Gage Skidmore via Flickr
By Elizabeth Whitman | Phoenix New Times
“Getting involved in commissioner elections? Unbelievably high risk.”
Back in October 2013, Jeff Guldner, who was then the senior vice president of customers and regulation at Arizona Public Service, swore that the state’s largest utility would not get involved in political races.
As he told The Arizona Republic, “We don’t tell employees who to vote for or try to influence elections.”
But while Guldner, who on Wednesday was named as the next CEO of APS after current chief Donald Brandt retires on November 15, said one thing, APS quickly began doing another. By December 2013, the utility was tracking Corporation Commission candidates for the following year, internal records made public for the first time earlier this year show.
Those documents show that Guldner actively participated in the utility’s successful efforts to influence the 2014 and 2016 Corporation Commission races. He got involved in planning as detailed as where campaign signs should be placed, and in a potential plot to plant pro-APS writers at a 2016 press conference.
Brandt’s retirement announcement arrived in the midst of a particularly challenging year for the embattled utility. It is under investigation for years of political spending and involvement, and under fire for excessive rates and customer deaths after APS disconnected their power. But this shakeup at the top doesn’t exactly augur a new and reformed APS.
