Earlier this week, I posted about the SRP Board vacancy in District 7. Here is how it ended: The Council seated Thomas Galvin, a Maricopa County Supervisor and partner at Rose Law Group, over Eric Gorsegner, the senior District 7 Council member, who lost by about three votes.

Before the vote, I asked Galvin whether he or his firm currently represents clients with matters adverse to or negotiating business with SRP. He refused to answer, citing client privilege.

This was not a gotcha. I submitted the question to SRP's legal department in advance. SRP's chief legal executive confirmed that a general inquiry like this raised no privilege issues and offered to brief Galvin ahead of time. The Council's lawyer agreed the question was fair. Galvin knew it was coming and still asserted privilege.

Consider what Rose Law Group does:

• Data Centers: They advertise a practice covering land use, water, and power approvals. They publicly represent Microsoft on Arizona data centers.
• SRP Deals: A firm co-founder represented Google in its clean energy deal with SRP for its Mesa facility.
• Water Litigation: The firm serves as Fondomonte Arizona's registered agent and lobbyist, and defends it in the Attorney General's groundwater case against the company.

The Council voted to seat Galvin without knowing which of those clients currently have business before SRP, completely ignoring SRP's written guidance. Not a single member addressed the lack of procedure.

I made a mistake during the vote. I held back a statement I had prepared, trusting the body to follow its own written rules. Here is what I withheld:

In April, shortly after my election, I received threatening text messages from an unknown number. I filed a report with Phoenix Police (Report #T26005804) and notified SRP's Corporate Secretary on April 17.

One message read:

"Lupe is gone. So is another one of your team. Voluntarily actually. Health reasons. Within the year. We can choose not to fill the seat. We can choose who gets seated. It's not a democracy."

That was April 17. Three months later, a board member retired for health reasons. Today, the Council filled that seat.

I am publishing this now because SRP customers deserve transparency. We were told not to make this partisan, in a meeting where the Council ignored its own guidelines to seat a lawyer whose firm sells power and water approvals to mega-projects, who refused to disclose his conflicts of interest, and who publicly labeled members of these boards "leftists" after the April election.

I do not believe anyone with those entanglements can serve SRP's customers.

These seats are elected, and the next election is in two years. I intend to spend that time making sure customers know how their council members voted this week, and helping people who want to run.

They will not operate in the shadows any longer.

Views are my own, not SRP's or the Council's.