Staff Open Meeting - August 12, 2026 - 10:00 a.m. (or upon ADJOURNMENT of the September 10, 2026 REGULAR OPEN MEETING, whichever is later) - Sep 10, 2026

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Arizona Corporation Commission 9 min 4 agenda items transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the purpose of today’s staff open meeting and agenda items?

Myers 0:00

Okay. Well, welcome everybody to our staff open meeting. Uh two items on here and um we are gonna try to get out of here by one if at all possible because we've got commissioners that have things to do this afternoon. I don't know why they don't block off their entire date. No, kidding. All right, uh Ficeur Walton.

Feister Walton 0:22

I move item number one for discussion.

Myers 0:24

Okay. Um and we will go ahead and start with uh our executive director, Doug, or whoever you want to

Unknown 0:32

I'm gonna because we've uh been working on this in tandem and rather quickly, I'm gonna ask that uh James and Christy bring you go folks up on today on what we've discovered and what we're presenting. Okay. Thank you. Just a supplemental budget request to the governor's office and to the legislative committees to budget committees. Um we because of the sweep that has come through, we have been at a cash deficit. And so we brought the numbers to the governor's office, we brought the numbers to the legislative uh committee, budget committee, and for some reason there's a disagreement on how those numbers have come across. And so we wanted to make it clear to them and then file a supplemental budget request to both.

Unknown 1:15

uh agencies are both uh entities and Chrissy could walk you through the numbers.

Christy Thatcher 1:23

Uh Christy Thatcher, uh for the record, Chief Financial Officer for Staff, Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners. Good morning. Uh so yes, uh to echo what they said, we did meet with the uh governor's budget office, OSPB, um last week. Uh we did ask them for their how they came up with their forecast for the June budget bill.

Why is a supplemental budget request being prepared for the governor and legislative committees?

Christy Thatcher 1:48

Um at that time they were not uh ready to show. They did supplement that to they did supply that to us at 5 p.m. last night. Yeah. So I did do an initial cursory uh glance at that and um I'll be working with the Demenas on kind of understanding heads and tails with it, and we can definitely come back to your offices on that analysis once I have more time to actually look at it. Um regarding our supplemental uh submission. Um, when we met with the budget office, uh the governor's office, they recommended that um if we are looking to change or amend anything that was in the budget bill, um, a supplemental submission would be required. And so that is why we're here today is to go through that supplemental process and then submit um the letter, a tran a new transmittal letter explaining.

Christy Thatcher 2:44

The supplemental ask and um essentially a a narrative, and I'm gonna have numbers behind that to kind of justify what we're asking for. Um this supplemental ask is to uh remove the AG appropriation of three million. Um and the reason um staff has identified that that would essentially uh fix the shortfall that we are projected to have in the later part of this fiscal year is because um as we spoke about in the budget um meeting in August twelfth. Um we are projecting uh A $5.31 million possible projected cash shortfall. That $3 million partnered with Uh the three million we're asking um after rerunning some of the balance sheet numbers, um, that would actually fix the um the balance that we are projecting to s the the deficit we're expecting to start next fiscal year with.

Christy Thatcher 3:46

So and it's just under the three million dollar mark. And so by removing that three dollar a three million dollar appropriation that's going to a grant, by the way, not operational statutory required. things that $3 million to the AG's office is going to a grant. If that is uh reversed essentially, that would actually allow us to continue doing our statutorily required uh responsibilities as a commission. And we wouldn't have uh a starting of a fiscal year with almost three million dollars in short cash, payroll bouncings, things like that.

Myers 4:21

Okay. Um Commissioner questions, I guess. Commissioner Marcus Peters?

Marcus Peterson 4:25

Yes, thank you, Christy. Really appreciate all your hard work on this. And so just to clarify, so for this twenty twenty six, twenty seven year, we'll see a five point three million dollar cash shortfall.

Christy Thatcher 4:36

That is the projection based off of the numbers that uh we crunched back in July, yes.