The Ledger — Cluster A

The claim: the regulatory framework governing rate classes “prevents” the project from causing residential rate increases.

What the public record shows instead

On June 23, 2026 — roughly six weeks before this assurance was made — City Council voted unanimously to begin negotiating a Community Benefits Agreement including a “Ratepayer Protection Fund,” described by its sponsoring representative as helping electric customers with “any bill increases as a result of the data center's operation.” A fund whose stated purpose is offsetting bill increases the data center causes cannot coexist with a categorical assurance that the data center will not cause bill increases.

The City separately asked the state, on July 29, 2026, to extend data-center ratepayer protections to El Paso — a request that would be unnecessary if the existing framework already prevented the outcome.

A distinction worth testing rather than assuming

The utility's statement concerns residential rates specifically, under regulatory review; the city's fund concerns bill increases more broadly. That's the likely defense, and it should be tested against the tariff's actual cost-allocation terms once final.

The proposed tariff reportedly includes protections keeping large customers responsible for infrastructure built for them “even if they later close or leave.”

What would confirm it

The actual stranded-cost and minimum-take provisions in the filed tariff text — not the press characterization of them.

The site is currently on construction power; operations are expected later this year, phasing toward roughly 1 gigawatt of demand.

A 1-gigawatt load against an agreement originally approved at a fraction of the current commitment ($800 million growing to a stated $10 billion) is precisely the kind of scope change the City's own risk-assessment methodology is meant to catch. No internal audit engagement has examined it.