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Díaz and Roberts: APS could improve communication around shutoffs, but it won't without outcry
Published May 12, 2025 at 12:50 PM MST
The Arizona Corporation Commission says it’ll look into what led APS to disconnect the power of a customer last May. The 82-year-old woman died, with the medical examiner ruling that heat stress contributed to her death.
Once Kate Korman’s death came to light, it led to a back-and-forth on social media between one of her sons and a member of the utility regulating Corporation Commission; the commissioner later apologized for his comments.
Laurie Roberts, columnist for the Arizona Republic who wrote about this, and Republic editorial page editor Elvia Díaz joined The Show to talk about this situation and what changes could be made to try to prevent this from happening again.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Laurie, let me start with you. Can you narrow down what stands out to you about this particular episode?
LAURIE ROBERTS: I think what stands out to me are two things. Number one, it took fully a year for the Corporation Commission to decide to review this case. Recognizing that the Corporation Commission’s job is to regulate utilities, I’m wondering why it took a year and public pressure to get them to look into that.
They say, “Well, it’s because the son finally launched an inquiry with us.” Well, it shouldn’t take that. A woman died because her air conditioning was turned off on a 99-degree day. An elderly woman living alone died as a result of this.
And the other thing that stands out to me is a commissioner, Vice Chairman Nick Myers, who when this came out literally spring to APS’. He blamed the sons, “You should have been there for your mother.” He said APS went above and beyond what they needed to do. And my favorite was, and this is a direct quote, “I don’t feel it’s a utility’s responsibility to keep everyone alive.”
BRODIE: Elvia, I’m curious what stands out to you because this is unfortunately not the first time we have read the story of somebody having their power turned off on a hot day and not surviving that situation. So is there something about this particular incident that stands out to you?
ELVIA DÍAZ: Well, the fact that it took a whole year for APS to review only tells me that there may be many other cases that we still don’t know. We know about this one because someone decided to report it, and the public made a big deal out of it. But imagine: A year went by. Who knows how many more have died that we just don’t know about?
And that’s a very important question about what’s the responsibility of the utilities. And that’s the bottom line here. In Arizona, we have a monopoly, if you want to call it that. At least in metro Phoenix, we only have two companies — APS and Salt River Project — that provide these kinds of services. So there should be some sort of regulation, some sort of responsibility for the privilege of having a monopoly depending on the area that they are serving.
And so yes, of course. Even columnist Phil Boaz, who’s on my team, he came to the defense of the utilities, essentially questioning they’re not responsible. They’re not charities, they are for-profit. They are businesses.
Yes, of course. Of that is true. They are not charities. They are businesses. In fact, I think even Laurie mentioned that, wrote about it. APS made $500 million or so in profit. So $500 that this person owed was not going to make a difference in terms of the bottom line.
ROBERTS: Yeah. Let me put it up there what she said. They’re not a charity. In fact, they made $608 million in profit in 2024. That’s up from $501 million the year before. So they’re doing pretty well with this monopoly, with this gift of being able to have a captive audience, a captive customer base.
And with that comes responsibility. I don’t care what Commissioner Myers says. There is indeed a responsibility. And I don’t think anybody is suggesting that people should just be able to quit paying their electric bill and continue on. But before you go and cut someone off — especially a long time customer like this — I think that you have a responsibility to speak with them, to make sure that there’s not something going on here.
And yes, they’re not social workers, but they’re making a lot of money off of us. And I think with that comes responsibility.
BRODIE: Laurie, let me ask you about that. Because APS has said that they reached out to Ms. Corman a number of times. They emailed her. They say they left a hanger on her door.
Now, the family says they didn’t find any evidence of anything on the door when they came to their mom’s house, or her son said that, and that the phone call went to an old number. The emails were just sitting in in her inbox. I’m wondering if this is more a situation where the process just needs to be changed, like there needs to be — as you reference — some kind of human-to-human interaction, like there needs to be maybe a responsibility to actually physically talk to somebody.
ROBERTS: I think that’s exactly it. The problem here was one of communication. The son has said that his mother was on autopay, which is where they just automatically take the money out every month out of your account. But something went wrong, and in January it quit working. So they start sending her notes via email because her billing is via email.
But they don’t put — again, this is all according to the son — they don’t put into the guide where you would see it, you know, warning please open this overdue bill or anything like that. No bills or whistles going off. So she apparently never opened any of these emails. Eventually they call her. It’s an old number, so she again still has no idea of what’s going on here. They supposedly leave a door hanger on her door, which her sons and neighbors say they never saw, never found.
But if you’re going to go to the trouble of putting a door hanger on her door saying, “You were overdue, you better contact us,” — why not knock on that door?
BRODIE: Elvía, do you have any measure of optimism that once the Corporation Commission undertakes this review of this case, that they that maybe the processes can change and maybe the utilities can can be encouraged or maybe just on their own start to really focus on on trying to do that they need to do to communicate with their customers and make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again?
DÍAZ: I hope so, but I’m not going to hold my breath knowing APS. Honestly, $500 that she owed in bills — just as Laurie says, no one expects APS to just forget about people not paying their bills. But $500 should be something that they should take as the cost of doing business, meaning $500 is not going to bankrupt APS or any utility companies. That should be part, again, the cost of doing business and the privilege of having a monopoly. So I’m not holding my breath without a public outcry and without public pressure.
BRODIE: Laurie, APS is obviously a very large company, a very large utility. None of us are on the inside of this company, but I wonder how easy or difficult you can imagine it might be to change the process like this and really make a point to communicate with customers in a way that will maybe be a little more meaningful?
Because it seems as though, as we’ve talked about, APS did reach out to this particular customer a number of times. It just seems like those methods of communication weren’t all that effective.
ROBERTS: No, they weren’t all that effective. But I’ve also got to say right here, and yes, I don’t think it should be that difficult. I don’t know how many customers. I don’t have the exact figure in front of me, but last May they disconnected a little over 2,000 people.
So I recognize you don’t have an army of people that can go and knock on doors. I think that you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. But I think there’s one thing that they can do. And number one is, make sure that your customers know the importance of having an updated phone number. And if you’re, if you’re sending stuff to people in email, make sure that it’s in the contact line with blinking red lights, “Overdue notice!” so that somebody will see it.
You’re probably like me. You get a bazillion emails a day, and I don’t open half of them, so that would be helpful. The other thing that would be helpful is they have a program that allows family members to be notified if one of their elderly customers is in trouble. And I think that’s a great program, but I think that they need to publicize it a little bit more and make sure — especially for their elderly customers — that they know about this.
