The race for the Salt River Project Board was unprecedented this year with record turnout for a normally sleepy election to govern one of the state’s largest utilities.
But, this time, Turning Point USA stepped in and a slate of clean-energy candidates on the other side, too. And the showdown was intense. In the end, Turning Point protected the incumbent president and VP, but clean energy candidates took over a majority of the power utility’s board.
And now one of those candidates has been ousted from his other job as a result — his other job as a Glendale City Council. It’s all over a provision in the city charter that bars council members from holding other paid public offices. But, Councilmember Lupe Conchas says it’s "also about money."
Jeremy Duda, who reported the story for Axios Phoenix, joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Jeremy.
JEREMY DUDA: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So Jeremy, this seems pretty clear, right? Like, the city’s law says you cannot hold another paid public office and be on their City Council. But how much does SRP pay its board members?
JEREMY DUDA: Well, SRP pays its board members $60 per day for each meeting they attend in person. And so and that’s uh these are uh quarterly payments that are given out for that. So in theory, if you were to attend every meeting virtually, you wouldn’t get paid anything and that’s what got some of the kind of dispute at the Glendale City Council last week came down to.
It’s like not only does this qualify as compensation as opposed to reimbursement but does but uh has, you know, Lupe Conchas actually received any uh reimbursement, which my understanding, he has not, at least not so far.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, not so far. So so what did the council members who voted to oust this this city council member Conchas say? Like, what did they what did they say about why?
JEREMY DUDA: Well, they said the law is clear, you know. This is a this is a position, the SRP Board, in their views, a position that provides compensation. You know, $60, as I mentioned, $60 per meeting, that’s governed by state law that says members of uh agricultural boards, which the SRP Power District Board is, um can be paid up to $60 per meeting with the specific amount of compensation set by the board.
The state the law does, you know, that statute does specifically use the term compensation, uh so I that’s might get into kind of a semantic issue on whether that’s is that compensation, is that reimbursement, what exactly is it per diem, exactly what is it.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. What what about Lupe Conchas? Like, what does he say about why he was targeted here?
JEREMY DUDA: Lupe Conchas says he was targeted because, not because of the SRP Board but because of, ironically, agitating against some of his colleagues over another issue of, you know, pay compensation, reimbursement, whatever you want to call it.
A couple of years before he was elected to the Glendale City Council, the city implemented a uh sort of a stipend. I think they referred to it as like a $450 per month vehicle allowance and then a $900 per month kind of stipend for expenses and reimbursements and whatnot as opposed to their previous reimburse, you know, reimbursement policy. This was an administrative policy.
And the way this and the reason this gets kind of controversial is that, you know, the pay for the City Council and mayor are set by the city charter and they can only be changed by the voters. The voters, you know, in 20th in 2019, just a few years before that, overwhelmingly rejected a proposed pay increase for the mayor and council.
I think, you know, Lupe Conchas views this as kind of as kind of side stepping and circumvention that requirement for voter approval and he believes it’s a kind of a very opaque the way this is used. He’s, you know, you know, somewhat recently referred to this as a slush fund. He’s, you know, a few months into his term in 2025, he stopped taking this once he says once he realized uh there are some kind of question what he felt like was the questionable nature of it. So in his view, he says he believes this was he was targeted because of the way he’s been kind of pushing back and fighting against this stipend policy.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. Right. OK. So I mean, the the AG’s office is actually even investigating that car allowance, that stipend policy as well, we should say. And Conchas said he’s going to fight this expulsion. What’s the plan there? Like, how does that process work?
JEREMY DUDA: He has filed something in court, I believe, he filed it on late last week asking for the expulsion to be reversed. And so we’ll have to let that play out in court. And for for for the time being, he’s no longer a member of the Glendale City Council. They’ll start the replacement process for him. He is still a member of the SRP Power District Board.
LAURNE GILGER: So let me ask about that board, Jeremy, because as I said at the top, like this was this very controversial SRP election with lots of eyes on it, lots of money in it, there in the way that is not usually the case for this election. And he ran as part of this kind of slate of clean clean energy candidates. Is this potentially going to have any impact on their success and and what he might be able to do on that board?
JEREMY DUDA: Not as far as I’m aware. Now Mr. Conchas did offer at the the City Council meeting last week where he was expelled, he did offer to resign from the SRP Board if his colleagues would refrain from expelling him. Obviously, yeah, that did not happen and now it’ll be up to the court so he’s on the SRP Board and if the court says so, he’ll go back to the Glendale City Council or he’ll just be on the SRP Board. But I don’t to my knowledge, I don’t think this affects uh his service with SRP for now.
LAUREN GILGER: He’s not stepping down at this point, still going to fight it. I want to ask more about that AG investigation into this stipend car allowance policy. This has to do with the whole controversy over the gift clause, right?
JEREMY DUDA: There’s a number of issues. One is, you know, the constitution the gift clause of the Arizona Constitution. There are questions over the provision I mentioned of the city charter requiring voter approval for a pay raise for the council. There’s open meeting law issues and I think another issue as well. So there’s kind of a handful of legal issues the AG’s Office is looking at in response to a complaint from uh someone in Glendale who uh raised some issues last I believe it was last August.
It was a while ago and then a few months later came back with a couple of additional issues and then the AG’s Office did inform Glendale the the city just about a month ago that "hey, we’re we’re taking a look at this, we’re investigating it" and they need some and they want some answers and some responses from the city in regards to this.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, last minute for you here, Jeremy. The mayor also said there were several "citizens," quote, unquote, who told the city they thought that Conchas shouldn’t be able to serve anymore because of this election to the SRP Board. Is there any hint of politics here?
JEREMY DUDA: Oh, I mean, there’s always a hint of politics, you know. You know, you know, Conchas is a Democrat, he was, you know, of course elected to the SRP Board, you know, partisan politics are always going to kind of rear their head when uh whenever there’s uh something that one side feels is kind of questionable on the other side, they’re going to go after them for it.
We saw during the speaker comments at the City Council meeting, you know, several Democratic members of the Legislature stood up to support Conchas. Some known Republican former at least one former Republican lawmaker and other kind of prominent other Republicans stood up to oppose him. So of course there’s always going to be a, you know, if if partisan politics is involved in any way, shape of form way, shape or form, of course that’s going to, you know, play a factor.
LAUREN GILGER: It’ll always be there. All right, we’ll leave it there for now. Jeremy Duda reported this for Axios Phoenix, joining us. Jeremy, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
JEREMY DUDA: Thanks for having me.
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