Opinion ID: 433508
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Merrill statement's inadequacy as a contemporaneous agency interpretation consistently applied.

Text: 44 Just as we must reject FERC's reliance on legislative history to justify its practice with respect to the municipal notice provision, we must also reject its assertion that the 1921 comment by the Commission's Executive Secretary while testifying to a House committee amounted to the type of contemporaneously articulated and consistently followed agency interpretation to which we would owe deference. It has long been accepted that an important factor to be considered in giving weight to an agency's interpretation of the statute it enforces is the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all of those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control. Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140, 65 S.Ct. 161, 164, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944). Where the agency has shown little evidence of the reasoning that went into its contemporaneous position, that position has been accorded little deference. See Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United States, 434 U.S. 275, 287 n. 5, 98 S.Ct. 566, 573 n. 5, 54 L.Ed.2d 538 (1978). Here, not only is there no reasoning contained in the statement offered by the agency as its contemporaneous understanding of the statute, there is no clear evidence of the statement's meaning, its completeness, or even its status as an authoritative construction of the statute in the view of the agency or, indeed, in the view of the official who made it. In fact, the Commission has not even been able to show this court any evidence that it has so much as referred to this statement, much less relied on it as policy, at any point in the more than 60 years since the statement was made. 45 The 1921 statement contained no reasoned interpretation, or even a mention, of the statute's notice provision. It was a brief and general, matter-of-fact description of then-current agency practice. The reason for the statement's brevity and generality is clear from the statement's context. The hearing was simply not focused on the Commission's interpretation of the statute's particular parts. It was concerned with the personnel needs of the Commission and with the question of how extensive the Commission's authority to hire personnel should be. Specifically, the hearing was on a bill to authorize the Commission to hire personnel for the first time. The statement cited as authoritative by the Commission was in response to a general question that was directly concerned with neither the notice provision nor the Commission's personnel needs; it was concerned with whether the Commission had sufficient statutory power to conduct permit and license hearings and to open them to all interested parties. The statement was simply a part of a short answer that generally described the Commission's thencurrent practices. 10 Such a statement was not likely to have been intended or understood as an authoritative construction of a statute's meaning, nor could it serve as such. Cf. SEC v. Sloan, 436 U.S. 103, 117-119, 98 S.Ct. 1702, 1711-1712, 56 L.Ed.2d 148 (1978); Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United States, supra, 434 U.S. at 287 n.5, 98 S.Ct. at 574 n. 5; Robzen's Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Housing, 515 F.Supp. 228, 235 n. 12 (M.D.Pa.1981). 46 Even if we were willing to view the statement by Executive Secretary Merrill as an authoritative statement of the Commission's contemporaneous understanding of its statutory responsibility, the statement would not necessarily help FERC's position. Apart from the fact that FERC seems never to have publicly stated its subsequent adherence to the statement, 11 the statement itself is unclear and easily understood as far more in conformity with the statute's plain meaning than is FERC's present position. Merrill stated that he sent letters to the head of every State department that is interested in water power development, a vague classification that would not obviously exclude specialized municipalities like NCWCD. Whatever the Commission practice may have been, Merrill's statement of that practice revealed nothing approximating the Commission's current cavalier willingness to ignore the statute's terms. 47