Top Headlines, July 23rd, 2015

Excerpt from The Arizona Republic (7/22/15): “Arizona GOP runs interference for Bob Stump … and APS?”

 Clearly, Arizona Public Service must be worried. Which means that the Arizona Corporation Commission must be worried. Which means that the Arizona Republican Party is up nights … really, really worried.

Thus comes the state GOP’s campaign to discredit those who are nosing around trying to figure out just how cozy Arizona’s utility regulators are with Aizona’s largest utility. This week, the party put out a web ad, dubbing the Washington D.C.-based pro-clean energy Checks and Balances Project “a leftist group pushing their radical agenda.”

Excerpt from The Arizona Republic (7/22/15): “AG’s Office widens Arizona Corporation Commission investigation”

 “The investigators working on the ACC complaint felt that there was enough public discussion and enough cause that the phone should be examined and information and data analyzed in conjunction or in relation to the whistleblower complaint,” AG spokesman Ryan Anderson told me on Wednesday.

“There have been widespread media reports and public information on what the text messages may or may not have entailed or may have been discussed. So it was determined that that was relevant to the investigation.”

Excerpt from The Arizona Republic (7/22/15): “Arizona utility regulator Bob Stump’s phone seized in probe of former Commissioner Gary Pierce”

The probe of Stump is being led by a watchdog group called the Checks and Balances Project. Through the state public records law, it requested text messages Stump sent from 2013 through earlier this year. The commission has been unable to provide them.

Excerpt from KJZZ (7/23/15): “Arizona Attorney General Confiscates Utility Regulator’s Cellphone”

The saga of Arizona Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump’s deleted text messages took an unexpected twist this week when the Arizona Attorney General’s office decided to get involved.

A nonprofit watchdog group in Washington D.C. has been hounding the Corporation Commission for months for access to Stump’s cellphone in order to recover hundreds of deleted text messages.