The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission put off making a decision on the change order for Telesource CNMI\u2019s contract\u2014called Change Order No. 5\u2014pending further assessment. The commission made this known in its latest order, placing the agenda on its next regulatory meeting in May.
\nCPUC\u2019s decision was result of a legal opinion that determined that Telesource is a \u201cpublic utility\u201d that must be regulated by the commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cTelesource CNMI Inc. is a \u2018public utility\u2019 within the meaning of Section 8402(e) of Public Law 15-35. It is, therefore, subject to the commission\u2019s regulatory jurisdiction,\u201d states the commission\u2019s order.<\/p>\n
At the February CPUC meeting, the commission advised its hearing examiner to examine whether Telesource\u2019s stock divestiture to Marianas Energy Technology Inc. required prior CPUC approval. It was also ordered to examine whether CPUC has the authority to reconsider an earlier decision made in November 2011 that provisionally approved the change order.<\/p>\n
To determine whether Telesource\u2019s stock divestiture required CPUC approval, two steps have to be determined first: whether Telesource is a public utility and whether the sale of Telesource\u2019s stock by the Pernix Group to Micronesia Technology Inc. constituted an event that required CPUC approval.<\/p>\n
In the opinion issued by CPUC legal counsel George Anthony Long, it was concluded that Telesource is a public utility that subjects the company to the duties and obligations imposed on a public utility and regulated entities.<\/p>\n
Because of this determination, if CPUC determines that the Telesource contract will not modify or change the rate structure being charged to customers, then its approval is unnecessary.<\/p>\n
If CPUC concludes that the contract may modify or change the rate structure being charged to customers, then it must evaluate the contract pursuant to applicable legislative standard and decide to either approve or disapprove the contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission put off making a decision on the change order for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31588","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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}