Ryan Randazzo

The Republic | azcentral.com

The FBI spent nearly 90 minutes questioning a clean-energy group about the Corporation Commission

The FBI is investigating the 2014 elections, in which APS is thought to have supported commission candidates

Checks and Balances has been criticizing the commission for more than a year

The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent nearly an hour and a half last week interviewing a Washintgon, D.C.-based clean-energy advocacy group as part of an investigation into Arizona utility regulators, an official said Wednesday.

The Checks and Balances Project, which indirectly has been funded by SolarCity Corp., has been criticizing the Arizona Corporation Commission since early 2015, and fought with former Chairman Bob Stump over access to his deleted text messages.

More recently, the FBI began interviewing officials regarding the 2014 elections, where Arizona Public Service Co. is widely believed to have spent money supporting two candidates who would win elections to regulate the state’s biggest utility. The money was spent by independent political groups that don’t have to disclose donors. APS has not denied its suspected contributions.

“The FBI is currently conducting a long-term investigation related to the financing of certain statewide races in the 2014 election cycle,” special Agent Matthew Reinsmoen said in early June.

APS officials and former Commissioner Gary Pierce confirmed being questioned and the commission was issued a subpoena for documents as part of the FBI investigation.

The FBI also interviewed Checks and Balances, said the advocacy group’s director, Scott Peterson.

After reading of the FBI investigation last month, Peterson said he reached out to the FBI, and the bureau called him back June 27 and questioned him about the Corporation Commission for an hour and 22 minutes, Peterson said.

Peterson and Checks and Balances have filed multiple public-records requests with the Arizona Corporation Commission and often suggest the five, elected regulators are too close with the utilities they regulate, such as APS.

Commissioners, including Stump, have called the project’s tactics a “witch hunt” that aims to intimidate commissioners so they don’t reduce the net-metering subsidy for rooftop solar. Net metering, where customers get full retail credit for excess solar power, is crucial to SolarCity’s business model of leasing solar panels to customers.

APS has applied to change how solar customers are billed and reduce the net metering subsidy.

Utility regulator's meetings with APS scrutinized

Peterson, who has emphasized that funding for his group has come from multiple sources in addition to SolarCity, was eager to share information with the FBI.

“I ended up having a lengthy conversation with a couple of agents in which I shared the material we developed and the questions that were never answered,” Peterson said Wednesday.

Peterson said he made an agreement with the agents not to disclose their particular questions. APS, Pierce and the Corporation Commission also have declined to share many details of their interaction with the FBI.

Peterson said he wanted to share information that showed, through a log of text messages that Stump sent, that the regulator was in contact with APS, the head of an independent political group supporting two candidates for the commission, and the candidates themselves, Tom Forese and Doug Little.

Peterson has suggested that Stump helped coordinate money from APS to support Forese and Little.

The Corporation Commission provided the log of text messages to Peterson in response to a public-records request for his texts. After a lengthy court battle, the texts were never made public. Investigators were unable to recover most of them from the phone, and two judges who reviewed the data that was recovered determined that none of the content matched the definition of a public record.