It may not get all the headlines during election season, but the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) makes a lot of decisions that affect consumers.
The five-member board sets rates for most Arizona utilities, and regulates gas pipelines, railroads and securities.
Two seats are up for grabs in 2022. Two Republicans and two Democrats are hoping to fill them.
While known mostly for its role with electric utilities, the Commission is also responsible for setting rates for gas utilities and the safety of natural gas lines buried across Arizona.
Republican Candidate Kevin Thompson is familiar with both, having worked for Southwest Gas for 16 years.
"Obviously, it helps me, you know, understanding the gas side and understanding where the utilities come from, but my job (would be) to regulate the industries as a whole," he told ABC15.
Given recent catastrophic natural gas line explosions in Coolidge where a father and daughter died and in Chandler where several people were severely injured, ABC15 asked Thompson what more the Commission should be doing to ensure gas line safety.
"It's incumbent not only on the Commission, and staff, but it's also on the utilities as well. You know, and whether it's Kinder Morgan or Southwest Gas, or were any other utility, they need to ensure that they're, you know, providing a safe, reliable product," he said. "But as they discover these leaks, they should be replacing them. When they're doing leak surveys, they should be replacing them. When they're testing pipelines, and they find faults, they should be replacing those."
His last position with Southwest Gas was as a lobbyist for the utility. Through court records, ABC15 found he later sued the company for age discrimination.
Thompson called it a "personnel matter that was settled amicably."
Currently, he is finishing his second term as a Mesa City Councilman.
Setting rates for the city's, water, power, and gas utilities are part of his duties in that role. He said that's the duty of the Commission too, and rejects that it should make decisions outside of rate making.
"There's no reason why three people should be deciding the energy future and setting policy for the entire state of Arizona," he said of the commission.
His stance, on the side of the Republican-led state legislature in itstug-of-war with the ACC over who has the ultimate power to set power policy in Arizona.
For the past several legislative sessions lawmakers have introduced bills to curb ACC authority in implementing policies like renewable energy standards which gave utilities a timeline to reduce fossil fuel usage.
An update of that policy was voted down by the ACC in January 2022.
Legislators became particularly active after the Johnson Utilities Arizona Supreme Court ruling which held that the state constitution explicitly granted the Commission authority to set rates and permissive authority for other actions which can be limited by legislative action.
Current ACC members have been divided on how to respond.
Thompson said anything outside of rate making "is really mission creep."
"The policymaking really needs to go back to the legislature where it belongs, and keep the Corporation Commission in its lane," he said.
ABC15 asked if Thompson's opinion would change if the legislature were flipped to Democratic control.
"Whether it's a Republican-controlled legislature or a Democrat-controlled or legislature, your job is to regulate the utilities, and to ensure that we're protecting the consumer and protecting the grid, that's it," he said.
Another issue the next Commission will have to tackle is whether to help coal-impacted communities across Arizona where plants are closing.
Thompson blames haze rules from the Environmental Protection Agency as the cause of the closures.
"So it should be the federal government that lends its hand, it shouldn't be the consumers across Arizona, being on the hook to pay for, you know, the transition of these communities."
ABC15 asked if Thompson thought utilities bore any responsibility to help the communities that have been mined of minerals and water for decades and largely powered the growth of the Valley.
"It hasn't been a secret that any of these plants were going to be closing. And so I think the community's, you know, should have had the foresight to think in advance of what they were going to do," he said.
But Thompson said his first priority would be to make the Commission run more efficiently.
"Utilities coming in and taking 18 to 24 months to get through a rate process or a making process, and that's way too long," Thompson said. "It's costing the ratepayers way too much money because for all that time out there, they're rolling those right back into the rates. All the attorneys and everybody else that (that the utilities are) paying."
