Opinion ID: 1284866
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Unconstitutional Delegation of Power

Text: The appellants appear to be arguing that because the state has never been able to find out exactly how much the HVTL will cost and because the price paid by the rural users of electricity will be partially determined by the costs of constructing the HVTL, the legislature and MEA have given the utilities a blank check to gouge the consumers of electricity. They claim:    [U]nless a statute, or the rules promulgated under it, or the safeguarded (sic) afforded by the procedures employed during the hearings based on the statute and rules, provide a means or method by which the burden of the costs can be balanced against the benefits to be received by the consumers, who `foot the bill', the ultimate consumers are denied due process of law.       [Thus,] any statute, or the rules promulgated under any statute, or the administration of any statute or rule, which denies public expression or inquiry on the point of the cost of a proposed activity of a regulated industry, especially one which will drastically affect the public pocket-book, is an unlawful delegation of legislative powers, and hence contrary to the provisions of Article III of the Minnesota Constitution. As this court stated in Lee v. Delmont, 228 Minn. 101, 113, 36 N.W.2d 530, 538 (1949), and affirmed in Remington Arms Co. Inc. v. G. E. M., 257 Minn. 562, 570, 102 N.W.2d 528, 534 (1960):    Pure legislative power, which can never be delegated, is the authority to make a complete lawcomplete as to the time it shall take effect and as to whom it shall applyand to determine the expediency of its enactment. Although discretion to determine when and upon whom a law shall take effect may not be delegated, the legislature may confer upon a board or commission a discretionary power to ascertain, under and pursuant to the law, some fact or circumstance upon which the law by its own terms makes, or intends to make, its own action depend. The power to ascertain facts, which automatically brings a law into operation by virtue of its own terms, is not the power to pass, modify, or annul a law. If the law furnishes a reasonably clear policy or standard of action which controls and guides the administrative officers in ascertaining the operative facts to which the law applies, so that the law takes effect upon these facts by virtue of its own terms, and not according to the whim or caprice of the administrative officers, the discretionary power delegated to the board or commission is not legislative. There appears to be no meaningful difference between the power of the legislature delegated to MEQC in the PPSA and the power it delegated to MEA in Minn.St. c. 116H. Section 116C.57, subd. 4, and § 116H.13, subd. 3 provide guidelines to MEQC and MEA respectively about the factors to consider in coming to their decisions, and both have been expanded into regulations by the respective agencies. [37] Yet the PPSA is not challenged on this ground. We are not persuaded that the failure of the legislature to require a specific finding of probable cost of a proposed project renders the delegation of authority unconstitutional. The evidence concerning probable cost that was received was certainly relevant, and requiring such a finding in many situations would be most useful. We do not believe, however, that the determination of cost is so essential that its absence nullifies the proceedings on constitutional grounds.