MacEachern: Susan Bitter Smith battle is overblown

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Mark Killian has resigned from the state Board of Regents -- five months after Gov. Doug Ducey appointed him as director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture.

No drama. No accusations of conflicts of interest. No outraged higher-education activists pushing Killian out the door. Nobody arguing during those months that Killian might be carrying Il Ducey’s water because he owed the governor his new job.

Instead, Killian just stepped down from his voluntary duties as a Regent because the burden of working two jobs was wearing him out. Geez, this has been tougher than I thought, he said.

He even got a nice pat on the back from the remaining regents: tireless public servant, said Regents chairman Jay Heiler. A real champion of higher ed.

Contrast Killian’s uncontroversial exit from his job overseeing state universities with the hubbub over Susan Bitter Smith’s moonlighting in addition to her day job with the state Corporation Commission.

THE BIGGER ISSUE BEHIND THE COMPLAINT

Sure, there are differences. But would those differences matter if not for the bigger issue overlaying every controversy (as well as every “controversy”) involving the Corp Comm? That being: the death struggle going on now between the rooftop solar industry and regulated energy companies like Arizona Public Service?

Bitter Smith owns a public-relations company that once was hired by a developer to help work out a dispute with neighbors near his new development. It involved an unfinished substation owned by APS, the largest company regulated by the Corporation Commission. APS ended up moving the as-yet uncompleted substation.

Our View: ACC fight is bigger than you think

Did Bitter Smith win the conflict for her developer-client by throwing her Corp Comm weight around with APS? She insists it was the neighbors who won, not the developer.

The broader issue, though, is:

Would the matter have merited much (if any) attention if not for the fact that solar-industry investigators are digging up as much dirt as they can on every utility regulator in America, and piling it up to make it appear to be a crisis?

IT'S NOT JUST AN ARIZONA PROBLEM

Activists funded by – yes – special-interest "dark-money" aren’t stopping at the little ol’ Arizona Corporation Commission. From sea to shining sea they are wearing out bureaucrats handling Freedom of Information Act requests, searching for material that might compromise utility regulators who they think might rule favorably toward legacy utility companies.

A conservative Republican, Bitter Smith does not exactly strike a sympathetic pose among green-leaning voters. They automatically assume her guilt.

But judged by the Killian Factor – is there evidence she changed a point of view or made a choice favorable to APS because of the substation-moving incident? – the question is without an honest affirmative answer.

Her work as director of an association of cable companies is a bigger concern. As director of (and lobbyist for) the Southwest Cable Communications Association, Bitter Smith represents cable-industry interests. She does not rep telecommunications companies, however, because they are regulated by the Corporation Commission. Cable companies aren't.

Roberts: Susan Bitter Smith should resign

Cox Communications has branches in both businesses. And the company bundles its products, which means it mixes the two. Is that a conflict for Bitter Smith?

Well, yeah. A lot of people, including me, think it is. She also is a lobbyist for Cox cable. She should quit the night jobs.

Bitter Smith says she has worked for the cable part of Cox, not the telecomm part. As noted, that's hair-splitting. But here is the rub: There isn’t any controversy before the commission involving Cox’s telecomm business.

BUT REALLY, THERE'S NO ISSUE WITH COX

Cox bundles its services and, so, bundles its profits. That may present a potential for conflict for Bitter Smith. But until there is an issue involving Cox, that's impossible to judge.

The Cox service regulated by the ACC is mostly its landline business. Landlines. Bitter Smith’s critics are lighting their hair on fire over suspected ill-gotten profits from a phone business whose heyday ended before Bill Clinton left office. Welcome back to the 20th century.

And while she may have disclosed her involvement with the cable association in pretty generalities, it has been there on the Corporation Commission web site for all to see if they bothered to look.

The Cox Question is an issue for no other reason than because the war between traditional utility companies and rooftop solar is lurching around causing collateral damage. And it just rolled over Susan Bitter Smith, corporation commission and director of a cable-company association.

AND ABOUT THAT 'DARK MONEY'

A side note:

A Nexis search of the phrases “Arizona Corporation Commission” and “dark money” turns up 120 instances during the last year in which both phrases appear, nearly all in news reports and commentary involving APS and its long-suspected efforts to get two commissioners elected through a "dark money-funded" political campaign group. (Full disclosure: I've written some of those phrases)

A Nexis search of the phrases “Checks and Balances Project” and “watchdog group” turns up 30 instances in which news reports identified the Checks and Balances Project as a good-government watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. (Fuller disclosure: I've written some of those, too)

Checks and Balances, however, is funded by so-called “dark money” no less than the campaign-finance group that supported corporation commissioners Doug Little and Tom Forese.

The Checks and Balances group is out to influence Arizona politics no less than any campaign-finance group.

It is time to give up the fiction that it is some kind of benevolent, non-partisan “watchdog group” and call it what it is: another special-interest group of political activists, likely sponsored by the rooftop solar industry and financed by dark money.