PHOENIX — A day after the Arizona Corporation Commission signed off on a rate hike for Arizona Public Service customers, an advocacy group is asking commissioners to reconsider the vote.
The Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund said the vote was cast based on preliminary estimates of rate increases. "It’s unclear whether those estimates include all the increases commissioners approved on Thursday," said Diane Brown, the group’s executive director.
“APS ratepayers deserve to know what increases they are paying for and approximately how much more they can expect to pay each month,” Brown wrote in the letter to commissioners Friday.
Hours before the vote, Brown had urged the commission to make sure they understood the full impact on customers.
“We know there’s a desire to vote today,” she said. “However, we urge you to get it right before you get it done,” said Brown to commissioners during the comment portion of the meeting.
Commissioners voted on Thursday on numerous changes to the proposed rate case. Some of those changed the amount of money the utility company can collect from its 1.4 million customers.
Before the final vote, Commissioner Anna Tovar said she wanted to know how much more customers would pay with all the changes approved so far. Commission and APS staff adjourned to a separate room to work on crunching the numbers for several minutes.
“This is math on the fly,” APS Attorney Melissa Krueger said.
She estimated the rate package was expected to cost the average residential customer about 8.3% more per month.
Commissioners ultimately voted 4-1 in favor of a rate hike following a marathon, 11-hour meeting. Tovar cast the lone vote against the increase.
After the vote, APS released a statement that said:
“We’re still working through the data, but preliminary estimates show a bill impact of roughly 8%, in the range of 10-$12 a month, for a typical residential customer,” said APS.
Commission Chairman Jim O’Connor told ABC15 on Friday that number “crunching is still going on, by the way, even today.”
He said he was highly confident that the preliminary numbers would be close to the final ones.
“The rate we are guestimating is 8% bill impact,” he said.
The new rates are expected to become effective on March 1, according to the commission.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at: anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.
