Having burned through $28 million in a pair of losing political battles in Arizona last year, California billionaire Tom Steyer is now prepared to pump some more cash into the state.

State utility regulators have no legal right to investigate their colleagues to determine if they are biased, a judge has ruled.

Attorneys for members of the Arizona Corporation Commission told a judge Tuesday he should block a bid by one of the panel's members to investigate whether financial help they got or are suspected of getting from Arizona Public Service for their elections tainted their vote to allow the company to collect more money from customers.

The 4-1 vote by the Arizona Corporation Commission came after the majority rejected a bid by Bob Burns to delay the rate case until his lawsuit with APS and his fellow commissioners is resolved.

The Arizona Supreme Court will hear a case about a mechanism used by water companies to increase rates outside of a rate case.

Irony,” says literary critic Harold Bloom, “demands a certain attention span, and the ability to sustain antithetical ideas, even when they collide with one another.”

An administrative law judge has concluded that Arizona Public Service hasn’t “established an urgent need” for addressing any cost shift attributed to rooftop solar outside of a rate case.

In a clear break from his predecessor, RUCO Director David Tenney suggested that the Corp Comm immediately tackle the issue of “cost shift” associated with rooftop solar instead of waiting to handle it in a rate case, which takes a comprehensive look at issues in a judicial setting before deciding to raise utility rates.

Less than two years after the Arizona Corporation Commission approved a small monthly surcharge on residential solar, the state’s largest utility is asking energy regulators to impose a 320-percent increase in the solar fee.

Navajo County Board of Supervisors chairman David Tenney was appointed Monday as the director of the Residential Utility Consumer Office, replacing director Patrick Quinn.