Opinion ID: 2324296
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Ensuring

Text: Faced with a huge administrative record that overflows with substantial evidence supporting the challenged AFOR, CWA places its principal emphasis on a narrow construction of ensuring in PUC § 4-301(b)(1)(ii) (ensuring the quality, availability, and reliability of telecommunications services throughout the State). The argument is based on a reservation expressed by the Commission over whether its Service Quality Plan would motivate Verizon sufficiently to attain the performance and, thereby, the statutory goals. The Commission's reservation, in context, is fairly presented in the following passage from Order 83137: We have serious concerns about whether and how Verizon will bring about the improvements it is committing in the Proposal to make. Verizon admitted during the hearing that neither the measures it had taken since our original Show Cause Order in Case No. 9114, including hiring and moving technicians and increasing its preventive maintenance budget, nor the looming threat of our service quality investigation had succeeded in improving Verizon's service quality performance. Its monthly performance reports bear this out. Verizon also testified that it had hired additional new technicians, but the Union questioned whether Verizon had increased the number of available technicians, particularly since it also declared a surplus of 165 technicians in Maryland. Either way, Verizon is not in compliance with our service quality regulations at this writing, and something has to change. If we knew with certainty what set of actions would bring about the necessary improvement in Verizon's service quality, we would have ordered them long ago. Because we do not, we can and will do the two next best things. First, with the modifications we have made above, the Service Quality Plan will establish the levels of performance we expect Verizon to attain, and will impose serious, ongoing sanctions (in the form of credits to customers) until Verizon actually achieves them. Second, whether or not we could formulate an operational plan designed to achieve these improvements, Verizon must do so if it is to have any hope of achieving them. Accordingly, as part of the ongoing reporting we will require as part of this Order, we direct Verizon to file annually an Operational Plan detailing the steps it will take to meet the service quality metrics. We will not prescribe a particular plan, nor will we substitute our judgment for Verizon's as to what operational steps will best accomplish its service quality goals. But we will review the Plan to determine whether it contains sufficient detail to allow us to monitor Verizon's progress, we will require monthly reporting against the Plan, and we will take appropriate action if the Plan fails to improve service quality after a reasonable period of time. Despite the reservation, the Commission, in its discretion, found that, with certain modifications, approval [of the second settlement proposal] is consistent with the public interest and the statutory standard for Alternative Forms of Regulation. The reservation is no more than an expression of the concept articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes: Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so. O.W. Holmes, The Natural Law, printed in Collected Legal Papers, 311 (Harcourt, Brace and Howe 1920). Examples of usages of the term, ensure, in contexts where it cannot possibly mean a completely certain result, may be found in William S. Hein & Co., Inc., Modern Dictionary for the Legal Profession (3d ed. 2001). There, Managed Care Organization is defined as an organization that contracts for prearranged fee schedule services by health care providers, whose decisions are systematically reviewed by the M.C.O. to ensure that the care provided was medically necessary and cost efficient. Query: Why do governments have Medicare and Medicaid fraud units? Quality Assurance is defined as a system of controls used in manufacturing to ensure that the finished product is complete, operational and ready to sell to the consumer. Query: Why are there product liability cases? National Conference of Bar Examiners is defined as a nonprofit organization which prepares uniform bar examination components and checks the personal references and employment histories of J.D. candidates and contacts law enforcement agencies to ensure that individuals taking the exams are competent and ethical. Query: Why do we have legal malpractice cases and an Attorney Grievance Commission? The Oxford English Dictionary (Clarendon Press, corrected reissue 1933) lists nine meanings for ensure. They are: 1. To make (a person) mentally sure; to convince, render confident. 2. To give security to, pledge one's faith to (a person) for the execution of a promise. 3. To pledge one's credit (to a person); to tell (a person) confidently that something is true. 4. To guarantee (a thing) to a person; to warrant (a fact). 5. To engage (a person) by pledge or contract. 6. To secure, make safe (against, from risks). 7. To insure (a person's life, property, etc.). 8. To make certain the occurrence or arrival of (an event); or the attainment of (a result); = ASSURE. 9. To make (a thing) sure to or for a person; to secure. The Commission's finding of compliance with § 4-301 employs the second usage. Having established criteria for the quality and reliability of telecommunications services in the Quality Service Plan, PSC required Verizon to give security, in the form of the $6 million of at-risk funds, to ensure the execution of Verizon's promise to meet those standards. CWA's argument, on the other hand, employs the eighth possible meaning by saying that the Commission must make certain the attainment of the performance standards. Assuming that ensuring creates an ambiguity in the statute, we turn to the rules of statutory construction. Where the meaning of the plain language of the statute, or the language itself, is unclear, `we seek to discern legislative intent from surrounding circumstances, such as legislative history, prior caselaw, and the purposes upon which the statutory framework was based.' People's Counsel v. Public Serv. Comm'n, 355 Md. 1, 22, 733 A.2d 996, 1007 (1999) (quoting Lewis v. State, 348 Md. 648, 653, 705 A.2d 1128, 1131 (1998)). In People's Counsel, this Court reviewed the PSC Order that approved the Price Cap Plan for Verizon. The issue was whether telecommunication rates set pursuant to Maryland Code (1957, 1995 Repl. Vol.), Article 78, § 69(e), an `alternative' form of regulation, must meet the `just and reasonable rates' requirement of the traditional rate of return regulatory scheme. People's Counsel, 355 Md. at 6, 733 A.2d at 998. [10] Following the passage of § 69(e), the Commission received four Price Cap proposals on which hearings were held. Thereafter, PSC issued the order being contested in People's Counsel. Under [this] plan, the PSC set the initial price for telecommunication services, with future price changes being controlled by a formula that [took] into account the rate of inflation, the increasing productivity of the Company and costs ... that are beyond the Company's control. Id. We noted that the approved plan adopted a `broader and more forward-looking measure of rate reasonableness' than could otherwise be had without the adoption of an AFOR. Id. at 7, 733 A.2d at 998. Because § 69(e) ha[d] never been interpreted, much less consistently applied, for a substantial period of time, and because PSC's proffered interpretation ... [was] neither long-standing nor a product of a `process of reasoned elaboration,' the scope of [our] review [was] essentially plenary, with a primary reliance upon the plain meaning and purpose of the statute. Id. at 17-18, 733 A.2d at 1005. We held that PSC properly exercised its discretion, as authorized by the General Assembly when it interpreted just and reasonable rates. Looking to the legislative history of § 69(e), we said that there is no dispute that § 69(e) was enacted to achieve three legitimate goals: (1) provide price and quality protection for Maryland customers, (2) encourage the development of competition in the regulated telecommunications industry, and (3) protect the public interest. Id. at 27, 733 A.2d at 1010. To achieve these goals, the Legislature authorized the Commission to regulate telephone companies `by means of alternative forms of regulation.' Id. We stated that the AFORs were intended to achieve the goals enumerated and that they are, therefore, rationally related to achievement of those objectives. Id. When approving the Price Cap Plan, PSC had found, inter alia, that the `plan also ensure[d] the quality, availability, and reliability of telecommunications services throughout the State.' Id. (quoting PSC Order No. 73011). We held that the Commission was not arbitrary in its definitional interpretations of § 69(e), that its findings were supported by `rational analysis,' and that it did not abuse its discretion in approving the Price Cap Plan as an AFOR under then § 69(e). Id. at 30, 733 A.2d at 1011. People's Counsel determined that the General Assembly intended that an AFOR could be forward looking and goal oriented. Because precognition is not an attribute of mere humans, the General Assembly could not have intended that the Commission be absolutely certain, when ordering the subject AFOR, that it would achieve its stated goals. The Commission did not commit an error of law by expressing the commonsense observation that it could not guarantee the future.