Corporation Commission cozy with APS? Say it isn't so!

So, I see that the then-chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission was playing digital footsie with both an Arizona Public Service executive and the guy who runs a dark money group widely suspected of being a front for APS during last year's elections.

I, for one, am shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that the commission – the folks who determine how much you will pay for electricity -- is apparently nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the electric utility it's supposed to regulate.

Why do I say that, you ask? Well, let me count the ways.

It's widely believed that APS purchased a pair of seats on the five-member commission last year by secretly funneling millions of dollars through the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and a second dark-money group.

And that APS kicked in $438,395 via AzFEC to help then-Commissioner Gary Pierce's son, who was running for secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Pierce is under investigation by the Attorney General's Office after a commission staffer questioned his cozy ties with Don Brandt, the head of APS parent company Pinnacle West.

Now comes word, via a Washington-based non-profit that advocates for clean energy policies, that then-Commission Chairman Bob Stump sent dozens of text messages to an APS executive and and the head of AzFEC in the months before last year's election.

This, as AzFEC, was spending $453,257-- money believed to have come from APS -- on an independent campaign to get Tom Forese and Doug Little onto the Commission.

According to the Checks & Balances Project, Stump sent 56 texts to Barbara Lockwood, APS's general manager for regulatory policy, from July to September 2014. Phone logs show he sent 180 texts to Forese and Little, who enjoyed $3.2 million in dark money support.

Stump sent 46 text messages to AzFEC president Scot Mussi during last year's campaign season and 100 in all between June 2014 and March.

Stump told KPNX's Brahm Resnik he was just rescheduling meetings with the APS executive, certainly not discussing elections or utility business.

As for Mussi, the dark-money operative who was spending like crazy to get Forese and Little elected?

"Scot Mussi and I have known each other for nearly 15 years," Stump told Resnik. "We have had lunch on several occasions the past year, and we have been trying for months to coordinate a double-date to the Phoenix Symphony."

A hundred texts to coordinate a trip to the symphony?

APS won't confirm that it secretly spent millions of dollars to get Forese and Little elected. The company also won't deny it. Either way, it's totally legal and completely stinky.

Any one commissioner could put the issue to rest by simply ordering APS to open its books. Curiously, not one has.

Meanwhile, APS recently asked the commission to allow it to charge $21 a month to rooftop-solar customers, up from $5. Bets on what the commission will do?

And next time, the utility goes to the commission to raise your electric bill?

Bets? Anyone?