Opinion ID: 1343653
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dues and Fees

Text: The commission deleted Chamber of Commerce and trade organization corporate membership dues and fees aggregating $8,868 from Colorado Ute's test year expenses. Two reasons were given for the adjustment: first, based on an assessment of the expenditures' value to ratepayers, the commission was not persuaded that the expenses . . . were shown to be a proper operating expense; second, the deletions conformed to past commission practice. Colorado Ute challenges both justifications offered for the adjustment. The utility contends that the record is barren of evidence that the dues and fees were not beneficial to ratepayers. Colorado Ute's allegations that the adjustment lacks support in the record is wide of the mark. The commission is not charged with the burden of showing why expenses should be excluded from the utility's test year operating revenue deduction. To the contrary, it is the responsibility of the utility to show that an expense will benefit ratepayers before it may be charged as a proper operating expense. If in the judgment of the PUC evidence is insufficient to establish that a particular result will occur, it is within its prerogative to decline to find that such a result will occur. Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co. v. Public Utilities Commission, 195 Colo. 130, ___, 576 P.2d 544, 553 (1978). According to the testimony offered by a commission staff witness, Colorado Ute failed to adduce any evidence that its Chamber of Commerce, Club 20 and Colorado Rural Electric Association (CREA) dues were beneficial to its ratepayers (although certain fees paid to CREA were allowed as proper expenses). Nor does our scrutiny of the record reveal any evidence of benefits accruing to Colorado Ute's customers as a direct result of its affiliation with these organizations. There is, therefore, little merit in the utility's contention that the commission acted arbitrarily and capriciously in adjusting its expenses to exclude the dues and fees in question.