Opinion ID: 353770
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Commission's Orders on Rehearing and the Instant Appeal

Text: 33 On 27 May 1976 the Commission issued orders granting rehearings for the purpose of considering the issues raised by Vanceburg in its applications and supplemental applications. 34 In Orders on Rehearing issued 21 June 1976 28 the Commission addressed the issues raised by Vanceburg and rejected on several grounds Vanceburg's contention that the Commission's failure to include imaginary tax costs in computing dam-use charges improperly deprived Vanceburg of its tax-exempt status. 35 First, the Commission stated that it would be anomalous to consider Vanceburg's tax exempt status when determining the economic feasibility of a project, a treatment which benefits Vanceburg by magnifying the projected cost savings; but then to ignore Vanceburg's tax-exempt status, and treat Vanceburg as an investor-owned utility when computing annual charges. 29 36 Second, the Commission stated that, in order to be reasonable, dam-use charges must be based upon the real status of each specific licensee and that to treat Vanceburg as an investor-owned utility for the purpose of computing annual charges is to give substance to a fiction. 30 37 Finally, the Commission noted that the assessed annual charges did not nullify Vanceburg's tax exemption, but merely required Vanceburg to exchange part of its tax savings for the benefit of using a Government dam. It concluded that the sharing-of-net-benefits method was properly applied in this case and that it uniformly required all licensees, tax-exempt or not, to pay one half of the value to them of using Federal property. 31 38 The Orders on Rehearing thus concluded that Vanceburg had failed to present any facts or legal arguments that required any modification of the Commission's licensing order of 29 March 1976. 32 These appeals followed and were consolidated by order of this court on 14 September 1976.