Watchdog Seeks Commissioner Bob Stump’s Phone to Access Content of His Text Messages
June 19, 2015 – Checks and Balances Project (C&BP) announced today that it has sent a letter to the Arizona Corporation Commission to demand immediate access to Commissioner Bob Stump’s phone and other devices that use the (602) 647-0433 phone number. If the Commission refuses to comply by 5:00 p.m. MT on June 26, 2015, C&BP will file a special action in Maricopa County Superior Court to obtain access to the phone and public records that remain on them.
“Commissioner Stump’s text message logs and emails appear to show that he was conducting public business on his private Verizon account to promote the interests of monopoly utilities,” said Scott Peterson, executive director of C&BP. “Now the Commission has hired a high-priced attorney at public expense to assert that the messages are gone. Yet readily available technology or the Commission’s own subpoena powers put these messages within easy reach. Let’s be clear. The Commission can get these messages. They just don’t want anyone to see them.
“We submitted our original records request to Commissioner Stump on March 11, 2015,” Peterson continued. “What are his text messages about that the Commission so desperately wants to protect them?”
Says C&BP attorney Dan Barr: “It would have been far easier for Commissioner Stump to comply with his legal duties under the Public Records Law had he used his Corporation Commission email account instead of texting on his private phone and then apparently deleting many of those texts soon afterward. Nevertheless, those text messages are still on Commissioner Stump’s phone. The Corporation Commission has two choices and only two choices. Either it will comply with the Public Records Law and give us access to Commissioner Stump’s phone so we can extract those texts that are public records from it or we will get a court to order them to do so.”
About Checks & Balances Project
A clean-energy public watchdog blog, C&BP asks questions of government officials, corporate managers and lobbyists who stand in the way of the growth of clean energy. Funding for C&BP comes from clean energy philanthropies and donors.
Contact: Scott Peterson at [email protected]
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