Public utility regulators determined yesterday that the request for a debt service surcharge on electric customers is not reasonable, and that there was no immediate need for this relief as requested.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. was requesting an \u201cinterim debt service surcharge\u201d to help pay off outstanding debt owed the Commonwealth Development Agency. CUC is required to pay back $4.32 million in deferred debt by October 2016.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission had to answer this question: \u201cDoes the partial record persuade you that there is a reasonable and immediate need for the interim rate relief requested by CUC?\u201d They unanimously voted \u201cnay\u201d to this.<\/p>\n
The commission consultants, Georgetown Consulting Group, had argued against the surcharge in their testimony. They pointed out that there is already allotted $1.8 million for this debt repayment in a stipulated agreement between them and CUC.<\/p>\n
During their meeting yesterday, this was commission chair Joseph C. Guerrero\u2019s \u201cbiggest concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy have none of those monies been paid to CDA? Should those be returned to the public if they have not been repaid?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the buckets in any rate case are just that, they are buckets that should not be leaking toward other bucket,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
On the need for immediate relief, commissioner Dave Guerrero said \u201cas a matter of transparency,\u201d they should go through the exercise of presenting information to the public on this rate change.<\/p>\n
Approving this charge on an immediate need basis would not have allowed for a public hearing.<\/p>\n
Dave Guerrero said they don\u2019t want to \u201cpass something without the proper research and reflection on the record.\u201d<\/p>\n
CPUC chair Joseph Guerrero was also authorized to execute an order memorializing this decision.<\/p>\n
An expedited review of this surcharge request was further granted. This was delegated to the commission\u2019s hearing examiner.<\/p>\n
This means that the debt service surcharge, which essentially continues an infrastructure surcharge that expired in April, may still be approved.<\/p>\n
\u2018We are not double-dipping\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n In an interview, CUC executive director Alan Fletcher sought to clarify the $1.8 million reserved in their rates that Georgetown alleged they had ignored.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not exactly accurate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be filing information to Georgetown\u2019s responses so we make it very clear to the public that we\u2019re not double-dipping,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He explained that the 2013 accord CUC and Georgetown Consulting agreed to in 2013 did include $2.8 million in CDA debt service.<\/p>\n But just before the decision, when CPUC would have issued the final order, CUC withdrew $2.4 million of the stipulated revenue increase in \u201cstandby charges.\u201d<\/p>\n “Our newly formed [board of directors] decided that they didn’t support that,” explained Fletcher.<\/p>\n Also, CPUC did not approve some $600,000 in non-rate revenues that were part of the agreement between CUC and Georgetown.<\/p>\n The result, said Fletcher, was that CUC only realized $100,000 in additional revenues.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Georgetown report, they did not say all the information. They just say what was stipulated to, but not what the end result was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, with that \u201csmall amount\u201d garnered from the previous rate case, they have not received up to $5.9 million from government agencies this past fiscal year, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe build more than we collected,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we feel we need this surcharge target to debt service alone.\u201d<\/p>\n This way the debt service monies are not intermingled with operational funds; instead they remain exclusively for paying CUC debts.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can we expect our customers to pay us if we do not pay our debts?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Public utility regulators determined yesterday that the request for a debt service surcharge on electric…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[366,915,49,4495],"class_list":["post-201394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-cda","tag-cpuc","tag-cuc","tag-dave-guerrero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}