” Brown said. 

As of publication, the Commission had not uploaded any recordings or meeting transcripts from the Oct. 7 discussion to its website. The Arizona Capitol Times gathered all quotes from the meeting referenced in this story from an audio recording of the conversation.

Other Commission stakeholders noted that Woodall’s termination could set a dangerous precedent, allowing a future executive director to weaponize their authority against hired staff and commissioners from the minority party. The ACC is currently all-Republican, and a Republican-majority commission approved Clark’s appointment. But two Democrats hope to shift that power balance in November. 

Woodall’s firing is also one in a series of employment snafus involving the Commission in recent years. Van Flein’s predecessor filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Commission in 2024, and the ACC censured former Commissioner Anna Tovar that year after she suggested staff turnover increased under Clark’s tenure. 

However, Myers, Thompson and Lopez all expressed concerns at the idea of the executive director having no authority to remove a commissioner-hired employee.

“I think there are still circumstances in which the executive director has the right, or should have the right to … fire, terminate a state employee, regardless of whether they report to us or not,” Thompson said. “As long as there is just cause and it’s not on a whim.”

But he conceded that Woodall’s situation could have been handled differently. At the Oct. 7 meeting, Márquez Peterson told Clark she felt it was “unprofessional.”

In a statement sent to the Arizona Capitol Times Thursday, Márquez Peterson maintained that Clark “acted without authority” and said the matter will be discussed at a future staff meeting.