The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission has ordered the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to continue paying for its expenses without limitation, including consulting expenses and fees, the regulatory commission\u2019s hearing examiner, and all other regulatory expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to deviate from what we agreed on before, then you should then bring it up in the form of a petition or letter asking for changes,\u201d said CPUC chair Joseph Guerrero last Friday at CUC\u2019s conference room in Joeten Dandan Commercial Building.<\/p>\n
This was in response to CUC\u2019s legal counsel Deborah Fisher, who earlier said the language requiring CUC to pay for the commission\u2019s consulting expenses \u201cwithout limitation\u201d is objectionable and should not be considered.<\/p>\n
Fisher, who was not present at the Friday meeting as she was off island, according to CUC\u2019s executive director Alan Fletcher, stated in her report that the commission\u2019s consultant and attorney should not be billing CUC directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cCUC needs to have an opportunity to review and object. Equally importantly, the commission should be reviewing these bills first, and then sending the billing to CUC with a request to pay,\u201d Fisher stated.<\/p>\n
Fisher also stated that CUC sees it as a \u201cpotential ethical problem\u201d in having a third-party payer of legal services review and comment on billings before the commission has already made its review and set forth their intentions.<\/p>\n
\u201cCUC sees a problem with the commission ordering payment of bills, which in these matters have been substantial, before the billings are put into utility rates,\u201d Fisher stated.<\/p>\n
Guerrero clarified that it should be clear that the commission\u2019s budget, as required by law, is to come up with \u201cforeseeable expenses\u201d that it would assess all regulated entity and that there is a statutory formula for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to object what the regulatory entity files and it serves no purpose to create a bigger budget. Rather, the statute is designed similar to U.S and Guam and I feel that the comments made here [Fisher\u2019s report] are a little bit out of place,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
He said it shouldn\u2019t be made in a \u201creport through the middle of a docket.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think that it\u2019s the wrong place to argue about administrative fees and procedures inside of a docket,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fletcher noted there were no attorneys present at the CPUC deliberation, but acknowledged that they did have an extensive comment list in Fisher\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many other concerns regarding how expenses are tallied and statements, including \u2018without limitation,\u2019 and we do want to reserve the right to comment back at your deliberations today,\u201d Fletcher told Guerrero.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said it is not in anyone\u2019s place to tell the commission to do what \u201cis designed for the commission to deliberate; it is not designed for any of the parties to deliberate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it should be in writing and petitioned by the entity, rather than engage in a deliberation,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission has ordered the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to continue paying for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,260,915,49],"class_list":["post-42565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-commonwealth-utilities-corp","tag-cpuc","tag-cuc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42565","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}