Four board members of Salt River Project were censured by majority vote of the board of directors, on Monday.
The decision stemmed from a June 2022 letter the four members docketed with the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) urging it to oppose the reconsideration of the more than doubling the size of the utility's gas-fired power plant in Coolidge.
The plant had already been rejected by the Commission in April after concerns about environmental effects of the neighboring community of Randolph and questions about the utility's bidding process.
At the time the letter was submitted the utility had requested the ACC reconsider its decision. The agency denied SRP's request.
In the letter board members and clean energy supporters Randy Miller, Nick Brown, Krista O'Brien, and Kathy-Mohr-Almeida said they "continued to harbor great consternation from SRP's proposed expansion of the Coolidge Generating Station and believe that the Commission should not rehear this issue until SRP has a better understanding of this project's impact on customers' electric bills."
It was a bridge too far for some other board members and SRP management which had the resolution of censure drafted.
"Board members are free to criticize board acts. But the circumstances here seem to us to go far beyond that and justify sanction," SRP Vice-President John Hoopes said during Monday's board meeting.
Censured board member Randy Miller said he believed they took the appropriate steps to voice their opposition to the Commission while making clear they were not representing the SRP board.
"This is crazy," he told the board. "Why are we being attacked for expressing our opinion? We did not go behind closed doors and talk to ACC members. We did it through the public process. We submitted it to the docket, we went through the appropriate procedures," he told the board.
Another point of contention was SRP's belief that the letter was drafted by environmental groups who openly opposed the plant expansion. Miller said it did not matter who wrote the letter, what mattered was that he agreed with it.
"I don't care who wrote the letter. To me, it doesn't matter. We haven't even discussed the content of the letter being infactual. As far as I know, everything we've said in there was factual," Miller said.
The board also stripped Miller, O'Brien, Brown and Mohr-Almeida of their committee assignments through the end of 2022.
In July the utility filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court seeking a reversal of the ACC's decision.
SRP painted a dire picture about its reliability if the expansion were not approved saying there is serious risk that it would not be able to meet anticipated demand in Summer of 2024.
In the interim the utility has approved a significantly smaller natural gas project at its Copper Crossing solar plant in Florence since it had already purchased eight of the 16 gas turbines in anticipation of Coolidge expansion approval.
