Opinion ID: 1213893
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the public hearing evidence.

Text: Concluding that the mandatory provisions of art. IX, § 21, Okla. Const. entitles SWB to the requested stay, the majority opinion directs the OCC to determine the amount of bond which SWB must post, explaining: The decision on the amount of a bond calls for an adjudicative inquiry into the circumstances, i.e., the nature of the order being stayed and the proper amount for the protection of the competing interests. If the majority opinion contemplates that the sixty small towns and rural areas with obsolete central offices are competing interests, then determination of the amount of monetary protection against the harm which may be suffered is an impossibility and can only be conjecture. The transcript of the public hearing is replete with the pleas from witnesses, who appeared before the OCC as representatives of our smaller communities, for upgrading of their telephone services. The OCC was advised of fire departments that can not received emergency calls reporting fires because of multi-party lines; chambers of commerce that cannot keep, much less attract, businesses because of the inadequacy of forty and fifty year old central offices; health providers who desperately need modern telephone services to deliver health care services in rural areas. Legislators appeared at the public hearing, submitted petitions for upgraded telephone services from their constituency and encouraged the OCC to adopt the proposed regulations. SWB and the other local exchange telephone service providers appeared. The OCC was advised that the rural telephone cooperatives are already in compliance with the proposed regulations because they have invested in the upgrading throughout the last decade, with exception for two coops that have time schedules approved by the OCC for completion of the upgrade over the next year or so. General Telephone Company advised the OCC that it has thirty-eight central offices that are not modernized; that it has no objection to the proposed regulations; but it will request an exception to the time schedule and request funding through the ratemaking process. SWB objected to the proposed regulations, but simultaneously admitted that it had some sixty central offices that needed modernization. SWB submitted that its principal reasons for objecting to the regulations are that the OCC is dictating technology rather than services and the OCC must provide for funding before it can require the improvement. Before the OCC, SWB and the other telephone communication providers in this State have clearly admitted the need for modernization and upgrading of central offices. The OCC has attempted to accomplish the needed modernization and upgrading through its rulemaking, ratemaking and adjudicatory orders. I would not generate further delay in bringing those orders to finality. I would direct the OCC to conduct an evidentiary hearing, upon ten days notice, giving SWB an opportunity to show cause why the amount of the bond should not be thirty million dollars adjusted for interest and inflation since 1986 and to show cause why the information gathered in the public hearing had on February 3, 1994, should not be admitted as evidence to support the ordered modernization and upgrading in PUD-260. Such orders are consistent with the requirements of art. IX, § 18, Okla. Const. and will advance the modernization and upgrading issue toward final resolution.