Roberts: Another day, another Corporation Commission stink

Another day, another corporation commissioner stinking up the joint.

This time, it’s Commission Chairwoman Susan Bitter Smith, who, when she’s not regulating telecommunications companies, appears to be working for them.

And isn’t that a cozy arrangement?

Attorney Tom Ryan certainly thinks so. On Wednesday, he filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, asking to have Bitter Smith a k a “the usurper” tossed from her public office.

“If this is allowed to stand, Don Brandt (head of Arizona Public Service) could save himself millions of dollars and run for the Corporation Commission himself,” Ryan told me.

Bitter Smith, in a statement released through her attorney,called the complaint “frivolous and without merit.”

“I am not now and have never been employed by a company that is regulated by the ACC. This is a part of a wider effort by a solar backed dark money group committed to forcing rate payers in Arizona to heavily subsidize solar.”

Seems unlikely that solar would be trying to stick it to Bitter Smith. She's sided with solar interests several times in the industry's ongoing war with APS -- most recently just two weeks ago when the commission voted 3-2 to do as APS asked and consider quadrupling its fee on solar users. (She was part of the 2.)

Ryan, who says he’s not representing anyone, frequently takes on cases of suspected public corruption. He's the guy who unearthed the famed sham candidate put up by Russell Pearce supporters in the Pearce recall election. He’s the guy who called out then-Attorney General Tom Horne for questionable behavior that ultimately led to his defeat at the polls.

Now he's the guy calling out Bitter Smith.

Who, in addition to working full time at her $80,000-a-year commission job, is working as a lobbyist for Cox Communications, which offers telecommunications services and thus is regulated by the commission.

She’s also paid $159,000 to work full time for the Southwest Cable Communications Association, where she recently lobbied the Federal Communications Commission on a telecommunications issue on behalf of clients Cox and Suddenlink Communications.

And she’s a partner with her husband in Technical Solutions, a “public affairs” firm that lists lobbying the Corporation Commission as one of its many services.

All this as she sits on the five-member commission that regulates telecommunications. Or put another way, the commission that sets your telephone rates.

Bitter Smith has said there is no conflict here, saying she works only for the cable side of Cox, and notes that she has publicly disclosed her various jobs.  Yes, and if you have a microscope, you might actually find that disclosure, which appears short a few eyebrow raising details about what she actually is doing.

Ryan notes that the Corporation Commission must abide by a more stringent conflict-of interest law given the “unique and extensive powers” granted the commission.

Whatever conflict law applies, I’m confident it doesn’t allow Bitter Smith to vote on a tariff increase for her client, Cox, as she did in 2013. Or to vote to rescind a bond requirement for Suddenlink Communications -- a member of the Southwest Cable Communications Association that she runs -- as she did in May.

Ryan, in his complaint, provided documents showing Bitter Smith’s involvement in a controversial proposal to relocate a massive APS substation next to a Scottsdale neighborhood.

Since last year, Bitter Smith, wearing her Technical Solutions hat, has been working to help GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons move an APS substation – complete with 55-foot tall towers and 69 KV lines -- next to a Scottsdale neighborhood. This, so that he can develop a golf course.

“Commissioner Bitter Smith and her company, Technical Solutions, should not have been within 100 miles of this project since it involved moving an APS 69KV line and substation. And yet there they were,” Ryan wrote, in his complaint.

Documents show the chairwoman of the Corporation Commission was not only working on the side to move that APS power station to benefit a client, but was doing it during daytime hours, when presumably she should be working on regulating APS, Cox’s telecommunications arm  and other public service utilities.

Ryan’s complaint now goes to the Attorney General’s Office, which already is looking into former Commissioner Gary Pierce’s connections with APS. Already looking into Commissioner Bob Stump’s 2014 text exchanges with an APS executive, the head of a dark money group believed to have been funded by APS and two then-corporation commission candidates who enjoyed the support of that dark money group.

Bad odors, it seems, abound at the Corporation Commission.

Me? I’d advise standing well upwind of the place.