The Corporation Commission agreed to turn over Commissioner Bob Stump’s phone to a retired judge and independent technology expert to see if any text messages are retrievable and subject to public records laws.

Lately, accusations of impropriety within the ranks of the Corporation Commission have been released in various news media. It is imperative that the officials of the most powerful group affecting the pocketbooks of the greatest portion of the state’s population remain unbiased and deal with only “the facts at hand” over the rate cases they preside.

Energy regulator Bob Stump routinely deleted text messages on his cellphones, including public records that cannot be retrieved, the Arizona Corporation Commission disclosed.

The Arizona Corporation Commission is pushing back against the narrative that energy regulators are beholden to the utilities.

The Corp Comm is in no mood to furnish the DC-based Checks and Balances Project with additional information about Stump’s text messages. The group has been digging into Stump’s email and text communications to prove its point that Arizona’s energy commissioners have been lost to “regulatory capture,” the idea that regulators act more as consultants of the industries that they oversee than as objective overseers.

Another Arizona electric co-op is proposing to reduce savings rooftop solar customers enjoy by dropping the rate it pays users for excess power generated by solar panels, joining a handful of proposals from other utilities.

Less than two years after the Arizona Corporation Commission settled on a small surcharge for residential solar, utilities are back before the regulatory body asking for bigger fees and setting the next stage for what some describe as an existential battle over the future of renewable energy here and perhaps across the country.

The Arizona Corporation Commission’s 2010 energy efficiency rules catapulted the state to the front of the energy efficiency industry, according to the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project.

In a filing to the Arizona Corporation Commission on March 25, Tucson Electric Power is proposing to slash the amount it pays for excess power from rooftop panels.

The Arizona Corporation Commission won’t be launching its own investigation into a whistleblower complaint alleging that a former commissioner and the regulatory agency’s staffers broke rules and engaged in unethical conduct.