Opinion ID: 311379
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Two Cost Factor Categories

Text: 14 The February Notice stated that the total cost of regulation was that stated in the Commission's budget for the relevant year. 12 Thus, the NCTA's request to inspect documents was phrased in terms of classes of documents that supported the budget and the allocation of budgeted costs among the regulated industries. The first two categories requested were: 15 1. The supportive documents used to arrive at the Commission's budget for fiscal year 1971; 16 2. The documents, listings and records used to determine the direct and indirect cost to the Government of the privileges granted the CATV industry for fiscal year 1971. 13 17 Access to the first group of documents would permit the NCTA to check the accuracy of the Commission's breakdown of its costs. Access to the second would enable it to determine which parts of the budget had been assigned to the cost of CATV regulation, and compare them with the budget breakdown to determine whether all of the costs assigned to CATV were consistent with the budget. By adding together the costs listed under the second category, the NCTA would be able to challenge both the fairness of the charge and the accuracy of the Commission's addition. 18 In response to the first item, the Commission provided the NCTA with a copy of its budget request, a document prepared for the Bureau of the Budget. The request itemized the Commission's proposed expenditures for fiscal year 1971, but requested fifty percent more money than the Bureau finally cleared for submission to Congress as the budget. The Commission produced nothing in response to the second item. 19 At the hearing in the District Court, the Commission produced the head of its budget office for examination by the NCTA. Asked for an explanation of the Commission's procedures, he testified that he had prepared the budget request from a variety of documents submitted by the Commission's various organizational units, in accordance with a memorandum of instruction from the Commission itself. He further testified that these documents were still in the possession of the Commission, but he argued that these were not supporting documents to the final budget, apparently on the theory that the budget request had intervened. The latter, he said, is really the supportive document for the Congressional budget. 20 The second request was for the documents that supported the assignment of part of the Commission's budgeted costs to CATV. The Commission's witness testified that there were no such documents. He said that he had compiled the relevant data from the budget by using yellow sheets of paper and adding machine tapes, and had preserved only the final totals. These, he testified, were the figures included in the March Notice. The NCTA avowed that it could not duplicate the Commission's figures by this means. While we can sympathize with this statement, for the reason that there appear to be contradictions in this account of the Commission's procedures, 14 we think that the Commission has adequately shown that there exist no documents in the category specified in the second request.