On this May Day, lifting up workers instead of AI billionaires who are working hard to create a permanent underclass

Yesterday at the evidentiary hearing to determine whether Blackstone and PNM broke the law with their $400 million unsanctioned stock transaction, Blackstone and PNM continued to argue that the law does not actually say what the law says. There is no 10% control threshold to trigger the requirement to get PRC permission, even if at one time a draft of a bill once said that and a newspaper once reported about the draft!

They also continued throwing up smoke to try to obscure their increasingly obvious failure to comply with clear regulatory requirements, saying that the law would absurdly require any company buying shares in a NM utility to get permission first - an argument that ignores the literal title of the section in question:

Section 62-6-12 - Acquisitions, consolidations, etc.; consent of commission..

The statute only applies to shares purchased in connection to an acquisition.

PNM CEO Don Tarry admitted in the hearing that looking back, it “would have been beneficial” to seek PRC approval for the stock sale, but instead of complying with the law Blackstone and PNM acted, once again, as if they are above it. 

Now they propose illegal remedies to avoid consequences - a retroactive approval or an “option agreement” - that have no basis in law. PRC Staff lawyers, too, continue to hold up the potential for some kind of fine, a slap on the wrist that could allow the acquisition to move forward. But Section 62-6-12 B is clear:

“Any consolidation, merger acquisition, transaction resulting in control or exercise of control, or other transaction in contravention of this section without prior authorization of the commission shall be void and of no effect.” (Emphasis added).

As our expert Bruce Throne argued in his testimony, "The Commission has no authority to vitiate or circumvent such clear and unambiguous expressions of legislative intent, the public interest and State policy"(pg 68), and further, "the New Mexico Supreme Court has made clear that the Commission only has the authority expressly granted to it in the [Public Utility Act] or necessarily implied by law and may not “‘pour any meaning’ it desires into the statute” or read into it “‘language which is not there, particularly if it makes sense as written.’" (pg 71. Internal citations omitted). 

The law is the law. The Commission cannot circumvent the law any more than Blackstone and PNM can.

You can read more about the hearing in the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Abq Journal and SourceNM.

WE REFUSE TO BECOME THE UNDERCLASS

On this May Day we celebrate those working class folks (and Sen. Harold Pope!) who showed up at PNM Headquarters yesterday to draw the contrast between what the people get - $3.51 per month for four years but no rate freeze - and PNM executives - about $43 million for Golden Parachutes. 

As reported in the NY Times today, AI zealots know that their products are on track to create a permanent underclass, destroying all jobs that require knowledge and expertise. That dystopian future has no place for democracy or law, permanently placing the owners of capital, data and information in control of an economy that provides only low-paying service wages to the rest of humanity. A return to serfdom.

This is the future that Blackstone is banking on. Blackstone's CEO Schwarzman has pledged to donate 99% of his $48 billion net worth to a foundation focused on AI and education. Sounds nice until you hear that Blackstone has invested $130 billion into data center assets already. And Blackstone wants to buy our utility because it wants to power that AI with our dollars, our resources and our water.

The Hearing Examiners will issue an order on Wednesday with details about the briefing schedule, after which they will make a recommendation and the Commission will vote on a final decision. But the Commission has also issued a notice stating "The Commission expects to issue a revised procedural schedule for the main acquisition proceeding no later than May 8, 2026, following the results of the show cause hearing."

Now is the time to raise your voice loudly. Write Letters to the Editor, write Op-eds, send written public comment (follow the link and then click on the circle with plus symbol in bottom right corner and follow prompts. The case number is 25-00060-UT) and show up at open-meetings to tell the PRC that the people demand Blackstone and PNM are held accountable to the law and we do not want a private equity takeover of our energy.