Opinion ID: 2325624
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Commission's Authority

Text: Newport maintains that rate design is the sole prerogative of the petitioning utility and bases this proposition on our holding in Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce v. Public Utilities Commission, 121 R.I. 122, 396 A.2d 102 (1979), and Rhode Island Consumers' Council v. Smith, 111 R.I. 271, 302 A.2d 757 (1973). In both of those cases, this court invalidated the preferential rates set for the disadvantaged and the elderly which had not been proposed by the utilities involved. Newport takes nothing by the holdings in each of those cases since the preferential rates imposed by the commission in both instances were not substantiated by cost-related evidence as are the rates in the case at bar. We have no doubt about the commission's power to formulate a rate design that may differ substantially from that presented by the utility. Back in 1969 when the General Assembly first created the commission, it specifically declared that it was the policy of this state to provide for the regulation of public utilities    in the interest of the public    [and] to provide just and reasonable rates and charges   . See G.L. 1956 (1977 Reenactment) § 39-1-1. The Legislature then went on to specify that the provisions of title 39 were to be construed liberally to aid in the implementation of the declared purposes of title 39 and that the commission was to be endowed with all additional implied and incidental powers which may be proper or necessary in the discharge of its duties. See G.L. 1956 (1977 Reenactment) § 39-1-38. The statutory sentiments to which we have just alluded represent a clear legislative intent to grant the commission broad powers as it seeks to establish a system of rates which will be just and equitable to all concerned including the utility and its customers. To limit the commission's powers, as Newport would have us do, would be to hamstring the effective operation of the rate-making scheme envisioned by the General Assembly. See Cascade Natural Gas Corp. v. Davis, 28 Ore. App. 621, 560 P.2d 301 (1977), where the commissioner's rate design, which differed from that submitted by the utility, was upheld.