The CNMI\u2019s utilities regulatory agency yesterday voted in favor of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s request to suspend prehearing activity on proposed rate surcharges meant to recover dire losses from Typhoon Soudelor last year and finance needed capital improvements.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission, at the request of CUC, voted to defer on prehearing activity citing the status of the appointments of the commission\u2019s board.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat this request means is just to suspend the activity because we are anticipating that the commission will not have a full quorum,\u201d CPUC chair Joseph Guerrero told Saipan Tribune in an interview after the commission meeting. \u201cWe need three commissioners to conduct business, make orders and such, because my term is expiring along with [commissioner] Oscar Quitugua\u2019s. <\/p>\n
He said CUC\u2019s \u201cargument is that we don\u2019t want to do all this work and then six months later the commission asks them again to update it. It\u2019s like counting things twice.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so it\u2019s reasonable,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to Guerrero, his term and Quitugua\u2019s expires on May 30. The third commissioner Dave Guerrero\u2019s term expires in August 2017.<\/p>\n
The CPUC chair went on to say even if they are reappointed they would still have to go through Senate and House confirmation and he said that might take about two months. If they don\u2019t get reappointed, he expects the near the same time for new commissioners.<\/p>\n
Still, Guerrero disclosed when asked that he\u2019s gotten word that Gov. Ralph DLG Torres will reappoint him. \u201cHe has until Monday to put something formal together. But the governor, in my conversations with him, he understands the importance of the commission\u2019s work and the service that we provide to the entities and the oversight of rates and the utilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yesterday, the regulatory board suspended a prehearing on rate case, number 16-01, which centered on the adoption of two new surcharges on CUC\u2019s electric customers.<\/p>\n
One was a \u201cdisaster recovery surcharge\u201d intended to reimburse CUC for costs incurred as a result of Typhoon Soudelor, and a capital improvement surcharge to finance needed capital improvements. The surcharges are proposed at $.0145 per kWh and $.0223 kWh, respectively.<\/p>\n
The disaster recovery surcharge aims to recover $3 million in net revenue over a 12-month period. <\/p>\n
The capital improvements surcharge is designed to recover $2.6 million over a year\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
CPUC\u2019s and CUC\u2019s action defer movement on rate cases meant to help a struggling utility that CUC chief financial officer Matt Yaquinto and Economist.com consultants wrote was in continued \u201csevere\u201d and \u201cserious financial trouble,\u201d according to pre-filed testimony on the rates last March.<\/p>\n
Yaquinto, who was fired without cause on Wednesday by acting CUC executive director Gary Camacho, wrote in his testimony of the thousands of accounts offline for several months due to the devastating storm and how prior to that CUC\u2019s losses and troubles had been well documented. \u201cIs there any evidence or reason to believe that CUC\u2019s position magically turned around or improved in the last five months? None whatsoever\u2026Still as of today [we] have not reached [revenue] levels before the storm since hundreds of accounts were destroyed.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said \u201crevenues are down and expenses are way up,\u201d and also said that the typhoon caused $31 million in damage and counting to CUC\u2019s system.<\/p>\n
Guerrero yesterday said the commission\u2019s duty was to always look at rate cases and analyze the merits of the case are.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigher rates are not necessarily bad for the public. Sometimes higher rates are justified to cover the costs of increase, costs that are beyond the control, cost of doing business for example,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sometimes rates are also required to fund projects, if we need new pipe or new power system or new vehicles or anything that creates power. So rate increases are not necessarily bad, it\u2019s just that it has to be justified,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI\u2019s utilities regulatory agency yesterday voted in favor of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s request…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[915,49,50,6333],"class_list":["post-228712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cpuc","tag-cuc","tag-power","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228712","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=228712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}